On the Uses of Social Science Research Author(s): William Foote Whyte Reviewed work(s): Source: American Sociological Review,

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ON THE USES OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH*

WILLIAM FOOTE WHYTE Cornell University

To provide a basis for judgmenton federal support for social science research, in 1985 a task force of the House Science and Technology Committee directed the Congressional Research Service to report on the extent to which such research has proven to be of practical value. The CRS draft report seemed to me to provide a very weak case for such support. When David Jenness, Executive Director of COSSA, brought this report to my attention, I rushed to provide him with further ammunition. An articlethat appearsin an academicjournallong after a Congressional Committee has asked for informationand ideas will have no influence on Congress, but the problems of demonstratingto policy makers (and to ourselves) the practical utility of social research will remain with us for many years to come. I am not undertaking broadand general review a of the practical contributionsof social research. I limit myself to lines of researchwhich I know best. I have been involved in organizationalresearch in industry since 1943 in the U.S., Latin America, and Spain. From 1964 to 1983 I was involved in agricultural and rural development research in Latin America. Throughout my professional career, I have been operatingfrom a secure academic base. Those whose primaryexperience has been in private consulting or employment in other organizations will, of course, have other perspectives, which I hope they will contribute to further
discussion.

Congressional Research Service has made its evaluation primarily in terms of the extent and perceived value of the use of research by the federal government. This is too narrow a view. Social science research is increasingly used in policy making and programplanning by state and local governments, by private companies and unions, and by citizens' organizations. In a government established to serve the general welfare, it does not make sense to evaluate research only in terms of how it contributes directly to the governmentthat supportsit.

THE CRS CRITIQUE As David Jenness points out (COSSA memorandum, September 20, 1985), the CRS main argumentfor federal supportof basic social science research is the "serendipity rationale"-at the time the researchis done, the researchershave no idea how it might be used, but some day somebody finds something that can be applied somewhere. This also links with the enlightenmentargument: social science research does not lead directly to of policy decisions but broadensthe understanding policy makers and therefore makes some positive contribution.It is comforting to believe this until one recognizes that some works of fiction also offer enlightenment. CRS finds that the social sciences have contributed little to the planningof governmentpolicies or actions and thereforequestions the value of federal supportfor such research.CRS does find that there has been substantial government utilization of programevaluationresearch.This soundsconstructive until we recognize that it often brings the researchers into an adversarial relationship with policy makers.When we study a policy or program with which key agency officials have been strongly identified, we find that describing any negative aspects is likely to provoke opposition to our research. To be sure, evolution research will continue to provide opportunities for applied sociologists, but we should not have to limit our applied work to this one type alone.

I begin by summarizingthe thesis of the CRS reportand adding my own comments. I then raise additional points that help to explain the current weak position of applied social research.Finally, I provide examples of researchprojects or programs that have been overcomingthese limitations. Since the success stories are drawn from my own experience and from that of colleagues who share some of my own interests, what follows may seem self-serving. I could overcome this impressionby reporting my own numerous failures to link research with action, but such coverage would require many more pages and would deflect me from the main point of this article:that behavioral scientists are achieving some success in applied research. I also argue for broadeningthe CRS conception of potential users of social science research. The
* Please address all correspondenceto William Foote Whyte, New York State School of Industrialand Labor Cornell New York14851-0952. Relations, University, Ithaca,

EXPANDING THE CRS CRITIQUE Before rushingto the defense, we should consider certainadditionalweaknesses of social researchnot dealt with at all, or dealt with inadequatelyin the CRS report.
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American Sociological Review, 1986, Vol. 51 (August:555-563)

