ABSTRACT
The Americanization of Austrian business culture—understood as the Austrian adoption of values, attitudes, methods, symbols, norms, and institutions that have been deemed as typical for American business—is quite a complex process. Social networks play a key role in the entire development of Austria's Americanization. During the first half of the twentieth century, Europeans—and among them, of course, Austrians—regarded two aspects of the American business culture as distinctly American: liberal business ethics and mass production. In 1946 some Austrians who were enthusiasts of the United States founded the Austro-American Society in Vienna, which shortly afterwards became involved in the distribution of care packages in the framework of the Marshall Plan. In the year of its establishment, the Austro-American Society intensively discussed business issues and proposed the foundation of an Austro-American Chamber of Commerce. Among the most ardent supporters of the Austro-American Society was the entrepreneurial Mautner-Markhof family.
