Radical Institucionalism: Basic Concepts

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EMULATION: AN INSTITUTIONAL THEORY OF VALUE FORMATION 
Author(s): William M. Dugger 
Source: Review of Social Economy, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 1989), pp. 134-154
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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EMULATION: AN INSTITUTIONAL 
THEORY OF VALUE FORMATION* 
By William M. Dugger** 
DePaul University 
INTRODUCTION 
Illegal insider trading in the stock market is a highly visible symbol of the 
fact that American morality is on the decline. Our values are degenerating. 
The pundits of the New right have noticed the decline and the degeneration 
but blame them on the rise of the liberal welfare state and on the spread of 
the so-called permissiveness that allegedly has accompanied the liberal 
welfare state. [Gilder, 1981] But the reactionaries are wrong. They have set 
up a scapegoat. And they wish to re-establish the authority of a more 
patriotic, patriarchal, and respectful age. Their nostalgia is not harmless, for 
their reminiscences reek of proto-fascism, and the reasons they give for our 
moral malaise are dangerously deluded. In short, the reactionary conven? 
tional wisdom as to why morals are declining and values degenerating is 
wholly inadequate. More adequate insight can be gained into value forma? 
tion and value transmission by contrasting how socialization processes affect 
the individual in a hegemonic institutional structure versus a pluralistic 
institutional structure and by exploring emulation 
? a socialization process 
that is transforming pluralism into hegemony in the United States. Here is 
the cause of moral degeneration in the United States, not the permissive? 
ness of the liberal welfare state, for pluralism fosters free will and moral 
integrity while hegemony fosters mindless conformity and moral opportun? 
ism. Besides, the insider traders responsible for demoralizing our securities 
markets were not exactly products of the welfare system. 
The reactionaries of the 1980s were right about only one thing: something 
has gone dreadfully wrong with American values. Nevertheless, we must 
turn away from reaction to understand what and why. This journal pub? 
lished a formal framework that can be used to analyze the shortcomings of 
rampant consumerism. [Dugger, 1985c] And in a major book, Christopher 
*0034-6764/89/0601-l/$1.50/0. 
**Presented at the annual meetings of the Association for Social Economics, December, 
1987, Chicago. Generous release time and support was provided by DePaul's College of 
Commerce, and by the Dean of the College of Commerce, Brother Leo V. Ryan, C.S.V. Rick 
Tilman and Kendall P. Cochran made careful comments on an earlier draft. John B. Davis, 
Arnold McKee, Robert A. Solo, and anonymous referees for this journal were helpful. The 
views are my own alone. 
134 
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EMULATION 135 
Lasch summarized several decades of social and psychological research: 
William H. Whyte's "organization man" Erich Fromm's "market 
oriented personality," Karen Horney's "neurotic personality of our 
time," and the studies of American national character by Margaret 
Mead and Geoffrey Gorer all captured essential aspects of the new 
man: his eagerness to get along well with others; his need to 
organize even his private life in accordance with the requirements 
of large organizations; his attempt to sell himself as if his own 
personality were a commodity with an assignable market value; his 
neurotic need for affection, reassurance, and oral gratification; the 
corruptibility of his values. [1978, pp. 63-64] 
So the evidence is in; the reactionaries are right; American values are 
slipping. In fact, Lasch believes that we have slipped so low that, "[T]he 
prostitute, not the salesman, best exemplifies the qualities indispensable to 
success in American society." [Lasch, 1978, p. 64] 
But why has this happened? Who is to blame? Where do values come 
from and how are they corrupted? To what extent are the values an 
individual holds products of that individual's intellect and will? To what 
extent are those values products of the social milieu in which the individual 
is engaged? These questions in value theory (not to be confused with 
questions in price theory) are similar to the nature versus nurture questions 
in social theory. These questions are the meat and drink of social economics. 
These questions are also central to the philosophical debate between the 
methodological individualists and the methodological collectivists. Under 
methodological individualism, the individual invents her own values 
through her free will 
? institutions do not value; only individuals value. But 
under methodological collectivism, the individual is taught traditional val? 
ues through socialization into a set of institutions. No definitive answer can 
be given to these methodological questions. But insight can be gained by 
contrasting how socialization processes affect the individual in a hegemonic 
social milieu versus a pluralistic social milieu and by exploring emulation 
? 
a socialization process that transforms a pluralistic institutional structure, 
conducive to free will, into a hegemonic institutional structure, conducive to 
mindless conformity. Pluralism is the domain of methodological individual? 
ism because pluralism provides the social conditions necessary for the 
exercise of individual intellect and free will. Hegemony, on the other hand, 
is the domain of methodological collectivism because hegemony provides 
the social conditions necessary for the inculcation of traditional or authori? 
tarian values. Emulation is important. It is the driving force behind the 
transformation of pluralism into hegemony, of free will into mindless con? 
formity. 
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136 REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY 
Pluralism is the crucible of individuality. A pluralistic society is made up 
of autonomous, conflicting institutions. In a pluralistic milieu, the individual 
participates in independent and autonomous institutions, each of which 
focuses on values that contradict the values of the others. These institutional 
contradictions force the individuals caught up in them to exercise their 
intellects and their wills in constructing their own sets of values out of the 
conflicting and competing values they encounter as members of different, 
autonomous institutions. Or, perhaps, these institutional contradictions 
force the individuals caught up in them to go mad. In a hegemonic milieu, 
on the other hand, there is no such risk and no such challenge.A hegemonic 
society is made up of dependent, complementary institutions. In a hege? 
monic milieu, the individual participates in dependent and coordinated 
institutions, each of which reinforces the values of the others. These institu? 
tional reinforcements allow the individual simply to absorb the values 
inculcated, exercising a minimum of will and intellect in the process. If the 
values of different institutions reinforce each other, no act of will or intellect 
is necessary to construct a set of values. The already constructed ones can be 
accepted without adaptation or amendment. Mindless conformity to existing 
values is all that is needed. Rather than struggling against the gathering 
chaos and potential madness to make ethical and moral sense out of one s 
experiences in conflicting institutions, no struggle is necessary, no madness 
is risked, no chaos is encountered. Passive acceptance is easy, risk free. In 
short, pluralism forces individuals to be ethnically active and mindful; 
hegemony forces individuals to be ethically passive and mindless. [Classic 
treatments are Gramsci, 1971 and Gerth and Mills, 1953] 
EMULATION 
Definition 
Emulation is competition for status. It is personal rivalry based on envy. 
