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The influence of ideas is a central but puzzling problem in the social sciences. Parsons insisted that ideas play a central role in social continuity as well as in social change. Basic ideas that organise experience become embedded in the public mind and structure the ways in which issues are tackled. Through much of the twentieth century, Darwinism, Freudianism and Marxism are central clusters of ideas. On a smaller scale, ideas that begin in academic settings can quite quickly spread into politics. Voegelin has detected very general notions that may structure whole eras, calling one of the most powerful in our time the “new gnosticism”. It draws on our ideas of knowledge and leads to the search for a universal ideology that dissolves all problems into demands for a totalitarian society. This paper argues that there is always an underlying basis for the power of ideas. Many ideologies of our time have been twists and turns on the Christian tradition. The form they take depends on the challenges of the hour and the nature of the surrounding cultures.

Geoffrey Hodgson would like to change all this with his Evolution of Institutional Economics: Agency, Structure, and Darwinism in American Institutionalism (2004). Hodgson writes as both an economic theorist and an historian of economic thought, and he argues that in the history of Institutional Economics in America resides a valuable legacy upon which contemporary theorists can build. In truth, Hodgson’s book must be read together with his recent How Economics Forgot History; The Problem of Historical Specificity in Social Science (2001), where he has argued for the importance of historical reasoning to economists.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the factors that influenced the establishment of modern management into the pervasive force it is today. It briefly describes modern management and discusses the reasons for this gap in knowledge in such a critical area. The main analysis of the paper focuses on the following social ideas and influences that created the conditions for modern management to be formed and established: social Darwinism and religion, the rise of social science, the promise of the scientific method, and the perspectives of the business tycoons.

This paper analyzes the prevailing trends of the late 1800 s to determine which had the greatest influence on the formation of modern management.

This paper concludes that the greatest factors on the establishment of modern management were social Darwinism and the promise of the scientific method. These, then, provided the perfect environment for Frederick W. Taylor to become the embodiment and popularizer of modern management. Perhaps, surprisingly, Christianity had little influence.

Now that the prevailing influences of modern management have been surfaced, scholars and practitioners can more effectively critique the current state of management and determine whether legacy assumptions and influences are still valid, or whether modern management should change in some way(s) to better reflect accurate assumptions and influences operative today. The anonymous reviewers of this paper have found this analysis to be provocative and challenging. They have also concluded that a single article cannot do justice to such an important, yet relatively unexplored area. Consequently, the authors hope that other researchers will also be provoked to join in this important task.

Living on the Boundaries: Urban Marginality in National and International Contexts is a volume long overdue. With the impact of the Great Recession of 2009 and its resultant impacts on a global scale, we are witnessing crises and institutional collapse on a major scale. Systemic problems go well beyond institutional crises brought on by collapsed economies and corporate excesses, but involve and make worse issues of inequality, racism, sexism, inadequate housing and health care, un/employment, poverty, underachievement, inadequate schooling and crime and justice. Periodically, our social science research and public policies have tended to assume that our social problems and social ills could be resolved. However with growing income inequality, there is notable tension developing between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. During periods of tight economies, contemporary thinking is reminiscent of Social Darwinism, that social ills and social problems can be traced to laziness, lack of ambition and deficiencies among the lower social classes. The shifting nature of work, global economic competition and technological advance has and will continue to have marked influence on jobs, income and social mobility in both developed and developing countries. The purpose of Living on the Boundaries: Urban Marginality in National and International Contexts is to raise questions and provide its readers with well-rounded and expansive frames of analysis to question, to view and to improve upon the societies in which they live. Our purpose will be accomplished if this volume helps its readers to begin their own process of questioning and addressing the substantive issues involved.

Following Lakatos' strategy of a rational reconstruction of science, I present a concrete example of the rise and decline of a research program from the history of the social sciences: the authoritarian character studies of the Frankfurt School. The first version of the authoritarian character studies of the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research was based on a Marxist social and psychoanalytic theory, and included an initial empirical survey. The preliminary results of this survey motivated the Institute's just-in-time emigration from Germany in 1932, and at the same time do not fit into the later theory of the authoritarian character (1936). The second version of the authoritarian character studies (1950) gained the status of a social psychological paradigm, but soon turned into a declining research program, which came to a complete stop around 1968 as far as the Institute of Social Research was concerned. Internal and external factors combined to bring about the sudden end of the authoritarian character studies.

How can we account for the vicissitudes of sociological concepts? In a case study of the subject, I asked myself: what is happening to the concepts of folkways and mores? Acting on the impression that these formulations by William Graham Sumner are on the path to extinction, I looked into possible trends in their use by authors and editors of reference works and certain textbooks (including those for courses on symbolic interactionism). A curious pattern of use became evident: while a few types of works showed no decline over the years, most types showed decreasing use. I offer speculations about the differences. Examination of Sumner's writings in the two areas of social change and human conduct in general reveals probable sources of the observed declines. Moreover, another source is probably certain changes in the social characteristics of sociologists.

Through an overview of the perceptional evolution of progress over the past two centuries, this paper aims to review a changed, yet constructive paradigm that has emerged in business leadership.

The paper is a general review-based deliberation presenting standards of the twentieth century, the need for a shift in paradigms and the shift as it unfolds in the twenty-first century.

Focusing on optimal stakeholder inclusion, yet not disregarding the concept of progress in a competitive environment, this paper presents a set of interrelated leadership skills and characteristics, including a discussion about their applicability and ways to develop them.

While globally applicable, the views in this paper are primarily based on the American performance environment.

Management practices would not have evolved to today’s level if we did not have the past experiences to learn from. The deliberations and insights shared in this article should be seen as a way of evaluating the path that led us to our current, multi-tiered leadership paradigm.

The model presented in this article should be seen as a useful, yet incomplete set of skills and characteristics to be considered by today’s and future leaders to ensure greater stakeholder inclusion.

Within the framework of focusing on the management horizon, this paper places the driving motives of two centuries that influenced our current society alongside each other and contemplates on the necessary shifts needed to move forward.

The first American university to have a graduate programme was Johns Hopkins, founded in 1876. Between 1880 and 1914 a number of new universities such as Stanford and Chicago were established, and older institutions such as Yale and Harvard were modernised. The University of Chicago was founded in 1892, with the help of a large founding endowment from the oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller.