Presently it is en vogue to search and research business models heedful to concerns of social, moral, and ecological sustainability. On the view here defended, however, we ought not to strive for piecemeal corrections but for a thoroughgoing paradigm change of the predominant economic theories and practices in favor of a genuinely ‘humanistic management.’ This very call for humanistic management serves as an introduction into this paper. The article then lays out a concept of humanistic management in three methodologically distinct (...) steps, description – ascription – prescription, before addressing potential challenges to the approach of humanistic management and, finally, pointing out some of its practical implications. The article hence proceeds as follows: From a critique of the reductionist description of economic agency given in conventional economics, the paper moves on to the ascription of freedom and responsibility by and through human actors, which appears essential for any attempt at re-integrating moral prescriptions into economics and, by extension, management theory. The resultant, dignity-centered humanistic management conception is then defended against challenges from postmodern authors and defendants of ‘deep ecology’. Afterward, the article presents some normative postulates for management practice ; last, the main findings of the paper are summarized. (shrink)

Otto Neurath’s thoroughgoing anti-foundationalism is connected to the recognition that protocol sentences are not inviolable, that is they are fallible and their choice cannot be determined: ‘Poincaré, Duhem and others have adequately shown that even if we have agreed on the protocol statements, there is a not limited number of equally applicable, possible systems of hypotheses. We have extended this tenet of the uncertainty of systems of hypotheses to all statements, including protocol statements that are alterable in principle’. Later historiography (...) has called Neurath’s extension of Duhemian holism the Neurath principle. Based on a study of Neurath’s early works on the history of optics, the paper investigates a previously unnoticed influence on the development of this principle, Neurath’s reading of Goethe’s Theory of colours. The historical and polemical parts of Goethe’s tripartite book provided Neurath with ideal examples for the vertical extension of Duhem’s thesis to observation statements. Moreover, Goethe’s critique of the language of science and his views on the theory-ladenness of observation, as well as on the history of science show strong parallels to many of Neurath’s ideas. These demonstrate the existence of surprisingly direct textual links between Romantic views on science and the development of twentieth-century philosophy of science. Neurath’s usage of Goethe’s examples also indicates that the birth of the Neurath principle is more tightly connected to actual scientific practice than to theory-testing, and that by admitting the theory-ladenness of observation reports and fallibility of protocol statements Neurath does not throw empiricism overboard.Keywords: Otto Neurath; J. W. von Goethe; Holism; Theory-ladenness; Duhem-Quine thesis; Romantic science. (shrink)

The main scope of this article is to introduce Spiethoff's economic styles approach to economists outside the German-speaking scientific community. It also provides a contemporary (new) reading and interpretation of this approach, especially regarding the methodology Spiethoff used in his research. Essentially, it will be shown that Spiethoff applies a kind of 'abductive' thinking that is usually ignored. Especially in the recent debate about pluralism in economics, the dichotomy of induction and deduction excludes the concept of abduction. Against this background, (...) the article highlights what Spiethoff's economic styles approach could add to the current debate regarding pluralism in economics. (shrink)