The rivalry is directed against one's competitors by becoming like one's 
betters. Acquiring the symbols of high status and displaying them to others, 
while simultaneously denying them to others, is the essence of emulation. 
Emulation is what drives the rat race. Viewed in the large, emulation is 
clearly irrational. Each individual in the emulative race tries to get ahead of 
every other individual. But, since we cannot all get ahead of everyone else, 
trying to do so is irrational. C. Wright Mills called the race the status panic, 
and he argued that the movement of millions of people into white collar 
employment in large, bureaucratic organizations significantly stepped up 
the panic. [Mills, 1951, pp. 239-58] The only rational thing for an individual 
to do when caught up in such a race or in such a panic is to drop out. But few 
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EMULATION 137 
do so. Only the hippies, the earlier beatniks, and the bohemians before 
them, have seen the light. These secular monks, these strange inhabitants of 
even stranger cloisters, these refugees from materialism run amuck, have 
induced few to follow them. Like their religious counterparts, they are not of 
the mainstream. Thorstein Veblen was probably the first secular thinker in 
America to understand fully the deep irrationality of the emulative life. 
[Veblen, 1975] Veblen was a secular humanist, outside the Judeo-Christian 
tradition. Nevertheless, his "Christian Morals and the Competitive System" 
was a profound statement of a social gospel in the United States. Of course, 
he found the two incompatible. [Veblen, 1964] 
The Rationalization Myth 
Max Weber argued that Western man was rapidly rationalizing his world 
by modernizing his organizations in both the private sector and the public 
sector. The modern organization, Weber argued, was based on bureaucracy 
? on the impersonal and rational application, on a large scale, by trained 
specialists, of formal rules to the pursuit of shared objectives. These ration? 
ally organized human activities would be the wellsprings of progress, ban? 
ishing the outmoded, honorific behaviors that used to interfere with the 
coordination of human action in pursuit of goals, or so Weber and most 
mainstream social scientists thought at the beginning of the twentieth 
century. [Weber, 1946, pp. 51-55 and 196-264] But in analyzing the impact 
of the organizational revolution, Weber grossly underestimated the impor? 
tance of emulation, particularly in corporate capitalism. Contrary to Webers 
false optimism, the organizational revolution did not reduce the irrationality 
of status; it did not free us from envy and spite. Instead 
? as Lasch 
summarized the findings of psychologists, sociologists, and anthropologists 
? the bureaucratic organizational revolution actually increased envy and 
spite, particularly in the United States. 
The U.S. Census Bureau does not classify occupations as bureaucratic 
and nonbureaucratic, so to show the twentieth century movement of Ameri? 
can workers into bureaucratic occupations, a proxy has been constructed for 
the number of people engaged in bureaucratic occupations. My proxy 
includes accountants and auditors, managers, officials, and proprietors, 
excluding farm, and clerical and kindred workers. Unfortunately, nonfarm 
proprietors are not tabulated separately by the Census Bureau, so my proxy 
includes them as being in bureaucratic occupations. My proxy measurement 
of people engaged in bureaucratic occupations from 1900 to 1970 is shown 
in Table 1. Bureaucratic occupations accounted for 2.6 million economically 
active people in 1900, which was 9 percent of the total economically active 
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138 REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY 
population. After steadily rising throughout the century, bureaucratic occu? 
pations accounted for 20.4 million people in 1970, 25 percent of the total 
economically active population in both the public and the private sectors. 
My proxy measure shows that, by 1970, one out of four of the economically 
active population was a "bureaucrat," was engaged in telling others what to 
do, rather than doing it themselves and/or was engaged in checking, record? 
ing, filing, and tabulating how those people do it. 
TABLE 1 
MOVEMENT INTO BUREAUCRATIC OCCUPATIONS, 1900-1970 
(In thousands) 
Mgrs, Officials, Accountants, Total in Total Econ. 
& Proprietors, Auditors, & Bureaucratic Active Percent 
Year exc. Farm Clerical Occupations Population of Total 
1900 1,697 900 2,597 29,030 9% 
1910 2,462 2,026 4,488 37,291 12% 
1920 2,803 3,503 6,306 42,206 15% 
1930 3,614 4,528 8,142 48,686 17% 
1940 3,770 5,220 8,990 51,742 17% 
1950 5,155 7,232 12,777 58,999 22% 
1960 5,489 10,094 15,583 67,990 23% 
1970 6,224 14,170 20,394 80,603 25% 
Source: Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial 
Times to 1970; Bicentennial Edition (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government 
Printing Office, 1975), pp. 140-41. 
But my proxy measure constructed from occupational data misses an 
important dimension of bureaucracy. Bureaucracy has to do not only with 
the occupation of employees but also with the size of employers. Bureauc? 
racy means large-sized organizations. Tables 2 and 3 show the size dimen? 
sion of U.S. companies. The picture presented in the following tables is one 
of a dual economy composed, on one hand, of millions of insignificantly 
small companies and, on the other hand, of a few thousand significantly 
larger giants. [Further discussion of the dual economy is in Averitt, 1968.] In 
1982 the giants accounted for about one-fourth of all employees, one-third 
of all payroll, and one-fourth of all sales and receipts of surveyed companies. 