556 Few problemsof concernto government,private agencies, or community organizations can be solved on the basis of research that is narrowly confined within a single discipline, yet most social science research has been discipline bound. We need to broaden the base of our studies by developing interdisciplinary projects and programs. In general, social scientists have refrainedfrom linking research directly with action. We have been afraid that our involvement in action will contaminate the scientific basis of our research. Therefore, we have remained on the sidelines, playing the role of professionalexperts who could tell people what to do if only we were asked. In basing our plans for the next researchproject on our understanding the state of knowledge as of in represented the academicliterature,too often we have been far behindjournalistsand politicians in recognizingemergingtrendsthat should be providing the focus for studies that will have real utility in policy making. Although these crtiticisms apply to much social research, they do not apply to a rapidly increasing number of projects and programsthat link social researchclosely with action and policy making. I illustratewith cases from the field. FROM RESEARCHTO ACTION IN BEHAVIOR ORGANIZATIONAL Research in what was earlier called "Human Relations in Industry"and now is more generally known as "Organizational Behavior" became established as a legitimate field of social research in the United States in the 1940s. The books of leading U.S. organizational researchers became well known in the academic world but received very little attention from U.S. management. In contrast, while academic work was slower to develop and was less strongly supported in universities abroad, the works of U.S. behavioral scientists were translatedand widely read in other countries. Having lost World War II, the Japanese recognizedthattheirold ways of doing things were not working. As in past centuries, they looked to othercountriesfor new experiencesand new ideas. The U.S. humanrelationsliterature widely read was in Japan. This led to what sociologist RobertCole calls "a creative misunderstanding" (personal communication). The Japanese assumed that participative managementdepicted favorably in academic writings actually represented what was practiced in the leading U.S. companies. Therefore, if the Japanese were to compete with the United States, they would have to develop their own patterns of participative management and worker participation.While participativemanagement got little more than lip service in U.S. management circles, the Japanese were making

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW profoundchanges in their social and organizational structuresand practices. It is only in the last decade or so, shocked by increasing industrialcompetition, especially from Japan, that U.S. managers have opened their minds to the need to make basic changes in managerialleadershipand laborrelations.They are now listening to behavioral scientists, as well as looking around the world for new and different organizationalmodels. The results of these changes are most dramatic in the automotiveindustry.The academicliterature did not persuade industrialleaders of the need to make basic changes. However, in deciding the natureand extent of needed change, they reached out to the organizationalresearchers. When Charles Walker and Robert Guest were doing researchfor The Man on the AssemblyLine (1952), by a happy chance, one of the men they interviewedwas Don Ephlin, then a skilled worker in the Framingham,Massachusetts, plant. Today Ephlin is UAW Vice President for the General Motors Division; with his counterpart in GM, Ephlin provided the leadership for the highly innovative organizational design of the Saturn plant, to be built in Tennessee. In the early 1970s when he and UAW Vice PresidentIrvingBluestone were persuadingFord and GM to work with the union on employee involvement or quality of working life programs, Ephlin frequently cited evidence for the dehumanizing nature of the automotive assembly line from The Man on the AssemblyLine. He has said that this book provided an essential intellectual foundation for the work re-designand workerparticipation programssubsequently developed in the industry. It was not international competition that moved Volvo, beginning in the early 1970s, towardmajor changes. Under conditions of full employment, Volvo could not hire or keep enough Swedes to man the assembly lines and became increasingly independenton foreign workers. This suggested to President Pehr Gylenhammer that there was something wrong with working conditions, and he asked his Medical Director to look into the problem. As the doctor later reported (Guest, 1985), I searchedout many sources of informationfrom medical journals and particularly from the psychiatricliteraturewithout too much success. But when I came upon your book, it was a revelation. It not only identified the basic problems, but it pointed the way to solutions. Guest adds, "I am certain that our study was only one among many other sources of information that influenced Volvo's decision." Nevertheless, in demonstratingjust which aspects of assembly line work were especially tension producing and dehumanizing, the study provided Volvo with essential evidence to guide one of the most

