ABSTRACT
Asubstantial part of the literature in the social sciences dealing with individual motivation and social change has concentrated on the functional relationship between ethical systems and economic change. The directions indicated in the major works of Max Weber (1930, 1951, 1952) have been built upon and developed by others, primarily under the stimulation of Talcott Parsons, to a point where they present a formidable body of theoretical and substantive material. The positive stimulus of a new ethical system in encouraging economic rationalization in the face of traditional values is featured in these works. Robert Bellah has adopted this framework and applied it to Japan, showing in the Shingaku movement in Buddhism a functional equivalent to Protestantism in western Europe (Bellah, 1957). Both Parsons and Bellah, following Weber, appear to view the change in ethics as a prior requisite and as a positive motivation to economic change. In reading these analyses, one cannot escape the feeling that a new spirit spreading among the people of a nation jars them from their traditional ways and moves them to take an active role in the newly developing economic system.
