Frank W. Taussig and Carl S. Joslyn on the social origins of American business leaders. A chapter in the history of social science at Harvard

Luca Fiorito () and Massimiliano Vatiero

Department of Economics University of Siena from Department of Economics, University of Siena

Abstract: In their 1932 volume American Business Leaders: A Study in Social Origins and Social Stratification, Frank W. Taussig and Carl S Joslyn, then a young Harvard graduate, argued that success in business depended more on innate superiority than on other environmental factors such as financial aid, influential connections, and formal education. The aim of this paper is to analyze the main contentions of Taussig and Joslyn, as well the intellectual genesis of, and the general reactions to, this controversial volume. Although our main focus is on Taussig and Joslyn, other figures, all directly affiliated with Harvard, will play a decisive role in our narrative—the economist Thomas Nixon Carver, the psychologist William McDougall, and the sociologist Pitirim Aleksandrovic Sorokin. This makes the scope of this paper in many respects broader than its title may suggest—in the sense that it will allow us to place a work like American Business Leaders within the context of an important strand of social science research at Harvard during the interwar years.

Keywords: Taussig, Frank Williams; eugenics; hereditarianism, business leaders, Harvard (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B1 B15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his and nep-hpe
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