ON THE USES OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH impressive programsof work re-design of modern history. Labor and management in the U.S. did not simply call on organizational researchers to tell them what to do. They conductedtheirown studies and field trips. Joint labor and managementteams made visits to the Japanese auto companies and to Volvo and Saab-Scania in Sweden to observe and talk with their counterparts.To a considerableextent, these visits were guided by the prior research of behavioral scientists. For example, Michael Maccoby (1985) had done importantwork in guiding an experimentalproject in Harmon Industries, an auto parts company in Bolivar, Tennessee, and he accompaniedthe U.S. industry-labor study team to Sweden to help interpretwhat they learned there. Robert Cole did his doctoral thesis research (Cole, 1980) as a participantobserver in Japanese auto factories. He has been called upon frequently to consult with U.S. companies and unions regardingthe implicationsof the Japaneseexperience. With a Japanesesocial scientist, he has been co-director of a comparative study of technology and technologicalchange in the U.S. and Japanese auto industries. This has been jointly financed by U.S. and Japaneseauto companies, with the active of participation the unions. A majorprogramthat more directly involves the federal government has been developing in the shipping and shipbuildingindustries.The intellectual origins of this program can be traced back several decades to the seminal contributions of behavioralscientists. The pioneering work was done by Eric Trist, a British social psychologist, who workedat the time in London with the Tavistock Instituteof Human Relations. (In recent years he has been working in U.S. and Canadianuniversities.)Trist was the first to articulatea new researchframeworkthatfocused on what he called socio-technical systems (Trist, 1981). His approachwas based upon a simple and yet fundamentalidea: that it was fruitless to keep technology and human relations in separate intellectual boxes; researchers and practitioners had to learn to think in ways that would enable them to conceptualizethe interrelations technolof ogy and organizationalbehavior. Trist's work stimulated many others. In the shipping and shipbuilding industries, the pioneer was Norwegian social psychologist, the late Einar Thorsrud (1977). He became involved at a time when the leaders of shipping companies were recognizing that Norway would lose its strong position in the maritime industry, through the competition of companies elsewhere that paid much lower wages, unless Norway made basic and technological humanresourcechanges.Thorsrud and his colleagues worked closely with leaders of labor and management to devise a research programwhich involved the physical re-design of

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the ship and a reduction of social and status differences between the deck and the engine room crews and between officers and seamen. Along with these physical and social changes came a program to reduce sharply the number of men required to man a large merchant ship, not only throughnew technology, but throughthe breaking down of traditional craft boundaries and the developmentof multi-skilled seamen and officers. As leaders in shipping and shipbuildingrecognized that the U.S. was in danger of being eliminated from these two important industries throughforeign competition, the MaritimeAdministrationresponded to industry'scalls for help by asking the National ResearchCouncil to advise on the developmentof a programof applied research. Out of this assignment to NRC developed a $4 million National Shipbuilding Research program, jointly sponsored by the Navy and the Maritime Administration.The program set up ten panels, composed of labor and managementpeople in each case, with a researchprofessional to organize and guide the activities of each panel. This programis currentlyspending $400,000 a year to supportthe HumanResources InnovationPanel, whose project manager from the outset has been Michael Gaffney. He moved to Cornell University in 1984 to work with and through Programsfor Employment and WorkplaceSystems (PEWS) of the New York State School of Industrial and Labor Relations. Gaffney received a bachelor's degree in marine science and a Ph.D. in anthropology,and he has a pilot's license. Gaffney has been organizing and guiding visits of joint labor-managementteams to shipyards in Japanand Western Europe and has been responsible for writing reports that have been widely circulated within the industry. The panel's objectives are to stimulate and guide action researchin organizationalchange. An NRC committee, working with the Maritime Administration,has allocated $500,000 a year to joint labor-management action research in the shippingindustry.The programis designed to help companies and unions reduce ship personnel to meet foreign competition. American President Lines, the major U.S. carrier in the Pacific, is working with Gaffney to develop its own action researchprogramin collaborationwith the unions. In such projects, it is often impossible to point to a particular idea that was contributed by a particular social scientist. The social scientists have not been playing the conventionalrole of the professional expert who stands aside and submits his ideas at the same time as he writes research reports, so as to claim academic ownership. The social scientists have learnedfrom the practitioners in managementand labor, just as the practitioners in learned from the social scientists. Furthermore, trying to understand and effect organizational changes, social scientists have had to learn enough

558 about engineering, architectural design, and busito ness administration integrate their contribution into the researchand developmentprocess. Social scientists are being called upon with increasing frequency by state governments to do policy research and provide technical assistance designed to aid in the revitalization of U.S. industry.For example, New York GovernorMario Cuomo's 1985 budget included an item for a PEWS project under the direction of Peter Lazes, who has been involved in participatory action and researchwith Xerox Corporation the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile workers (Lazes and Costanza, 1983). The aims of the project were twofold: on the one hand, PEWS was committedto developing participatory action research with severalcompaniesandunions, seeking to strengthen the competitive position of companies through cooperativeproblemsolving in privateindustry,or through employee ownership. PEWS was also expected to advise the governmentregardingwhat the state could do to stimulatethe developmentof more efficient organizations,ones which also elicit a higher degree of commitmentfrom the employees. In Ohio, Governor Richard Celeste secured an appropriation of $2 million to support and the stimulate development cooperative of union-management relations. The governor consulted with Neil Herrickand Michael Maccoby and asked Herrick to draft the first position paper on the state program. A committee composed of social scientists was formed to help the Department of Development judge proposals submitted by labor-managementcommittees and universities. In both these cases social science is clearly being used in state policy making.