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EMULATION 139 
TABLE 2 
EMPLOYMENT, PAYROLL, AND SALES AND RECEIPTS 
BY COMPANY SIZE, 1982 
Company Size 
by Number 
of Employees 
Number of 
Companies 
Number of 
Employees 
Annual 
Payroll 
(millions of i 
Sales and 
Receipts 
(millions of $) 
All Companies 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Companies in 
Manufacturing 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Companies in 
Retail Trade 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Companies in 
Services 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Companies in 
MineralsOver 999 
Over 9,999 
Companies in 
Construction 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Companies in 
Wholesale Trade 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Companies in 
Agriculture 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
4,256,243 
3,506 
444 
293,556 
1,875 
300 
1,055,095 
626 
83 
1,220,631 
516 
42 
43,366 
93 
4 
449,388 
150 
11 
326,492 
156 
4 
867,715 
90 
none 
61,660,233 
23,032,904 
14,938,420 
22,007,978 
14,256,681 
9,904,062 
14,845,081 
5,269,865 
3,768,835 
10,792,294 
1,992,491 
826,176 
815,667 
321,126 
61,240 
4,321,677 
653,989 
317,547 
4,120,876 
384,559 
60,560 
4,756,660 
154,193 
none 
913,862 
435,882 
297,030 
442,415 
319,535 
234,606 
137,170 
55,255 
40,111 
153,622 
27,336 
10,462 
19,250 
8,519 
1,678 
80,066 
17,265 
9,090 
73,157 
7,631 
1,084 
8,182 
345 
none 
5,362,011 
2,338,080 
1,504,000 
2,198,920 
1,630,789 
1,166,685 
1,039,454 
373,966 
257,915 
423,477 
82,772 
30,824 
125,056 
55,760 
7,697 
329,452 
62,345 
26,994 
1,150,690 
130,252 
13,885 
94,963 
2,195 
none 
Source: Bureau of the Census, 1982 Enterprise Statistics, General Report on Indus? 
trial Organization (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 
1986), pp. 93-145. 
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140 REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY 
TABLE 3 
SHARES OF EMPLOYMENT, PAYROLL, AND 
SALES AND RECEIPTS BY COMPANY SIZE, 1982 
(In Percent) 
Size by Number 
of Employees 
Percent of 
Companies 
Percent of 
Employees 
Percent of 
Payroll 
Percent of Sales 
& Receipts 
All Companies 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Manufacturing 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Retail Trade 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Services 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Minerals 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Construction 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Wholesale Trade 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
Agriculture 
Over 999 
Over 9,999 
100.00 
0.08 
0.01 
100.00 
6.39 
0.10 
100.00 
0.06 
0.01 
100.00 
0.04 
A 
100.00 
2.14 
0.01 
100.00 
0.03 
A 
100.00 
0.05 
A 
100.00 
0.01 
none 
100.00 
37.35 
24.23 
100.00 
64.78 
45.00 
100.00 
35.50 
25.39 
100.00 
18.46 
7.66 
100.00 
39.37 
7.51 
100.00 
15.13 
7.35 
100.00 
9.33 
1.47 
100.00 
3.24 
none 
100.00 
47.70 
32.50 
100.00 
72.73 
53.03 
100.00 
40.28 
29.24 
100.00 
17.79 
6.81 
100.00 
44.25 
8.72 
100.00 
21.56 
11.35 
100.00 
10.43 
1.48 
100.00 
4.22 
none 
100.00 
43.60 
28.05 
100.00 
74.16 
53.06 
100.00 
35.98 
24.81 
100.00 
19.55 
7.28 
100.00 
44.59 
6.15 
100.00 
18.92 
8.19 
100.00 
11.32 
1.21 
100.00 
2.31 
none 
Note: A = less than 0.01 percent. 
Source: Author's calculations from Table 2. 
Concentration by organization size has gone to extraordinary lengths in 
the dual economy. The most size-skewed sector clearly is manufacturing, 
where a small number of giant companies with over 9,999 employees 
account for an inordinately large share of all manufacturing employees. The 
300 giant manufacturing companies of Table 2, though only 0.10 percent of 
all manufacturing companies, employ nearly half of all employees 
? 45.00 
percent, to be exact. As shown in Table 3, these giants account for over half 
of the payroll in all of manufacturing and for over half of the sales and 
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EMULATION 141 
receipts as well. Manufacturing is not the only size-skewed sector. The 
giants in all sectors employed about one-fourth of all employees, even 
though those giants accounted for only 0.01 percent of all companies 
surveyed by the Bureau of the Census. After manufacturing, the next most 
size-skewed sector is the retail sales sector, which is composed of millions of 
tiny companies and then a relative handful of behemoths. Even the service 
sector is size-skewed. The 42 giants in services, though a minuscule propor? 
tion of the million-and-a-quarter service companies, accounted for 8 percent 
of all service employees. The minerals, including petroleum, and construc? 
tion sectors show a similar size distribution. The only sectors where the 
size-skew has not gone very far are wholesale trade and agriculture. But 
their day is coming. If the trend continues, they will not escape the drive 
toward immense size and the accompanying bureaucracy. 
Large size and the requisite bureaucratic organization that accompanies 
it put people into large-scale enterprises composed of finely graded systems 
of organized ranks. Each rank fits into the well-known pyramid of authority 
or organization chart shown in all the business management textbooks. 
