The hiding hand

A World of Unintended Consequences

Here’s a story about a revolution that never happened. Nearly 90 years ago, a 26-year-old newly credentialed Harvard sociology PhD and future American Philosophical Society member, Robert K. Merton, published a paper in the American Sociological Review that would become one of the most frequently cited in his discipline: “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action.” While the language of the paper was modest, it offered an obvious but revolutionary insight: many or most phenomena in the social world are unintended – for better or worse. Today, even management gurus like Tom Peters acknowledge that, “Unintended consequences outnumber intended consequences. ….[READ]