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW

concessions for employee stock, and defending against hostile takeovers. Along with the growth of various forms of employee ownershiphas come a growing academic and popularinterestin workercooperatives, a form of ownership in which control is fully in the hands of workerson the basis of one worker/onevote for the board of directors. Up into the 1970s, organizational behavior researchersgave little attentionto the question of ownership. In fact, ownership was implicitly treatedas a constant ratherthan a variable. In the early 1970s, a small group, at first centered aroundCornell University, became interested in this field. This led to the development of an academic/activistnetwork which linked university people with community activists. We focused particularly on cases in which workers and managerswere strugglingto avoid plant shutdowns by buying the plant. In several cases, we have worked closely with labor and management in participatory action research(Whyte and Boynton, 1983). The Economic DevelopmentAdministration was the principal federal agency that had been providing loan money for employee buyouts to avoid plant shutdowns. The EDA had been acting simply on an ad hoc basis, responding to community crises when nothing else seemed to work. It occurred to us that it would be useful to seek federal legislation to support and guide such furtherefforts. Several of us in this academic/activistnetwork, working particularly with staff members and Congressmen Peter H. Kostmayer (Pennsylvania) and Matthew F. McHugh and Stanley N. Lundine (New York) helped draft the Voluntary Job Preservation and Community Stabilization Act, which was introducedin the House of Representatives on March 1, 1978 (Whyte and Blasi, 1980). FROM RESEARCHTO ACTION ON This initiative soon came to the attentionof Corey EMPLOYEEOWNERSHIP Rosen, a staff member of the Senate Small In 1970, employee ownership was practically Business Committee. (Rosen, has a Ph.D. in unknown and non-existent in the United States. It government from Cornell University, but we had is now estimated that close to 7,000 companies not met before.) By the time Congress adjournedin October of have some form of employee ownership, and more than 500 companies exist in which employees own that year, one of every six members of the House the majority or all of the stock (Rosen et al., of Representativeshad become a cosponsor of this act, and it was getting increasingly favorable 1985). This surge of employee ownership has come in attentionin the Senate. The bill did not pass, but it part in response to federal legislation that provides did lead directly to an important piece of tax advantages to companies that establish Em- legislation:The Small Business Employee Ownerployee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). Beyond ship Act, signed by President Carter in July of the initial legislative goal of simply broadeningthe 1980. The bill was drafted by Corey Rosen. The base of capital ownership, the ESOP vehicle has Act directed the Small Business Administration to also been used for a varietyof otherpurposes, such change its policy so as to authorize loans to as financing employee buyouts, saving plants that Employee Stock OwnershipTrusts (ESOTs are the were being shut down, transferring ownershipfrom primary legal instrument for conversion to emretiringentrepreneurs the employees, fitting into ployee ownership) on the same basis as loans that to a general business development strategy, improv- are grantedto any small business. ing company competitiveness by exchanging pay In the late 1970s, we found a rapidly growing