Higher ranks supervise the lower ranks, making sure that the goals of the 
organization, set at the top, are achieved, by those at the bottom. To 
reinforce their authority, the higher ranks are given more power, more 
income, and more status than the lower ranks. This ranking of organizational 
authority to supervise getting the job done does help get the job done, but in 
the United States it has also greatly aggravated the envy and spite of an 
individualistic people fresh from the raw struggles of the frontier. So, the 
bureaucratic organization of business corporations greatly intensified emu? 
lation in America. In the 1950s C. Wright Mills described the result as the 
"status panic," and he described the psychology of the white collar 
employee caught up in it as "the psychology of prestige striving." [Mills, 
1951, p. 240] William H. Whyte, Ir. explained that the organizational revo? 
lution in America had given rise to the "organization man." Whyte describes 
these new men: 
They are competing; all but the fools know this 
? but for what, and 
against whom? They don't know, and there is the trap. To keep 
even, they must push ahead, and though they might like to do it 
only slightly, who is to say what slightly is. Their contemporaries 
are in precisely the same doubt, and thus they all end up competing 
against one another as rapaciously as if their hearts were set on the 
presidency itself. [1957, p. 176] 
Rosabeth Moss Kanter found quite similar kinds of distortions in the 
organization woman when she studied the corporate world in the 1970s. 
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142 REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY 
[Kanter, 1977] Michael Maccoby, in a psychological study of corporate 
executives, found that fear and anxiety were pervasive in the organizational 
world. [Maccoby, 1976, pp. 200-204] More recently, in the 1980s, Terrence 
E. Deal and Allan A. Kennedy find that organizations are becoming highly 
manipulative, forming their own little "corporate cultures" to indoctrinate 
and to motivate their striving employees. [Deal and Kennedy, 1982] Also, 
Ralph Nader and William Taylor interviewed several top executives, finding 
them to be aggressively manipulative and socially irresponsible in the 
pursuit of their driving ambitions. [Nader and Taylor, 1986] 
Grouping individualistic careerists close together in large companies and 
putting them in ranks, particularly when they are out to make a buck for 
themselves in a business career, make them more personally competitive 
and more acutely aware of gradations in status. The constant personal 
contact between business rivals, which occurs in corporate bureaucracies, 
has made Americans far more emulative. It makes them corporadoes, the 
twentieth century equivalents of the nineteenth century desperadoes.So 
the bureaucratic principle applied to corporate organization has not pro? 
moted rationality, at least not in the character of the great American middle 
class. Instead, because it has intensified emulation in an already envious 
people, it has added more than a touch of frenzy to the American character. 
These are strong statements, but they are fully supported by the psychologi? 
cal, sociological, and organizational evidence. [Further discussion is in 
Dugger, 1980, 1984, 1985a.] 
The Importance of Emulation 
Emulation distorts the culture as much as it distorts the individual. 
Emulation is of fundamental significance to pluralism because it eats away 
the separating walls so important to the theory and practice of pluralism. A 
pluralistic society is supposed to be composed of separate, independent 
institutions. Within each institutional sphere, participating individuals par? 
take of and contribute to the values, beliefs, and meanings of that sphere. As 
long as the institutions are roughly coequal, the beliefs, meanings and 
values of each can more or less coexist. But with the rise to preeminence of 
one institution, the individuals participating in all the different institutional 
spheres begin to emulate the values, beliefs, and meanings of the one 
preeminent institution 
? 
forsaking the values, beliefs, and meanings of the 
alternative, declining institutions. Emulation facilitates the interpenetration 
of the dominant institution's values because, in the case of twentieth century 
America, it allows a corporate leader to usurp leadership roles in other 
institutional spheres without the participants in those other spheres object 
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EMULATION 143 
ing to the usurpation. 
Successful corporate leaders, though they lack expertise in other areas of 
life, can use the aura of status that surrounds them as leaders in the 
corporate sphere of life to support them in leadership roles in other spheres 
of life. Because corporate executives are emulated by those in all walks of 
life, churchmen, educators, government officials, even family members 
accept the status claims of a corporate leader, even in noncorporate affairs. 
The acceptance of status claims is not reciprocated, however. This last point 
is extremely important. Emulation is a strictly one-way relation. For exam? 
ple, while a leading educator would be hesitant about telling a leading 
corporate executive to mind his own business, particularly if the busines 
sperson is a contributor to the endowment, a corporate leader would feel far 
less status anxiety in doing so to a leading educator, even though the 
educator supplies the businessperson with needed trained employees. The 
status, wealth, and power of the leading corporate executive all contribute, 
through the power of emulation, to his/her overwhelming ability to domi? 
nate those who lack them. Emulation is the principal avenue of domination. 
It corrodes away the independent worth of competing others. It belittles 
the many as it elevates the few, and it enforces a competitive conformity on 
us all. 
Although big businessmen give advice to everybody else, they accept 
advice only from other big businessmen 
? witness the predominance of 
corporate executives on national-level presidential advisory commissions, 
on university governing boards, on church boards, and on the various 
philanthropic boards. The token representation of churchmen and educators 
on the boards of large corporations is merely the exception that proves the 
rule. Nonreciprocal emulation allows the corporate institutional sphere to 
penetrade the other institutional spheres while remaining inviolate itself. 
The only significant exception to nonreciprocal emulation is the consulting 
relation between big name business professors and their corporate clients. 
