Administration &Society, Ahead of Print.
Managerial sciences are generally considered to be the art of efficiently running business. Their influence, though, extends far beyond the corporate sphere and they play an important part in public administration and in particular in its dialog with society at large. Here, from the viewpoint of historical institutionalism, we document one of the earliest successful examples of the wider application of management science: the 1914 antitrust rules (the Clayton Antitrust and Federal Trade Commission Acts) from the perspectives of economic scholars as technical experts, the early years of the Wilson administration, and the spheres of business and society. The societal debate about business and efficiency and the successive implementation of scientific managerial ideas in the administrative sphere, saw management science permeate the whole of American society and become an almost irrefutable aspect of everyday life and representations, thereby enabling it to spread well beyond the boundaries of the firm.Evidence for PracticeFrom a Science, Technology and Society (STS) perspective, managerial thinking extends far beyond technical debates or shared practices.Efficiency plays a dual role as a value and as a criterion of the optimal use of resources, which should be incorporated into public policy design with respect to business regulation.Negotiation between public administration and social actors is multidimensional and requires identifiable and accountable leaders.Clayton Antitrust legislation emergence can bring some return on experience to current debates about Digital Market Act at European Union level.