The four approaches to Austrian Social Theory
Abstrakti
Administrative Studies, vol. 10(1991): 4, 259-269
Austrian economic theory is known for putting
emphasis on the division of knowledge,
discoordination of plans and discovery of the unknown. The purpose of the paper is to provide an
introduction to the Austrian theory of society.
Austrian economlsts have applied various
approaches to explaining the nature of society.
The only genuinely Austrian approach is the
evolutionary social theory which examines the
competition between societies as an open-ended
process of discovering new social institutions.
The contractarian, naturalistic and utilitarian
approaches have advantages of their own, but
they are of limited use because they seek good or
natural social institutions solely on the basis of
what is currently known to be good or natural.
