Since the mid-20th century, organizational theorists have increasingly distanced themselves from the study of core societal power centers and important policy issues of the day. This has been driven by a shift away from the study of organizations, politics, and society and towards a more narrow focus on instrumental exchange and performance. As a result, our field has become increasingly impotent as a critical voice and contributor to policy. For a contemporary example, witness our inability as a field to make sense of the recent U.S. mortgage meltdown and concomitant global financial crisis. It is not that economic and organizational sociologists have nothing to say. The problem is that while we have a great deal of knowledge about finance, the economy, entrepreneurship and corporations, we fail to address how the knowledge in our field can be used to contribute to important policy issues of the day. This double-volume brings together some of the very top scholars in the world in economic and organizational sociology to address the recent global financial crisis debates and struggles around how to organize economies and societies around the world. Table of Contents PART B SECTION III: HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE U.S. FINANCIAL CRISIS Chapter 11: The Misapplication of Mr. Michael Jensen: How Agency Theory Brought Down the Economy and Why it Might Again, Frank Dobbin and Jiwook Jung (Harvard University) Chapter 12: Neoliberalism in Crisis: Regulatory Roots of the U.S. Financial Meltdown, John Campbell (Dartmouth College) Chapter 13: The American Corporate Elite and the Historical Roots of the Financial Crisis of 2008, Mark Mizruchi (University of Michigan) Chapter 14: The Political Economy of Financial Exuberance, Greta Krippner (University of Michigan) SECTION IV: CRISIS PRODUCTION: SPECULATIVE BUBBLES AND BUSINESS CYCLES Chapter 15: The Institutional Embeddedness of Market Failure: Why Speculative Bubbles Still Occur, Mitch Abolafia (State University of New York at Albany) Chapter 16: The Social Construction of Causality: The Effects of Institutional Myths on Financial Regulation, Anna Rubtsova (Emory University), Rich DeJordy (Boston College), Mary Ann Glynn (Boston College) and Mayer Zald (University of Michigan) Chapter 17: Business Cycles, Entrepreneurship, and Economic Crisis in the Commercial Building Market: Toward a Mesoeconomics, Tom Beamish and Nicole Biggart (University of California at Davis)