About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

16 Antitrust Bull. 509 (1971)
Antitrust Implications of a Sociological Interpretation of Competition, Conflict, and Cooperation in the Marketplace

handle is hein.journals/antibull16 and id is 537 raw text is: ANTITRUST IMPLICATIONS OF A             SOCIOLOGICAL
INTERPRETATION OF COMPETITION, CONFLICT.
AND COOPERATION IN THE MARKETPLACE
by
Louis W. STERN'
Attempts have been made to amend the theory of the firm
on the basis of findings from contemporary political science,
sociology, and psychology.' Yet, there is little evidence that
the insights gained have affected general public policy or
antitrust law specifically. The basic objective of this article
is to propose a blending of a sociological view of the firm as
an economic entity and to explore whether such an approach
might provide a meaningful perspective to the role of anti-
trust.
Sociology studies social aggregates and groups in their
institutional organization. According to Parsons, it is con-
cerned . . . with the phenomena of the institutionalization of
patterns of value-orientation in the social system.'2    Eco-
nomics, on the other hand, is concerned . . . with the phenom-
ena of rational decision-making and the consequences of
Professor of Marketing, The Ohio State University. The author
gratefully acknowledges the helpful suggestions and comments of
the marketing faculty (and particularly Professors E. T. Grether
and David A. Revzan) at the University of California (Berkeley),
Professors Lee E. Preston, Robert Bartels, George Fisk, and Larry
J. Rosenberg, and his research assistants at Berkeley and Ohio State
(David Keefe, Charles Snow, and John Withey). Support for the
development of this paper was supplied by the Institute of Business
and Economic Research at Berkeley.
See, for example, Richard Al. Cyert and James G. March, A
Behavioral Theory of the Firm (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-
Hall, Inc., 1964); A. Phillips, Market Structure, Organization and
Performance (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1962);
and W. J. Baumol, Business Behavior, Value and Growth (New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1959).
2 Talcott Parson, The Social System  (Glencoe, Ill.: The Free
Press, 1951), p. 552.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most