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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.