ON THE USES OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH interest in employee ownership among state governments.The first law to supportinitiatives in this direction was enacted in Michigan in 1979. Soon afterward,James Houck, directorof the unit to administer the law, arrangedto bring a fiveperson team for a two-day meeting at Cornell to review what we had been learningabout employee ownership (Houck, 1985). Eleven states with 45 percentof the U.S. populationnow have some sort of legislation that supports employee ownership, and several states are investing substantialfunds to develop this field. There is now a substantial body of published research on employee ownership in the United States. The most broadly based study, covering surveys and interviews in fifty companies, and reviewing general developments, is presented in the recent book, Employee Ownershipin America (Rosen et al., 1985). Following the 1980 elections, Rosen left the Senate staff and established The National Center for Employee Ownership, which carries on an impressive programof research and education. NCEO conferences regularly bring together university researchers, community activists, and people from labor, management, and government. Research has also been linked to action for the development of worker cooperatives. Ever since Beatrice and Sidney Webb announced their judgment that worker cooperatives were not a viable form of organization, it has been generally assumed that cooperativeswere merely an impractical utopian scheme. The discovery (first by journalists and then by social scientists) of the Mondragon cooperative complex in the Basque region of Spain has provided a dramatic and impressive refutation of this negative judgment and Whyte, (Oakeshott, 1973; Gutierrez-Johnson 1977; Whyte, 1982). Mondragon has had a phenomenalrecord of success in establishing and maintainingworkercooperativesin good times and bad. Several of its companies are the major producers in their line in Spain, and Mondragon currently exports 30 percent of its total output. Now we see the emergence of serious projects of designedto utilizethe implications the Mondragon experience in Great Britain, Quebec, Latin America, and the United States. In the United States the leading non-profit organizations that support the development of employee ownership and worker cooperatives have explicitly adopted certain features of what they call the Mondragonmodel. This is the case with the Industrial Cooperative Association (ICA) (Somerville, Massachusetts), the Philadelphia Area Cooperative Enterprise (PACE), and two organizationsin North Carolina: the Centerfor CommunitySelf-Help (Durham)and Twin StreamsEducationalCenter (Chapel Hill). In 1985 Cornell and Mondrag6n began an inter-institutional collaborativeresearchand teaching program. In July, anthropologist Davydd

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Greenwood guided a month-long seminar with 15 personnel officials of the 11 worker cooperatives (with 6,000 worker members) of the Ularco group. Througha study of the evolution of Ulgor, their first and largest cooperative, they analyzed and made explicit some of the basic elements of their organizationalculture: the values they hold, their decision making processes, and the criteria they use in making decisions. In preparingtheir extensive project report, which is now being used in Mondragonto continue the self-study process, they evaluatedand criticizedwhat had been written about them by Basques and foreigners, including the draftof a book KathleenKing Whyte and I are writing. During 1986 Greenwood and I worked with the same group to extend the self-study to Ularco, the unique organization that provides managementservices, strategic guidance, and the exchange of resources among the 11 member cooperatives. As we help Mondragonpeople to develop their own capabilitiesfor applied social research, we are enhancingour own abilityto drawfrom Mondragon certain lessons that might be applied in other countries. Those of us engaged in such researchwould like to believe that employee ownershipin some forms can help us to solve problems of industrial development and decline, but this does not mean that we consider ourselves propagandists. It is importantto learn what works and what does not work, and under what circumstances. None of us would wish to guide people into employee ownership in cases in which the enterprise is probablydoomed to failure. Therefore, we do not see a conflict between our personalvalues and the quality of our research. It is also useful to note that we do not get involved in traditional ideological arguments. Supportin Congressfor employee ownershipspans a wide range, from the extreme right to moderates and liberals. President Reagan, himself, is on recordas saying thatemployee ownershipis a good thing, and the excellent British BroadcastingCompany documentaryprogram on "The Mondragon Experiment" has been played on the videotape television viewing system in the White House and Executive Office Building.

AGRICULTURALRESEARCHAND DEVELOPMENTFOR THIRD WORLD NATIONS In the 1970s, a numberof social scientists came to the realizationthat the "green revolution" was not solving the problems of most small farmers in developing nations. New high-yielding rice and wheat varieties, especially, had made enormous to contributions world food production,but, except

560 where they had access to irrigation,small farmers hzA gained little from these scientific advances. Several social scientists became awarethat some of our colleagues in plant, animal, and soil sciences had come to the same general conclusion. Through the Rural Development Committee of Cornell's Center for International Studies, we formed an interdisciplinary working group which conducted five years of discussion meetings in search of answers that would be more likely to bring small farmers the benefits of advances in science and technology. As we began to see the main outlines of a new strategy, the working group became committed to writing a book that would re-interpret past efforts in agricultural research and development and present this new strategy through case examples drawn from the innovative work of pioneering social and biological scientists in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The authorswere two economists, two political scientists, three sociologists, a plant scientist, an animal scientist, a soil scientist, and two agricultural engineers. As various reviewers have noted, HigherYielding Human Systemsfor Agriculture (Whyte and Boynton, eds, 1983), is not based on a conference report in which specialists in the various disciplines and present independent uncoordinated interpretationsof problems and prospects. Because we had been working together, discussing, and criticizing our various approachesover a period of years, we were able to integratein this book the knowledge gained from various disciplines in ways useful to students and policy makers, whatevertheir disciplinarybackgrounds. Focusing on the innovative work of a small number of biological and social researchers, extension agents, and government administrators, we showed how small farmers were making progress as active participants in a new research and development strategy. That is, we observed the professionals move beyond the optimum and artificialconditionsof the conventionalexperiment station to work with small farmers, and carry out experimentsin their own fields. We saw researchers go beyond the conventionalform of single-crop specializationin orderto study the combinationsof crops and animals that made up the farming systems the small farmers were practicing. We saw extension agents and researchers going beyond relationshipswith individualsto work increasingly with groups and organizations of small farmers. Above all, we saw the professionalslearningfrom the small farmers,at the same time thatthe farmers were learning from the professionals. And finally we saw government administratorsstruggling to re-orient their bureaucraciesto make them more responsive to the initiatives of the small farmers and more able to utilize the intellectual contributions of those farmers. It is importantto note that the conclusions were

