Engineering the “Statistical Control of Business”
探讨马尔科姆·罗蒂在AT&T电话工程背景下的经济学兴趣，揭示工程与经济学实践的重叠，并阐述他如何构想通过量化管理实现“商业的统计控制”。
Malcolm Rorty is best known to historians of economics as the primary organizer and founder of the National Bureau of Economic Research. This article situates Rorty’s interest in economics against the backdrop of his early career in telephone engineering at American Telephone & Telegraph. I argue that distinct structural features of telephone engineering in general, and AT&T in particular, created overlaps between the practices of engineering and economics, and also opened space for Rorty to craft a broader vision for the “statistical control of business” through quantitatively informed management.