Abstract
Few people have inspired a shift in economic thought. Alfred Marshall is one of the few. One hundred years following the publication of Marshall’s seminal work, the Principles of Economics, his thoughts and ideas remain not only relevant to the theoretical inquiries of the modern age but of practical significance to today’s managers. Central to Marshall’s contribution to the foundations of modern management is his concept of utility. Utility throughout time has been described as many things by many people. Associated with morals, usefulness, and later correlating with human wants and desires, our understanding of utility underwent a marked transformation throughout the Classical and Neo-Classical eras. In order to appreciate the role Alfred Marshall played in the development of economic understanding therefore, it is necessary that we also examine how his Neo-Classical explanation of utility emerged from his classical predecessors. This chapter explores Alfred Marshall and Utilitarianism.
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Boccalatte, K. (2020). Neo-Classical Thought: Alfred Marshall and Utilitarianism. In: The Palgrave Handbook of Management History. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62348-1_24-1
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