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW not based simply upon critiques of past programs and practices. In addition to providing such critiques, every point is illustratedby examples of advances made by creative researchers,extensionists, and agency officials. This book presentsfew ideas that are completely original. In some cases, we reporton the basis of our own field research, but in most cases the argumentis based on projectreportsand interviews with a small numberof agriculturalscientists and practitionerswho are putting into practice a new strategyof agriculturalresearchand development. It is importantto point out that these cases do not simply represent diverse and incompatible approachesto the researchand developmentprocess. There are, of course, differences in detail from projectto project, but the book identifies common elements of a promising pattern that is emerging around the world. At this early stage, we cannot prove scientifically that the new strategy works better than those of the past. However, the results so far have been promising enough to move agriculturalofficials increasingly toward the new strategy. The growing involvement of social scientists in agriculturalresearch and development is reflected in the international agriculturalresearch centers around the world. When IRRI (the International Rice Research Institute in the Phillipines) and CIMMYT (the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico-the acronym representsits title in Spanish) were established in the 1960s, their programs were confined to researchersin plant sciences. Economists were the first social scientists to break into this network of expanding research centers, although in the early years administrators expected them simply to do cost-benefit analyses of new plant varieties in comparison with those traditionallygrown, or to prove that agricultural researchyielded far greater material benefits than its cost. As economists became more involved in particularfield projects, some came to recognize the importance of the understanding cultureand organizational of life the farming community. This opened the door for social anthropologistsand sociologists. This trend has gone farthest in CIP (the International Potato Center in Peru) where economist Douglas Horton worked first as head of the very small Economics Unit. As he brought in anthropologists and sociologists to link CIP's plant sciences research with a broad range of the social sciences, Center DirectorRichardSawyer agreed to a name change so that CIP now has a Social Sciences Unit. The social scientists at CIP are not simply appendages with uncertian relations with the main lines of researchand development. They have come to be intimately involved with plant scientists in field projects and in the development of research policies.

ON THE USES OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS This is not intendedto be an argumentagainst the social and economic benefits that can come from "basic" or "pure" research. In fact, I have describedone case of basic research(the assembly line studies of the 1950s) which yielded important practicalbenefits many decades later. What I wish to stress is that there are ways to design research that both advance science and yield reasonably foreseeable practicalbenefits. It is strikingthat social researchersare reaching the same generalconclusions in fields so divergent as industry in highly industrializedcountries and agriculturein developing nations. In conventional organizations in both fields we find the same tendency of those in power to grossly underestimate the intellectual contribution that could be made by the powerless if the social systems were restructuredso as to facilitate and utilize that contribution. While the conventional view of workers or peasants may arise out of the social-class position of the powerful, that view has been strongly reinforced by students of engineering, business administration, and the social sciences. For industry, the prophet was Frederick W. Taylor (191 1; see also Copley, 1923), the father of what came to be known as scientific management, but which is more accurately describedas "technocraticmanagement."In agriculture, we have been similarly misled by social researchers who defined the problem of rural poverty in terms of "resistance to change." What we now call "the myth of the passive peasant" gave rise to innumerablestudies that attemptedto determinehow the experts could overcome "resistance to change" and make the small farmers do what was good for them. This generalconclusion points to a prime source of the problemsof low productivity,but it does not tell us how to solve them. It is only a first step to recognize that the intellectual resources and emotional commitments of workers and small farmerswill only pay off in increasedproductivity and human satisfactionif they themselves actively participatein the decision-making process. Participation comes in various forms, and different participatory systems are requiredin differentwork situations. We need to go far beyond saying that participationis a good thing. Social researchers and practitionersin industry and agricultureneed to study and work together to develop new participatorysystems. It is that process that is gaining strength among increasing numbers of and professors.. practitioners Whethersocial scientists can contributeto policy making depends in part upon whether the policy makers are facing problems in which they think we can be of some assistance. If the leading practitionersare enjoying great success and have won high prestige in their organizations and in

