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This paper aims to offer a new history of management by tracing a religious dimension of scientific management. The thesis is that the good was foundational for bringing scientific management to success in Taylor’s native Quaker Philadelphia in the 1880s. The paper’s main contribution is to contrast the philosophical origins of Taylor’s ideas in scientific management to his native Quaker roots, and how Taylor, over time, into the 1910s, wrestled with this issue.

The paper is situated in historical interpretivism and subjectivism, leaning on contextual and narrative research on religious morality.

Quaker morality prevented managerial opportunism at Taylor’s Midvale Steel in the 1880s. Conversely, by the 1900s and 1910s, interest conflicts between workers and managers escalated when scientific management moved out of its traditional cultural contexts of Quaker Philadelphia and spread across the USA. The historical implication is, already for Taylor’s time, that scientific management never was the “one-best way” of management.

Future research needs to deepen and broaden research on scientific management when tracing the significance of religion and culture in management thought.

The paper has implications for modern studies of business morality by uncovering the practical relevance of religious business ethics at the outset of management studies.

The historic emergence of scientific management points to a theory of institutional evolution and economic growth, when religiously grounded governance of the firm deinstitutionalized, and institutional economic governance, with different but superior economic advantages, progressed by the 1900s.

The paper suggests an alternative version of the intellectual heritage of management studies by tracing the legacy of Taylor’s Quakerism and how religious and cultural ideas contributed to the formation of science in management.

Revisiting Carroll’s classic corporate social responsibility (CSR) pyramid framework, this paper aims to evolve a novel synthesis of ethics and economics. This yielded an “integrative CSR economics”.

This theory paper examined how to conceptually set up CSR theory, argue its ethical nature and establish its practical, social and empirical relevance. Economic analysis reached out from contemporary institutional economics to Smith’s classic studies.

The paper reconstructed all of Carroll’s four dimensions of CSR – economic, legal, ethical and philanthropic responsibilities – through economics. The paper discounted a core assumption of much CSR research that economic approach to CSR, including the instrumental, strategic “business case” approach to CSR, were unethical and lacked any foundations in ethics theory. Integrative CSR economics reframes research on viability and capability requirements for CSR practice; redirecting empirical research on links between CSP (corporate social performance) and CFP (corporate financial performance).

The paper focused on Carroll as the leading champion of CSR research. Future research needs to align other writers with integrative CSR economics. Friedman or Freeman, or the historic contributions of Dodd, Mayo, Bowen or Drucker, are especially interesting.

The paper set out how integrative CSR economics satisfies the “business case” approach to CSR and develops practical implications along: a systemic dimension of the market economy; a legal-constitutional dimension; and the dimension of market exchanges.

Integrative CSR economics creates ethical benefits for society along: a systemic dimension of the market (mutual gains); a legal-constitutional dimension (law-following); and the dimension of market exchange (ethical capital creation). Social benefits are not only aspired to but also are achievable as a business case approach to CSR is followed.

The paper’s main contribution is a new synthesis of economics and ethics that yields an “integrative CSR economics”.

The purpose of the paper is to critically question conventional views of the one‐dimensional, mechanistic and negative image of human nature of Scientific Management. Both for worker behavior and for managerial behavior positive aspects of an image of human nature are reconstructed in organizational economic terms.

Through institutional economic reconstruction, drawing on the methods and concepts of organizational and institutional economics, the portrayal of workers and managers by Scientific Management is critically assessed.

It is suggested that a conceptual asymmetry exists in Taylor's writings regarding the portrayal of human nature of workers and managers. Whereas for workers a model of self‐interest was applied (through the concepts of “systematic soldering” and “natural soldiering”), Taylor portrayed managers through a positive, behavioral model of human nature that depicted the manager as “heartily cooperative”. The key thesis is that by modeling managers through a rather positive image of human nature Taylor could no longer methodically apply the model of economic man in order to test out and prevent interaction conflict between potentially self‐interested managers and workers.

The paper focused on Scientific Management to advance the thesis that the portrayal of human nature has been ill approached by management and organization theorists who were apparently pioneering an institutional and organizational economics. Future research has to broaden the scope of research to other pioneers in management and organization research, but also to critics in behavioral sciences, such as organization psychology, who may misunderstand how economics approaches the portrayal of human nature, in particular regarding self‐interest.

Taylor's portrayal of managers as naturally good persons, who were not self‐interested, caused implementation conflict and implementation problems for Scientific Management and led to his summoning by the US Congress. By modeling managers as heartily cooperative, Taylor could no longer analyze potentially self‐interested behavior, even opportunistic behavior of managers in their interactions with workers. Scientific Management had thus no remedy to handle “soldiering” of managers. This insight, that managerialism needs to be accounted for in a management theory, has manifold practical implications for management consultancy, management education, and for the practice of management in general. Students and practitioners have to be informed about the necessary and useful role a model of self‐interest (economic man) methodically plays in economic management theory.

The paper reconstructs the portrayal of human nature in early management theory, which seemingly anticipated the advances – and certain pitfalls – of modern institutional economics. The paper unearths, from an economic perspective, conceptual misunderstandings of Taylor regarding his image of human nature of workers and managers.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a new qualitative method that is theoretically underpinned by cognitive anthropology. This research strategy is introduced to further advance the understanding of complex green consumer behavior – in this case life‐cycle analysis.

This paper examines the contextual aspects of problem‐solving behavior of green, environmentally concerned consumers. Cognitive anthropology develops a different, yet complementary, understanding of consumer cognition to a psychological approach. Through the concepts of practical thinking and bricolage, cognition and behavior are conceptualized on a contextual basis. Such an approach encourages a reassessment of how consumer research has traditionally conceptualized problem framing, information search, information processing and related concepts. The paper draws upon in‐depth, qualitative interviews with a wide range of green consumers from both the UK and Germany.

The findings provide some interesting clues regarding the nature of information search and information processing. In the sample, the green consumers of the top clusters were able to see and retrieve life‐cycle information as it was offered by a shopping context and it was this context, as it is perceived by the bricoleur that ultimately limits information search and processing. Within the “objective” bounds of a choice context, skilful practical thinking and bricolage was shown in different degrees amongst the clusters, with considerable creativity shown in “seeing” life‐cycle information.

Given that the research outlined in this paper is mono‐paradigmatic, it is suggested that a future avenue for research in green consumer behavior would be the use of a multiple paradigm approach.

The paper outlines a stepping approach to marketing communications directed towards the green, or potentially green consumer, suggesting that some form of community based social marketing program might be a useful educational tool given the findings presented.

The introduction of a new research strategy – cognitive anthropology to the study of green consumer behavior.