But that relation has become so incestuous that it is difficult to tell the 
difference between the academics and the businesspersons, if differences 
remain. [Mark, 1987] 
Those who think that American society is still pluralistic go to great 
lengths to separate wealth, power, and status, in theory, as if doing so would 
keep us safe, in fact, from the emerging corporate hegemony. [Further 
discussion of the pluralism debate is in Dahl, 1961 and Domhoff, 1983.] But 
emulation ties all three together. That is, emulation makes the power of the 
wealthy legitimate and the wealth of the powerful respectable by inducing 
the ambitious among us to admire them both. So emulation protects the use 
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144 REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY 
of corporate power by cloaking it with the status of legitimacy, thus turning 
raw corporate power into accepted authority. Emulation also protects the 
accumulation of corporate wealth by admiring it, thus turning the spoils of 
power into the fruits of enterprise. Emulation is the strongest integrating 
force working on our culture. Unfortunately, the first major social scientist 
to explain the integrative effect of emulation on American culture, Thorstein 
Veblen, did so in a writing style so droll that after reading him, it is hard to 
take emulation seriously, as he certainly did. His Theory of the Leisure 
Class, published first in 1899, is a literary classic and is still widely read as 
the definitive statement on emulation in American culture. [See the Mentor 
edition, 1953, for the C. Wright Mills introduction.] "Conspicuous con? 
sumption" and other phrases from it have become standards parts of the 
language. But rather than just something to snicker at, emulation gives the 
lie to the pluralist picture of America. 
Not only does emulation allow the corporation to break through the walls 
of other institutional orders without reprisals and to integrate all three forms 
of social standing 
? wealth, power, and status ? into an impressive whole, 
that whole being a cultural phalanx, if you will, but emulation also allows 
the corporation to recruit and coopt into its lower ranks a steady stream of 
highly ambitious and highly talented young bloods from whichever institu? 
tional spheres of life and from whatever social strata it desires. The young 
man or woman on the make admires and envies the successful corporate 
executive, not the politician, not the churchman, not the teacher, and 
certainly not the housewife. This admiration and envy gives the corporation 
the first pick of middle class American youth. And ever since the closing of 
the frontier, they have pushed their way aggressively into the higher 
corporate ranks. [See Warner, 1959, Lipset and Bendix, 1964, and Jencks, 
et al, 1979] 
Emulation penetrates so deeply into our culture that it poisons the simple 
things in life. Not even Thoreau and his Waiden would be exempt from the 
effects of emulation. Were he alive, his gardening technique would be sold 
in serial form to women's magazines, his little cabin would be duplicated all 
over upstate New York and New Hampshire, and he would be beseiged by 
new commercial offers night and day. His picture would be on the covers of 
Time and Newsweek simultaneously, making him a celebrity known to all, 
and making it impossible for him to continue living the good life. The 
simple, contemplative life has become virtually impossible for any self 
respecting American. The hippies, the secular monks, were the last ones to 
try it seriously and look what happened to them: Their clothes were turned 
into high-fashion, their hair became a smash Broadway musical, their slang 
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EMULATION 145 
became high English, their neuroses became the stuff of avant-garde psy? 
chology, their recreational drugs became the cutting edge of consciousness, 
and their symbols of rebellion became cultural icons. After the hippies, even 
status-seeking Muscovites wear bluejeans. So hungry is this world of hire? 
lings for new things to emulate and so boring is this world of corporate 
conformists, that any simple act of creative living will be immediately 
snapped up, commercialized, and all the fun completely emulated out of it 
forever. The best example of the emulative dry rot is in physical fitness. The 
simple, creative act of being more physically comfortable with oneself by 
cutting out cigarettes and drugs and by getting some fresh air and exercise 
has turned into a fitness mania. Smokers, in addition to druggers, now face 
legal sanctions and social ostracism. And while participation in health clubs, 
spas, and diets is becoming mandatory for everyone, masochistic joggers 
and speed-crazed bikers have taken over our sidewalks and parks. 
Emulation has touched even our debauchery with the dry rot. You cannot 
just roll one of your own, light up, pass it around, and get stoned. Before you 
do, you must finish an elaborate, emulative ceremony that goes something 
like this: First you have to discuss the genetic origins of your grass, 
describing how and where it was grown 
? indoors or out, artificial or 
natural light, and what kind of soil 
? 
trying all along to impress everyone 
with the quality of your cannabis and with the stylishly advanced nature of 
your personal knowledge of drugs. Next, you must state whether it came 
from a male or a female plant, and compare it, invidiously, to the local, 
national, and international varieties available at the time. Only then will 
people consider having a hit with you. But after all that, the thrill is gone. 
For those who prefer legal drugs, the fun of getting drunk on cheap wine is 
now out of the question, even for the lower classes. For all but the destitute, 
wine drinking has become a highly competitive sport, complete with spe? 
cialized magazines, newspaper columnists, wine-tasting classes, and snob? 
bery raised to the nth degree. With wine in permanent decline, beer 
swilling is being ruined by imported brands, and hard liquor is running 
against the grain of the physical fitness craze. No wonder people are drying 
out and going straight. The fun is gone from drinking and drugs. The only 
things left of the hippie trinity (sex, drugs, rock and roll) are sex and rock 
and roll. But rock and roll lost its soul years ago to commercialization and 
payola and what with the rise of the sex manual, the spontaneity of sex is 
gone too. Everything, now, is competitive and commercial. [An analytical 
framework is in Dugger, 1985c] 
So, of course, now the detox centers and rehab programs are being 
redesigned for the emulative. What with the wife of a former President 
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146 REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY 
opening up her own substance abuse center for rich and famous drunks and 
druggies (Betty Ford), and what with the wife of the current President 
frequently visiting various substance abuse centers to sell them and herself 
on national television, the repentant abusers are all paying $400 a day to dry 
out in the proper style. Pity the old-time, ex-junkie who has managed to turn 
straight and just wants to help others do the same. He has no one to help. 
They are all tastefully straightening themselves out at high-brow drug 
centers, rubbing elbows with the elite, getting on national television with 
Nancy Reagan, and crowding out the honest, simple abuser who just wants 
to quit. Drinking and drugging will never be the same again. Because of 
emulation, even recreational drug use has become a competitive pastime for 
middle class climbers, and visits to expensively stylish detox centers have 
become symbols of arrival. The spreading drug phenomenon in America 
shows the strength of emulation and the relative weakness of advertising in 
the shaping of American culture. For it is emulation, not advertising, that 
has led to the widespread use of illegal drugs. Alcohol may be another 
matter, though. 