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society, they are not inclinedto open theireyes and ears to let social scientists point out those problems that their currentmethods are not solving. In other words, our failures to influence policy makersmay not be due simply to the irrelevanceof our research or to our inability to communicate with practitioners-though these deficiencies are certainly present in some cases. When the U.S. in the post-WorldWar II years was known as "the great arsenal of democracy," why should industrialleaders listen to discordant notes from academia?In fact, as recently as 1968, Jacques Servan-Schreiberpublished a best-seller, The American Challenge, which argued that U.S. managementmethods were so superiorto those of Europe that U.S. companies were going to take over the economy of Europe. It was only as U.S. companies began to lose their markets to foreign competition that the leaders of industryand labor began opening their minds to what we might contribute. In Sweden the problem was not international competition but full employment, that made it difficult for Volvo to man its assembly lines. It was the bind in the workplace itself that precipitated organizationalrethinking. In the early years of the "green revolution," the plant scientists in charge of the international researchcenterscould well believe thatthe world's problems of food production and rural welfare were being solved by the introduction of new high-yielding plant varieties. It was only as it to became apparent some plant scientists that small farmers in general were receiving few of the benefits of the "green revolution" thatthe doors of the centers began to open to social scientistseconomists first and then, after some lag, anthropologists and sociologists. Progressin appliedsocial researchoften requires collaborationor at least the either interdisciplinary commitment of the researcherto search for and deal with ideas and information beyond his/her particularspecialty. Nor should interdisciplinary work be confined within the various disciplines of the social sciences. The sociologist does not have to become an engineer or a financial specialist to do useful work in industry,but he or she needs to what these professionals are doing and understand how they think about their work and their organization. Similarly, the sociologist does not have to master the.plant sciences or agriculturalengineering to do useful work in agriculture,but he or she needs to understandwhat these professionals are doing and what they think about their work and theirorganization.In otherwords, interdisciplinary thinkingmust cover a broaderrange of specialized knowledge than has been customaryin the past. Conditions for developing more fruitful applied social research are now more favorable than they have ever been. Both in industryand in agricultural development, more practitionersthan ever before

562 are open to our ideas and information. However, that still leaves the question of how we can best utilize these expanding opportunities.In the past, there has been a widespreadtendency to visualize applied social researchin elitist terms: we tried to get practitioners to recognize that our research equips us to tell them what to do. I call this the "professionalexpertmodel" (Whyte, 1984, Chapter 10). This model is perfectly appropriate when we are called upon to discover and presentthe facts regardingsome social and economic problem, but it is not a workable model when we are studying organizationalchange processes. In "participatory action research" (Whyte, 1984, chapter 10), illustratedby some of the cases described earlier, we work collaborativelywith the practitionersand learn from them, as we study their organization and try to help them solve its problems. I have illustratedmy argumentprimarilythrough research, based on the assumption that it is possible to develop projectsthat serve the interests of the various parties involved, rather than to simply help one party to exploit the other. Does this assume that all problems of society can be solved by applied social research, without major changes in the macro-economic and social structure of society? Not at all. In principle, I am not opposed to such majorchanges-including revolutions-but I can only imagine how changes of so drastica naturemay come about. Meanwhile, I find it useful scientifically and practicallyto study what can be done here and now underthe existing social and economic conditions. Our experience suggests a further point on research strategy. Most social science research is focused on what I call "standardsituations" (those very common in the field of study). The people concerneddiagnosetheirproblemsin standard ways and arrive at standardpolicies and programsthat may do little to solve those problems. This style of research gives us the illusion of scientific virtue because, whateverour conclusions, they will apply to a large numberof cases. The drawbackis that this style leaves out of focus cases in which creative individuals have defined the problems in nonstandardways and have devised social inventions that appearto be solving the problems better than the standardnon-solutions(see Whyte, 1982). It may be useful here to use an evolutionary analogy (Greenwood, 1984). The survival and success of an organizationdepends in part on how the variation in its structuresand social processes throughtime fits with the variation in its external environment.In an era when social, economic, and political conditions are undergoing rapid and drastic changes, it is especially likely that organizationsthat share the most common patterns of structureand social processes will drift out of adjustmentto the environment. In that situation, continued focus on "standard" organizationswill yield voluminous data on problems and little data

