Understanding Differences: Searching for the Social Processes that Construct and Reproduce Variety in Science and Economic Organization

Abstract

Given the socially constructed nature of social phenomena, such as scientific knowledge and economic systems, and the considerable differences in how they are organized in different societies, the comparative analysis of variations in patterns of social organization and their consequences seems to me to be central to the social sciences. Beginning with the study of how and why scientific fields are differently organized and then comparing business schools and their graduates in Britain and France, a core theme in my intellectual career has been to understand how the organization of particular kinds of social activities varies between different contexts and has contrasting outcomes. More recently, this concern has been extended to the comparative analysis of economic organization in different institutional contexts, first of all in East Asia and then in Europe, leading to the elaboration of the comparative business systems framework. In all cases, I have developed intellectual frameworks for describing the central ways in which these phenomena varied and then attempted to show how particular kinds of institutional contexts can explain these differences. The same approach helps us to understand how the changing environment of research in business and management studies in many countries is influencing research goals and styles.

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