The spreading drug phenomenon also shows something about the U.S. 
labor movement. Labor leaders are not joining hands with their member? 
ship in the name of national sanity and class solidarity to overthrow their 
drug-crazed masters. Instead, in the name of progress and more for us, the 
most aggressive trade unions are pushing for insurance coverage of detoxing 
at substance abuse centers in their collective bargaining contracts. The 
labor leadership is eager for their membership to share in all the good things 
in life. So, of course, is the membership. It does not want to transform the 
way of life but to have more of it for itself. Labor is striving mightily not to 
be left behind in the mad emulative scramble. Emulation is the American 
way. Emulation, not sanity, and certainly not class solidarity, shapes the 
folkways of the U.S.A. 
Emulation s Impact on the Institutional Order 
Emulation does more than just poison the folkways. It also distorts the 
entire institutional order by forging it into hegemony rather than plurality. 
Emulation makes the corporate leader's prestige count in noncorporate 
institutions, insuring corporate domination of the noncorporate world. Busi? 
nessmen have long tried to buy their way into positions of respect and 
power outside of their own narrow fields of activity. Nevertheless, like 
gangsters, they have found it difficult to buy status in the eyes of those 
outside the business. Status is not a simple function of wealth alone. 
However, with the rising prestige of corporate leadership roles, the position 
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EMULATION 147 
of the businessmen occupying those roles has changed fundamentally vis-a? 
vis those outside the business world. Now corporate leadership roles can be 
used to transform their occupants' high standing in the corporate world into 
equally high standing in the noncorporate world. The emulative transfer? 
ence of role status can do what money alone cannot ? give a big business? 
man the same status and power outside his business role as he has attained 
inside it. This emulative transference of role status is replacing institutional 
plurality with hegemony. 
In the educational sphere, the emulative transference of role status allows 
corporate leaders to assume leadership roles in the schools. When educa? 
tional leaders at the national or state level desire a new direction in 
education, they often turn to corporate leadership to provide it. For exam? 
ple, in 1985 when the state of Texas tried to develop new directions in 
education, it turned for leadership to H. Ross Perot, founder and former 
CEO of the old Electronic Data Systems Corporation (EDS was acquired by 
GMC, along with Hughes Aircraft, in a major diversification move in 1985). 
Perot became a major force within the Texas educational establishment. 
[Rips, 1985] Corporate leaders dominate the governing boards of universi? 
ties and colleges, even state ones, giving a decidedly corporate flavor to 
university fiscal affairs. Corporate domination goes beyond the fiscal office 
into the curriculum itself. Business schools are the most notorious, often 
being little more than vocational training centers for corporate-bound youth. 
This scandalous state of educational affairs is exemplified by an episode at 
the William E.Simon School of Business of the University of Rochester. 
According to articles in the New York Times, Mr. Tfuneo Sakai, an employee 
of the Fuji company of Japan, applied in 1987 for admission to the Simon 
School. He was admitted, but his admission was then rescinded by the 
Business School after the Eastman Kodak Company, a long-time supporter 
of the University of Rochester, suggested that it would withdraw its employ? 
ees from classes at the Business School. The Fuji Company is a business 
rival of Kodak, and Kodak did not appreciate a Fuji employee at the 
Rochester school. After first admitting Mr. Sakai, then rescinding his admis? 
sion, the school reversed itself again. Seems the influential financier after 
whom the business school is named ? William E. Simon ? and the 
business school faculty were able to overturn the cancellation. Nevertheless, 
Mr. Sakai plans to attend the Alfred E. Sloan School of Management of 
MIT. [Daniels, 1987a, 1987b; also Dugger, 1974] 
Even in the pure liberal arts college, with no business school at all, 
corporate vocationalism is advancing rapidly in the form of runaway enroll? 
ment in the college s economics department. In such instances, the eco 
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148 REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY 
nomics department capitalizes on its new-found emulative popularity by 
offering mostly vocational courses of a decidedly business school nature like 
accounting, marketing, management, and finance. When a true economics 
course is offered, like micro, macro, or development, its content is blue sky. 
The content of economics courses has been determined, more or less for two 
decades now, by the Joint Council on Economic Education. The Joint 
Council is a corporate dominated group that funds workshops, seminars, and 
curriculum guides for economics teachers all over the country. [Domhoff, 
1983, pp. 103-105] The substance of its workshops, seminars, and curricu? 
lum guides is free enterprise, Pollyanna-economics. It is boringly upbeat, 
optimistic, American, and pro-business. Every economic cloud has a silver 
lining. We will all get rich, by and by, if we deserve it. The propaganda is 
dished out as if it were purely the result of rigorous scientific investigation. 
While dishing it out, the instructors surround themselves with a false aura of 
scientific objectivity, constantly referring to the laws of supply and demand 
as if they were the equivalent of the laws of physics and couching their 
ideology in mathematical rigor. 
Some teachers of economics have resisted this corruption of the discipline 
with great courage and imagination. Theirs has been a valiant but losing 
battle. When forced to do battle with the objectivity of science, the rigor of 
mathematics, and the prestige of the corporate executive, the simple hon? 
esty of the schoolmarm and the intellectual integrity of the college prof are 
hopelessly outclassed. In the educational sphere of institutions, the war has 
been lost to corporate emulation. 
In the religious sphere of institutions, many American churches have long 
been dominated by the business animus, if not by the businessman himself. 
