The Influences Influencing Personal Influence: Scholarship and Entrepreneurship
Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, (2006)DOI: 10.1177/0002716206292864
Zusammenfassung
The article examines how the study that resulted in Personal Influence came to be funded by True Story magazine. It does so by looking at Lazarsfeld's research career. Lazarsfeld is seen as an institutional innovator in higher education, having established in Vienna in 1925 the first social science research center of its kind in the world, and later the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University. The structural situation of the Bureau is examined in detail, showing how Lazarsfeld developed the role of entrepreneurial scholar to finance its operations. The article examines Lazarsfeld's psychological makeup, which meshed well with the world of business as well as the Bureau's need for commercial fund-raising. Having given the context of Lazarsfeld's operations, the final part of the article examines how the study was '' sold'' to True Storymagazine.