ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Ferdinand Toennies's, Max Weber's and Georg Simmel's descriptions and appraisals of the normative and communitarian elements that may be found in business relations. The sociological work of Toennies, Weber and Simmel was inspired by a common concern for the social and cultural consequences of capitalist modernization. Simmel's sociology of monetary transactions, while fundamentally different from that of Toennies, paralleled Weber's in some respects and complemented it in others. Contemporary students of the so-called moral economy are close to Toennies's position when they wonder if "action that appears to meet moral standards" may not be actually motivated by the actors' "economic self-interest". The Weberian sociology of business groups and milieux is in broad agreement with contemporary research inspired by, or consonant with Marxist theory, but qualifies some of its contentions. It anticipates and complements recent advances in the application of network theory to economic sociology.
