Socially Significant Science

The concept of “social” is undergoing constant redefinition, and with that, so is everything else. Even before the coronavirus pandemic introduced us to social distancing, new forms of social media were disrupting everything from how we define relationships, how we communicate, how we educate and learn, how we influence, or are influenced by others, how we get news and information, and much more. To “socialize” is is a term used less often to refer to casually mixing with others, and more often to be about influencing people, or even organizing around the principles of socialism.

So, where does this leave “social” science? When the social dimension of our world undergoes constant revision, does it change the nature of social science?  Do the old definitions fit the new contexts?  I can’t answer these questions, but I raise them to illustrate the challenge to the social sciences when the very nature of the phenomena being studied is constantly shifting.

These questions become particularly tricky in the context of organizations and business. The field of management is relatively new to being classified as a social science and this classification is still being contested by some. And to complicate matters further, some top business schools have reclassified their MBA degrees to be STEM programs, with an emphasis on science, technology, engineering and mathematics, thereby de-emphasizing the social dimension of organizations.

The problem continues in economics and finance with students studying models that are based on assumptions of rational behavior, when behavioral economists and psychologists, like Nobel Prize-winners Richard Thaler and Daniel Kahneman, have shown that these assumptions are not at all adequate for predicting the socially-influenced economic behavior of individuals.

These trends expose the widening gap between pursuing management as a social science and actually doing management work. From a wider perspective they reveal the misalignment between the traditional pursuit of social science and solving real problems in contemporary society.

At the same time there a counter movement rising out of management practice that seeks to re-evaluate the concepts of value creation, and even capitalism, in a social context. This movement espouses a belief that business performance should be measured on not only the return to shareholders, but also on achieving environmental, social and good governance (ESG) objectives. This thinking presents the opportunity to highlight the contemporary relevance of organization development, which was founded on the Lewinian belief that social science should serve a social purpose and exist in what Lewin called “the realm of problems,” especially socially significant problems.

For Kurt Lewin it was the practical purpose of social science that really mattered. He believed social scientists should not be afraid to use methods or concepts that span across disciplines – because any one of them refers more or less to the same set of social problems. In the following excerpt written in 1939, Lewin highlighted the interconnections and interdependencies of our social world.

“The variety of facts which social psychology has to treat might really seem frightening to even a bold scientific mind. They include “values” (such as religious and moral values), “ideologies” (such as conservatism or communism), “the style of living and thinking” and other so-called “cultural” facts. They include sociological problems, i.e. problems of group and group structure, their degree of hierarchy and types of organization; or such problems as the difference between a rural and an urban community, their rigidity or fluidity, degree of differentiation, etc. They also include so-called “psychological” problems, such as the intelligence of a person, his goals and fears, and his personality. They include such “physiological” facts as the person’s being healthy or sick, strong or weak, the color of his hair and his complexion. They include, finally, such “physical” facts as the size of the physical area in which the person or a group is located. It is utterly fruitless and merely a negative scientific treatment to put these facts into classificatory pigeonholes.“

Lewin’s vision for social science with a social purpose introduces a different class of disciplinary thought. It is an ethos distinguished by the integration of both theoretical and practical knowledge set in a particular circumstance. It exists in what Lewin called “the realm of problems,” especially socially significant problems, and it foreshadows a different form of social science; something I call I like to call socially significant science.