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AbstractGiven the growing call for the restoration of the place of entrepreneurship in economic theory, familiarity with the works of Gustav Schmoller would be a great asset for a better understanding of the nature of the enterprise and the role of entrepreneurs. This article examines Schmoller's still-underutilized research, which makes him one of the founding fathers of research in entrepreneurship. It illustrates Schmoller's distinct contextual perspective on entrepreneurship. The most compelling notion is the emphasis on and accentuation of the modern enterprise as a special form of institution that can be characterized by three dimensions: (1) the macroscopic dimension refers to the enterprise as a unitary corporate actor, (2) the microscopic dimension encompasses the organizational structure of the enterprise, and (3) the metascopic dimension describes the institutional link between the organization and society. These three dimensions also shape Schmoller's "psychological-ethical" idea of the entrepreneur as an economic and social actor.

Abstract
Despite the trenchantly formulated attempts of early ordoliberals to distance themselves from Gustav Schmoller, his research program can undoubtedly be identified as one of the numerous intellectual influences of their economic and sociopolitical ideas. In this article we dispel prominent misconceptions regarding Schmoller's work and explain why the most fitting understanding of his approach today is contextual economics. We establish six characteristics of ordoliberalism that were already essential in Schmoller's work, and which show great continuity in the tradition of German-speaking political economy. In this context, there is little more emblematic than the idea of the Social Market Economy as an "irenic formula". We argue that the basic thought of social irenicism is also the essential leitmotif in Schmoller's progressive conception of an economic order, which we call, by analogy with Müller-Armack, a Sittliche Marktwirtschaft [Ethical Market Economy]. For a better and more reflective self-understanding, a modern economics of order [Ordnungsökonomik] would be well advised to develop a heightened awareness of its own intellectual roots.

AbstractThis article highlights the various sources that shaped the genesis of ordoliberalism. In the wake of the emerging project of neoliberalism, ordoliberals created a theory that contains a bundle of claims, which constitute the attempt to merge liberalism and its contextual embedding into a social philosophy that meets the requirements of both—economy and society. They were concerned with a new and properly interpreted liberalism. Not because they did not share the basic assumption of classical liberalism that individual self-interested action is the necessary driving force in advancing economic and social progress, but because they realized that individual action requires an embedding into a social and moral order to deliver public benefits. This insight proves to be the significant difference between ordoliberals of neoliberal facon and the exponents of classical liberalism: namely that the market economy operates based on prerequisites which it cannot itself guarantee. Regarding their very own historical context, this must be seen in light of their concern for the reconstruction of Western societies after the end of the totalitarian Nazi regime. The purpose of ordoliberalism has always been the "consciously shaped" economic order which manifests itself as humane and as functional. Moreover, if one understands ordoliberalism as contextual liberalism, it can also be significant for today's discourse. In order to achieve this aspiration, ordoliberalism adopts a contextual approach. In particular, linkages can be drawn here to Constitutional Political Economy, and the interaction of these perspectives offer promising benefits for both "thinking-in-orders" traditions.