Among the smaller churches, most of which are constantly on the verge of 
financial collapse, church leaders must be more businessmen than church? 
men. Survival requires financial, not spiritual ability. Here the effects of 
emulation are the strongest. The television and radio churches are orga? 
nized on a business basis from the very beginning. They buy airtime to 
deliver a spiritual service over the public airways, and they solicit a mone? 
tary payment for it in return. If what they pay for the airtime and for their 
solicitation and related expenses is less than what they receive from those 
they solicit, they earn a profit. If they prosper, they soon diversify into 
additional products and services. Oral Roberts, for example, has invested so 
far in a hospital, a university, and a retirement real estate community. Now 
he can birth them in his hospital, book them in his university, and bunk 
them in his retirement village, all the while he continues to save them on his 
television show. His is a vertically integrated ministry with a diversified 
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EMULATION 149 
portfolio run by an inspired businessman, himself. God save us all. 
Churchmen on the make long have emulated successful businessmen, 
distorting the church as they did so, giving it that Elmer Gantry flavor so 
unique to American spiritual life. But interestingly enough, unlike the role 
transference in education, high status corporate leaders have seldom tried to 
transform their high business status into equally high status in the religious 
field. Instead of corporate leaders turning their status to account in the 
church by becoming leading churchmen, leading churchmen have 
increased their own status by becoming leading businessmen, while remain? 
ing churchmen, at least in name. So, the distortion of religious life in 
America has been done by the churchmen themselves, with little direct 
transference into the religious field by corporate executives. Not all church? 
men and church women have participated in this degradation of their roles. 
Many have bravely resisted, but to little avail, given the current drift of 
things. [Young, 1982, Harrington, 1983] 
In the governmental sphere of institutions, the impact of emulation has 
been obvious. While the status of corporate managers has been raised by 
emulation, the status of government officials has been reduced. So, when 
the government needs decisive action or new direction, corporate leaders, 
not government ones, are tapped to provide it. When the government wants 
to save money, for example, the President of the United States does not call 
on the leaders of government agencies to determine what is to be done. 
Instead, he asks corporate executives to form a Commission and to draft a 
Report for use in attacking the very government it was aimed to help. (The 
Grace Commission and its catalogue of suggestions to dismantle or cut back 
the welfare state is the most prominent example from the 1980s.) Privatiza? 
tion is another example of the mindless denigration of government com? 
bined with the mindless emulation of the corporation: When government at 
the national, state, or local level needs to step up its efficiency, the govern? 
ment level involved does not improve its own operations. That would be too 
obvious. Instead, it just sells the operations. That is, it resorts to privatiza? 
tion ? to selling off the right to perform public functions to private 
corporations and to deregulating those corporations which already perform 
privatized functions, but under the scrutiny of regulatory agencies. [Tolchin 
and Tolchin, 1983 and Schwarz, 1988] This, in our mindless age, allegedly 
raises the efficiency of the auctioned-off and deregulated functions. Because 
of emulation, we think anything done by a private corporation is done more 
efficiently than if it were done by a government entity. In an earlier 
mindless age, the French king before the 1789 revolution, was also in the 
habit of privatizing many of his functions by selling them in the form of 
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150 REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY 
rights to private investors. After all, it was the pre-revolutionary French 
economists, the Physiocrats, and not Adam Smith, who first invented laissez 
faire. In an early French experiment that blended privatization with mone? 
tary quackery, the kingeven sold the government's right to coin money to a 
private speculator, John Law, who promptly ruined the currency. 
[Galbraith, 1975, pp. 22-33] This historical episode, unknown by most 
contemporary economists, foreshadowed the outcome of the more recent 
American experiment, of a like nature, which also mixed monetary quackery 
(monetarism) with privatization (supply-side economics). Privatization in 
France certainly raised the short-term revenues of the crown, giving it 
temporary help in reducing its growing deficits. The practice seemed to 
reach a peak right before the French revolution, during which the king lost 
his head. The relations between privatization, monetary quackery, deficits, 
laissez-faire economists, regicide, and revolution are all quite complex and 
problematic. And far be it from me to suggest that history can repeat itself, 
particularly if we are ignorant of it. Nevertheless, the impact of emulation 
on American government has been catastrophic. The emulative glare emit? 
ted by the corporation has blinded the political leadership and the underly? 
ing population to the folly of making government work better by disman? 
tling it and auctioning off the pieces. 
In the family institutional sphere, the impact of emulation has been just 
as profound. The corporation's emulative glare has blinded the women's 
liberation movement, just like it earlier blinded men. It has blinded both to 
the importance of family. It has attracted both men and women on the make, 
drawing them away from the narrow confines of family-imposed traditions 
with the blue sky promises of a corporate career. For women, the forward 
attraction of corporate career has proved stronger than the backward drag of 
sex stereotyping. Corporate career has provided many women with a way to 
escape the dead hand of patriarchal tradition. An economically independent 
woman does not have to suffer in silence the abuse of a macho husband. She 
can hire lawyers, get court orders, leave the lout, support herself, and 
protect herself. So for many women, corporate career has been a blessing, 
providing an alternative role to play as they freed themselves from the 
stultifying sex stereotypes imposed upon them by the traditional patriarchal 
family. Women have demonstrated beyond a doubt that their place is not 
just barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen. Corporate careers for women 
have opened up educational opportunities for women, and corporate women 
provide admirable role models for other women to follow. This has all been 
positive, in innumberable ways, particularly in enlarging the personal 
autonomy and self-worth of women. And, of course, much more can and 
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EMULATION 151 
should be done. 
But on the negative side, the emulative attraction of corporate career has 
turned the women's liberation movement, like the labor movement before 
it, toward the traditional careerist goal of more for me. Emulation has 
diverted at least a part of the great energy of the women's liberation 
movement away from developing personal autonomy for women into devel? 
oping successful corporate careers for women. The two are not the same. In 
search of more for me, the energies and imaginations of women are turned 
to corporate account rather than toward personal autonomy and self worth. 
