The Internal Functioning of Capitalist Organizations

It is a commentary of some sort on the blurring and shifting of disciplinary lines that I should have been asked to talk on the psychology of capitalism, and should have accepted. Though during the past fifteen years I have had a good deal of exposure to the body of theory of social and personality psychology, I have no formal training in psychology. And I am not a professor of business management. My field of specialization is economic development and social change in the low income countries—which, I think, does make me an economic historian. If I have any individual specialization, it is on the emphasis that I insist must be given to the technical study of personality formation if we are to gain a full understanding of either economic development or social change. This interest in turn is related to the psychology of capitalism. One of the simpler things that this personal history symbolizes is that old disciplinary Lines are giving way, as scholars shift their analysis to new explanatory variables. The old lines of demarcation between sociology, anthropology, and political science are becoming obsolete, all of these disciplines are nibbling away at the domain of history, and personality theory is intruding into the domain of all four.