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How do social factors motivate and influence scholars when they theorize? By exploring the life of George Homans, this paper aims to illustrate that theories are the products of the theorist, and as such are influenced by individual life experiences.

Drawing on a plethora of archival sources including many personal and autobiographical accounts, this manuscript synthesizes these sources thus providing clear insight into how personal factors and experiences impacted Homans's social exchange theory.

This research concludes that Homans's journey into theorizing was an act of providence; that his early career, personal background, and social capital interacted with several factors beyond his control thus leading to his interest in social exchange processes.

This is the first research endeavor exploring the context, sentiments and motivations of George Homans as he began to lay out social exchange theory.

This paper aims to correct some misconceptions about George Homans. Specifically, it clarifies the relationship between Homans and Malinowski, explains why Homans is rightfully considered the father of social exchange, shows Homans’ perspective on altruism and self-interest and analyses Homans’ place in management’s complex history.

This is a conceptual paper which synthesizes both primary and secondary sources on Homans, social exchange theory (SET), Malinowski and other Homans’ contemporaries and theories, which, in aggregate, help dispel some common misconceptions in the literature today.

This paper disperses several common misconceptions about Homans and his work. First, the findings show that beliefs that Homans was unaware of Malinowski are not justified, as Homans was not only aware of Malinowski but also significantly influenced by Malinowski’s work. Second, this manuscript clarifies that while Homans, for specific reasons, focussed on self-interest, his work accounted for altruism. Lastly, this paper also further cements Homans’ place in history as the father of social exchange.

Recent misconceptions have emerged in the literature calling to question not only Homans’ legitimacy as the father of social exchange but also some of his views on the theory itself. By clarifying these misconceptions, this paper enables scholars from a variety of management fields to better understand historical foundations of SET and its impact on current research.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest Homans’ social exchange theory (SET), a management theory, as an explanation for some of the findings of some of the Hawthorne experiments (1924-1933), which demonstrated how social situations play an important role in task performance and productivity and how social exchanges can facilitate it. The authors also use SET to investigate Elton Mayo’s inquiry as to what caused spontaneous cooperation in Hawthorne.

The authors used a combination of published work by Homans, Roethlisberger and Dickson, Mayo and others, as well as oral histories conducted by Greenwood and Bolton in 1982-1984, to argue that some of the Hawthorne studies illustrate the principles of SET. Homans’ SET brought together concepts from multiple disciplines and offered a framework to explain social behaviors.

The relay assembly room and the bank wiring tests of Hawthorne studies can illustrate SET as developed by Homans. With the development of SET, Homans not only provided explanations for the creation of strong feelings of affiliation and trust through interactions and mutual dependence between group members but also provided evidence to Mayo’s concept of spontaneous collaboration.

The limitations of the paper are that the studies themselves can lend themselves to multiple perspectives due to design flaws. Therefore, our argument is only one interpretation – even if it is something that the researchers would have supported.

The paper augments the ongoing discussion about the Hawthorne studies in the literature and in the development of management theories such as SET. The authors provide support that it is through the attempts to explain the Hawthorne studies and the post-Second World War controversies over the studies that Homans developed social exchange. Building on previous work, the methods show perspectives beyond the motivations and sentiments of Homans by demonstrating observable behaviors from the Hawthorne studies.

Elton Mayo was a professor at a prestigious university, but not a researcher; a scholar, but more concerned with executives; a capitalist, but someone who downplayed monetary incentives; an insider, but someone whose own background was more of an outsider. These contradictions have resulted in scholars questioning Mayo’s impact on the field of management. Thus, this paper aims to critically review Mayo and his contributions to management through a lens calibrated to the context of his time, providing a more contextually accurate view of Mayo and his work and offering a clearer view of his meaningful impact on the field.

Using a combination of primary and secondary sources, the authors connect otherwise disparate information to critically review Mayo’s work within the context of its era.

The authors’ critical review of Mayo identified nine topical areas where Mayo and/or his work have been misunderstood or misinterpreted. For each area, the authors offer a more contextualized and appropriate interpretation of Mayo and his viewpoints, and thus more accurately informing the management literature.

This paper is the first to thoroughly revisit Mayo and his work through a contextualized lens, offering a more informed view of why Mayo’s seemingly controversial behaviors were actually quite standard behaviors given his context.

This paper seeks to analyze the contribution that the Hawthorne studies made to the discipline of management. The recent scholarly trend has been to attack the Hawthorne studies on the grounds of methodology and originality. However, the only way to accurately view the Hawthorne studies is to recreate the intellectual environment in which the studies were conducted. Why did this version of human relations rather than Dennison's or Williams's emerge as the scholarly contribution?

Both primary and secondary sources were utilized in the research. The focus was from the time period of 1930 to 1958. More contemporary work was considered as well.

Contemporary scholars viewed Hawthorne as being more thorough and complete than previous work. They also viewed the study as a contribution in light of some methodological issues and political biases.

Performing temporal analysis allows the perceived strengths and weaknesses of scholarly works to become more apparent.

Previous accounts of the Hawthorne studies have mostly studied their impact on practitioners. This study examines the impact on scholars.

The sustainability issues faced by Asian firms, such as environmental destruction and depletion of resources, require the existing corporate social responsibility (COSR) models to be carefully examined and re-conceptualized. Both researchers and practitioners have indicated how social equity and having a long-term business perspective are imperative to address environmental concerns alongside fulfilling the wealth maximization goals among firms. The purpose of this study is to contribute to the literature by examining the interrelationships between COSR parameters among firms, with social equity perspective.

The data for this study comes from the Thomson Reuters Asset4 Index. The baseline sample of this study included 1,690 firms listed between 2011 and 2017. For hypothesis testing, fixed-effect panel analysis on 10,140 firm-year observations over seven years from 2011 to 2017 was conducted. These data points were drawn from four Asian countries (Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong).

This study indicates that developed stock exchange markets among Asian markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong are transitioning from a strong focus on environmental issues to a more social equity-based economy, which is driving higher governance performance. This indicates the significance of the social dimension inherent in sustainable development and goes beyond just the ethical dimensions among the firms and the economy at large. The study also presents the challenges of re-modeling existing COSR framework among firms in Asia which do not have a clear road map on how to achieve environmental performance to achieve higher levels of human well-being, as well as the ethical considerations of achieving the wealth maximization goal.

This paper is unique in nature because it attempts to re-conceptualize the COSR models that support governance initiatives from an Asian market perspective by improving upon environmental performance, which in turn addresses critical issues around depleting resources and reducing wastage in the production process. The re-conceptualization model used in this study is based on the social exchange theory developed by George Homans in 1958. Accordingly, this study links the circular flow of resource procurement as well as production to the circular flow of resource replenishment seen in the chosen emerging Asian markets.