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW on solutions. Shifting our focus from central tendencies will turn our attention to some cases whose variation from the common pattern is leading to extinction. We will also identify other cases in which individuals have created social inventions that build organizationsbetter adapted to solving the problems of today and tomorrow. Although there is no natural law that denies sociologists the right to make social inventions, fortunatelythe human race does not depend on us for its social inventions. Humans everywhere are creative both socially and in other fields. Applied sociologists can monitorthe organizational changes in progress, select for study those variationsfrom "standard" that appear most promising, describe them systematically,and develop theoreticalframeworks that help others to understand the main features of the emerging new organizational models. I have illustratedthis process with cases from both industryand agriculture. Finally, let me repeat that I have attemptedto review only a limited set of cases in which social scientists have contributed to action and policy making. I have confined myself to the fields in which I can testify from personal experience and from study of the work of my colleagues. If the actual and potential practical contributionsof the social sciences are to be recognized in government and among the general public, we need to bring into public and academic discourse the ideas and experiencesof many other social researchers.I aim this paper at an academic audience in the hope of stimulatingmy colleagues to broaden and deepen this discourse.

REFERENCES Cole, Robert. 1980. Work, Mobility and Participation. Berkeley: University of CaliforniaPress. Copley, Frank Barkley. 1923. Frederick W. Taylor. Father of Scientific Management. New York: Harper Bros. Greenwood, Davydd. 1984. The Taming of Evolution. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Guest, Robert H. 1985. "Industrial Sociology: Some Personal Reflections." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting, AmericanSociological Association (August), Washington, D.C. Ana Whyte and William F. Whyte. Gutierrez-Johnson, 1977. "The Mondrag6nSystem of WorkerProduction Cooperatives." Industrialand Labor Relations Review 31: 18-30. Houck, James. 1985. "Employee Ownership in Michigan: The Emerging Role of the State." ILR Report. Employee Ownership23:2 (Spring). Lazes, Peter and Tony Costanza. 1983. "Cutting Costs WithoutLayoffs ThroughUnion-ManagementCollab4:362-70. oration." National ProductivityRevie4w Maccoby, Michael. 1985. "The Problem of Work: Technology, Competition, Employment, Meaning." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting, American Sociological Association (August), Washington, D.C.

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Oakeshott,Robert. 1973. "Mondrag6n:Spain's Oasis of Democracy." Observer (London) Color Supplement, 21. January Reprinted,pp. 290-96 in Self-Mangement: Economic Liberation of Man, edited by Jaroslav Vanek. Baltimore:Penguin Books, Ltd., 1975. Rosen, Corey, KatherineKlein, and KarenYoung. 1985. Employee Ownership in America. Lexington, MA: Heath. Servan-Schreiber,Jacques. 1968. The American Challenge. New York: Harper& Row. Taylor, FrederickW. 1911. The Principles of Scientific Management.New York: MacMillan. Thorsrud, Einar. 1977. "Democracy at Work: Norwegian Experiences with Nonburaucratic Forms of Organization."AppliedBehavioralScience 13:410-21. Trist, Eric. 1981. The Evolution of Socio-Technical

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Systems: A Conceptual Framework and an Action Program. Toronto:OntarioMinistry of Labor. Walker, Charlesand RobertH. Guest. 1952. TheMan on the AssemblyLine. Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversity Press. Whyte, William Foote. 1982. "Social Inventions for Solving Human Problems." American Sociological Review 47:1-13. . 1984. Learningfrom the Field. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Whyte, William Foote and Joseph Blasi. 1980. "From Research to Legislation on Employee Ownership." Economic and IndustrialDemocracy 3:395-415. Whyte, William Foote and Damon Boynton (eds.) 1983. Higher-Yielding Human Systems for Agriculture. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.