Social Institutions of Capitalism

Edited by Pursey Heugens, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, The Netherlands, Hans van Oosterhout, Assistant Professor of Institutions and Institutional Design, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, The Netherlands and Jack Vromen, Associate Professor in the Philosophy of Economics, Faculty of Philosophy, Erasmus University, The Netherlands

• Contents: 1. Social Contract Theories: E Pluribus Unum? 2. Stable Social Contracts 3. The Relational Constitution of Contractual Agreement 4. The Foundations of Trust 5. Economics and the Social Contract 6. Social Contracts, Sic et Non 7. Sources of Normativity: Reflectivity versus Social Contracting 8. Justice-Conventionalism, Justice-Platonism and the Social Contract Index

'Heugens, van Oosterhout and Vromen have pulled together a diverse set of ideas around a common theme, social contract theory, that provides a useful underpinning for our ideas about what makes societies work in the ways that they do. Rather than attempting to integrate ideas from scholars of game theory, contract law, organizational theory, economic philosophy and business ethics, moral, and political philosophy, they outline a common framework on which these disparate ideas all cohere. Fundamentally, the editors suggest that for a social contract to be practical and workable, we as people living in societies have to agree to the underlying values and norms within a particular social contract as rational and reasonable agents. This type of synthesis provides a helpful framework for understanding what the limits and boundaries of social contract theory are and should be useful to thinkers in all of the domains covered by the authors in the book.'