Call for Papers: World Business History Conference session proposal.
Weber revisited: Christianity and Entrepreneurship in the Global Economy
A session proposal for the World Business History Conference, "State of the art inWorld Business History - a first review", Frankfurt am Main, March 16-17th, 2014
Session description.
Max Weber’s Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism has been one of themost influential and controversial interpretations of the causes of economic
growth since its publication over a century ago. The thesis compares Catholicand Protestant denominations in early modern Europe, and the role of Calvinistteachings on salvation on increasing capital accumulation and effort. The detailsof the thesis are much disputed, but the wider hypothesis that religious beliefs ingeneral, and some Christian beliefs specifically, aid the formation of cognitive
frameworks that have the indirect benefit of stimulating entrepreneurship
remains highly influential (Ashton 1948; Landes 1998; McCloskey 2010; Munro2010). Empirical support for the thesis can be seen in the disproportionate
influences of inter alia non-conformists before and during the British Industrial
Revolution, Protestant Evangelicals in the US Gilded Age, Jewish entrepreneursin the US and UK, among many others (Ashton 1948; Jeremy 1990; Godley 2001;
Godley and Casson 2010; Baghdiantz et al 2005).
But the last half century has seen two historic transformations. First, after
remarkable growth in the world’s Christian population, the demographic centreof the global Christianity has shifted from the Global North to the Global South.
Within these regions, it is Protestantism (and specifically Pentecostal andCharismatic denominations) that has grown so quickly (Pew Research Center,2011). At the same time, the integration of much of the so-called Global Southinto the global economy has had a dramatic effect on economic growth there,powered disproportionately by indigenous entrepreneurship (Bruton, Ahlstromand Obloj 2008). Among sociologists there is the beginnings of systematic
research that seeks to explore the relationship between these twotransformations of much of the developing world – a growing proportion ofChristians among the population and increasing levels of indigenous
entrepreneurship (e.g. Tong 2012 for China).
This proposed session seeks to invite up to five presentations from businesshistorians and other researchers (especially sociologists and others) focusing on
the relationship between Christianity and entrepreneurship in emerging
economies in historical and comparative context. The session’s aim is toencourage the empirical documentation of these recent trends and to comparethem with the far better documented cases of Christian entrepreneurs inadvanced economies in earlier periods.
Please send paper proposals by September 15th 2013 to session organiser,Professor Andrew Godley, Director, Henley Centre for Entrepreneurship, Henley
Business School, University of Reading, a.c.godley@henley.reading.ac.uk

References:T.S. Ashton. The Industrial Revolution (1760–1830) (1948 OUP).
Baghdiantz, I., McCabe, G. Harlaftis and I. Minoglou (2005) Diaspora
Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, (Berg, Oxford,Bruton, G. Ahlstrom D, Obloj, K. 2008. Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies:
Where Are We Today and Where Should the Research Go in the Future.
Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice 32 (1) January: 1-14.
Andrew Godley. Jewish Immigrant Entrepreneurship in London and New York:Enterprise and Culture (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2001).
Andrew Godley and Mark Casson, ‘Britain, 1900-2000’, in David S. Landes, JoelMokyr and William J. Baumol eds, The Invention of Enterprise:
Entrepreneurship from Mesopotamia to Modern Times (Princeton UniversityPress) 2010: 243-272.
David Jeremy, Capitalists and Christians (OUP 1990).
David Landes, Wealth and Poverty of Nations: why some are so rich and some sopoor. 1998. New York, Norton.
Dierdre McCloskey, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the ModernWorld. 2010, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
John Munro (2010), ‘Tawney’s Century, 1540-1640: The Roots of Modern
Capitalist Entreprneurship’, in David Landes, Joel Mokyr and WJ Baumol(eds), The Invention of Enterprise: Entrepreneurship from Ancient
Mesopotamia to Modern Times (Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ).
Pew Research Center, Forum on Religion and Public Life Global Christianity
December 2011. http://www.pewforum.org/Christian/Global-Christianitymovements-and-denominations.aspx
Joy Kooi-Chin Tong. Overseas Chinese Christian Entrepreneurs in Modern China: A
Case Study of the Influence of Christian Ethics on Business Life Anthem Press,London. 2012.

Appendix
Countries with fastest GDP Growth 1982-2011 (simple mean of GDP annualgrowth %): Source. Author’s calculations from World Bank,
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?page=1
China
Botswana
Singapore
South Korea
India
UgandaChadMalaysia

10.2
6.8
6.7
6.3
6.3
6.0
6.0
5.9

Despite Europe’s historical links to Protestantism, its share of the global Protestant population (13%) is
eclipsed by the share in sub-Saharan Africa (37%), the Americas (33%) and the Asia-Pacific region(17%). Only the Middle East-North Africa has a smaller share of Protestants (less than 1%) thanEurope.