The field of Corporate Social Responsibility is described and the theory on it is critically reviewed. It is argued that present theory is insufficient in explaining the phenomenon of CSR and might fail to recognize some of its deeper significance. A new basis for the theoretical analysis of CSR...

Answering the call for a new theoretical approach to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), this paper makes a suggestion from a Weberian perspective. It briefly appraises the existing research on CSR and develops key points of a new approach based on their criticism. Suggesting that CSR is a...

This paper constitutes the start of a project dedicated to Austrian economist and economic sociologist Friedrich von Wieser (1851-1926). Its central claim is that especially in recent decades, Wieser has become a disproportionately underresearched scholar, and the paper provides a set of...

This paper addresses the intellectual relationship between Max Weber and three key proponents of neoliberalism: F.A. Hayek, Walter Eucken and Wilhelm Röpke. This relationship is contextualized in the history of German-language political economy, focusing on the nexus and proximity between early...

This study aims to uncover Max Weber as a direct and indirect influence on Alexander Rüstow and Wilhelm Röpke and the emergence of ordoliberal socio-economic thought in the 1930s and 40s. Weber contributed to the German Kulturkritik of the early 20th century that shaped the academic and...

Max Weber's path to economic science was impacted to a large degree by political motives. The question emerges how the depiction, which has been maintained by historians of economics, of Weber as a methodologist – who demands objectivity and value freedom in scientific analysis – is...

Max Weber's relationship to economics in general and to the Austrian School in particular has received more attention recently. However, this literature as conducted by Weber scholars and by Austrian economists exhibits two major deficiencies. First, the studies are often either purely...

We investigate the effect of Reformed Protestantism, relative to Catholicism, on preferences for leisure and for redistribution and intervention in the economy. With a Fuzzy Spatial Regression Discontinuity Design, we exploit a historical quasiexperiment in Western Switzerland, where in the 16th...

We revisit Max Weber’s hypothesis on the role of Protestantism for economic development. We show that nationalism is crucial to both, the interpretation of Weber’s Protestant Ethic and empirical tests thereof. For late nineteenth-century Prussia we reject Weber’s suggestion that...