American Historians and the "Organizational Factor"

Abstract

In the last few years, historians have given an increasing amount of atten- tion to the "organizational factor" in American history, to the develop- ment of those sprawling networks of large-scale organizations which dominate the United States and other industrial societies. The origins of this interest are diverse. In one respect, it is but a resurgence of that insti- tutional orientation characteristic of American historiography at the turn of the century. In a much more important and direct sense, the recent literature reflects prior and concurrent developments in the social sciences. This includes the theories of Weber and Burnham and their critics on the academic level, and the work of Boulding, Whyte, Reisman, Galbraith, Ellul and others on a more popular level. The interest springs as well from the historian's sense of his own situation. Historians are studying organi- zation-building and associational activity in the American past because those processes are so obviously fundamental for understanding the American present, and the historian's place within it.1