Furthermore, emulation in the form of corporate careerism has meant major 
opportunities lost in the art of living together, in exchange for minor 
opportunities in the scramble to get promoted before your rival. It not only 
diverted energies away from developing personal autonomy and self worth, 
it also removed men and then women from the home and destroyed the 
potential of the home in the process. Emulation diverts energy away from 
not only the patriarchal family, but also the gay family, the open family, the 
single-parent family, and the commune. These are all families that men and 
women should be trying to reconstruct but are too enthralled by corporate 
careerism to even try. [For a fascinating contrast, see Kanter, 1972 and 
1983] 
To sum up, emulation has touched every major American institution with 
the dry rot, always in a way that has raised the status of the corporation and 
its roles above the status of alternative institutions and their roles. The social 
result has been a strengthening of corporate hegemony and a loss of 
institutional plurality. The personal result has been a mindless conformity 
and a loss of free will. The ethical result has been a generation of moral 
weaklings (the Yuppies) whose personal strivings have no real meaning and, 
therefore, whose ambitions can easily be turned to someone else's account. 
But, of course, our youth are restless under the current dispensation and no 
one can say for sure how long the current malaise will last. The young could 
still save us. They could reconstruct a mind of their own, as other youth have 
done before them. 
CONCLUSION 
Values Are Endogenous 
In the jargon of econometrics, values are endogenous, not exogenous. The 
values held by individuals are products of the institutional structure in 
which the individual finds herself. That is, values are not pulled out of thin 
air by individuals. Values are learned. But the learning process of pluralism 
is strikingly different from that of hegemony. In a pluralistic society, the 
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152 REVIEW OF SOCIAL ECONOMY 
learning is active. Individuals cannot simply accept what they are taught, 
because different institutions teach them different things. They are forced to 
make choices and to defend the choices they make. Individuals are forced to 
take an active role in the formation of their own moral character, to synthe? 
size creatively their own values from the competing ones they encounter all 
around them. Under pluralism, individuals go mad, or they acquire moral 
integrity. 
Under hegemony, individuals go soft. In a hegemonic society, such as 
ours is becoming, the learning is purely passive. Individuals accept what 
they are taught, because all institutions teach them the same thing. The 
individual plays a dependent role in the value formation process of hegem? 
ony. She is not forced to make choices and defend them, so she does not 
synthesize or reconstruct her own values out of the competing ones she 
encounters. She does not acquire moral integrity. 
Moral integrity is increasingly lacking in the American character. The 
American character is being tamed because pluralism is being lost. The 
diverse institutions which should be teaching contradictory values are not 
doing so. Emulation has emptied them of their force. But emulation has 
filled the corporation with the force lost by the other institutions. Rising to 
hegemony, corporate values are replacing the diverse values of the formerly 
independent church, state, family, school, and union. This is not to say that 
American youth are becoming loyal servants of the corporation without a 
struggle, for they are not. Some of them are showing refreshing new signs of 
moral revulsion. But it is to say that American white collar strata are coming 
to accept one particular set of values, beliefs, and meanings, inculcated 
through emulation, through mindless striving after more for me. Church, 
state, family, school, and union have fallen away as sources of values, beliefs, 
and meanings. Corporate ones have come to dominate. In the resulting 
corporate hegemony, moral choice and challenge are gone 
? so too is the 
moral integrity forged by making choices and by overcoming challenges. 
Values have become more endogenous thanever. 
The reactionary right is onto something 
? our values, beliefs, and 
meanings are disintegrating, collapsing into conformity. This collapse is a 
very important subject for social economists to study. But the reactionary 
right fails to identify the real cause of the collapse, so this social economy 
analysis helps to set the record straight. The values corrupting us are 
products of corporate hegemony, not of welfare statism. The organizational 
revolution, not the New Deal, is the fountainhead of competitive conform? 
ity. And, the collapse into conformity is driven by emulation, not secular 
humanism. As more and more of us have moved into the large-scale, 
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EMULATION 153 
bureaucratic organizational world, we have taken on more and more of the 
values, beliefs, and meanings useful for getting ahead in that world. We 
have adapted to the organizational revolution. Nevertheless, we have failed 
to understand what has happened to us as we adapted to hegemony. 
Instead, we have accepted the ready-made scapegoats offered us by the 
reactionaries. And yet, in spite of all our confusion, some facts are hard to 
avoid: It was Ivan Boesky, financial capitalist, not Beatrice Washington, 
welfare mother, who was caught with his hand in the till to the tune of $100 
million. 
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	Article Contents
	p. 134
	p. 135
	p. 136
	p. 137
	p. 138
	p. 139
	p. 140
	p. 141
	p. 142
	p. 143
	p. 144
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	Issue Table of Contents
	Review of Social Economy, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 1989) pp. 113-224
	Front Matter
	THE METHODOLOGY OF ECONOMICS AND THE CASE FOR POLICY DIFFIDENCE AND RESTRAINT [pp. 113-133]
	EMULATION: AN INSTITUTIONAL THEORY OF VALUE FORMATION [pp. 134-154]
	CAPITAL GAINS AS ECONOMIC RENT [pp. 155-172]
	WHAT IS JUST PROFIT? [pp. 173-184]
	PROPERTY RIGHTS IN CONTEMPORARY ISLAMIC ECONOMIC THOUGHT: A CRITICAL PERSPECTIVE [pp. 185-211]
	Book Reviews
	Review: untitled [pp. 212-214]
	Review: untitled [pp. 214-217]
	Review: untitled [pp. 217-220]
	[NOTES] [pp. 221-223]
	Back Matter