Big Business and Community Welfare英文资料.pdf
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Big Business and Community Welfare
Revisiting a Classic Study by C. Wright Mills and
Melville Ulmer
By THOMAS A. LYSON*
ABSTRACT . Building on research published by C. Wright Mills and
Melville Ulmer in 1946, the relationships among community welfare
and civic engagement, the independent middle class, and big business
are examined. Manufacturing-dependent counties are the units of
analysis. Partial correlation analysis is used to identify the effects of the
independent and mediated effects of big business, civic engagement,
and the independent middle class on community welfare. Results
show that a local economy organized around smaller-scale, diversified
enterprises has more favorable outcomes than one dominated by one
or more large corporations.
I
Introduction
IN THE DECADES AFTER WORLD WAR II, American social scientists consis-
tently demonstrated in their research and writing that larger-scale,
capital-intensive, industrial enterprises were not only “good” for the
economic health of the country as a whole (Galbraith 1967; Kerr
1960), but also enhanced the social and economic well-being of
workers, families, and communities (Averitt 1968; Falk and Lobao
2003; Hodson 1983; Lobao 1990). A conceptual framework to explain
the positive effects of large firms on individuals and communities
was provided by labor market segmentation theorists (Doeringer and
Piore 1971; Beck, Horan, and Tolbert 1978), who showed that the
*Thomas Lyson is the Liberty Hyde Bailey Professor of Development Sociology at
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853. His research interests include the r
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