Key points are not available for this paper at this time.
Direct all correspondence to Yehouda Shenhav, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel 69978. The author thanks Steve Barley, Nitza Berkovitz, Daniel Breslau, Yinon Cohen, Frank Dobbin, Michal Frenkel, Mauro Guillen, Yitchak Haberfeld, David Hounshell, Sanford Jacoby, Gideon Kunda, Jim March, John Meyer, Anne Miner, Richard Scott, Ronen Shamir, Haya Steir, David Strang, Mark Suchman, Ilan Talmud, Ely Weitz, and three anonymous reviewers for comments or suggestions. The assistance and services received at the Wisconsin Historical Library; at the Wendt Engineering Library, the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and at the Engineering Societies Information Center Linda Hall Library East, New York City, are appreciated. Yasmin Alkalay, Ella Glasman, Alexandra Kalev, and Aviva Zeltzer provided valuable technical assistance. This research was supported by a grant from the Israel Foundations Trustees, Ford Foundation, 1994, and by a grant from the Israel Science Foundation administered by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities. A version of this paper was presented at the ASA Annual Meeting in Los Angeles, August 1994. This paper traces the genesis of the systems paradigm in the study of organizations in the United States back to nineteenth-century engineering practices. The empirical analyses for the period 1879-1932 are based on primary data collected from three journals in which the study of organizations was first codified and crystallized: the Engineering Magazine, the American Machinist, and the ASME Transactions. The evolution of the systems paradigm was found to be a product of at least three forces that form one interacting gestalt: (1) the efforts of mechanical engineers who sought industrial legitimation and whose professional paradigm spilled over into the organizational field; (2) the Progressive period (1900-1917) and its rhetoric on professionalism, equality, order, and progress; and (3) labor unrest, which was perceived as a threat to stable economic and social order. The paper provides a cultural and political reading, rather than a functional and economic one, to the emergence of managerial thought and the evolution of organization theory.'
Yehouda Shenhav (Fri,) studied this question.