Christian Olaf Christiansen (b. 1980) is Assistant Professor at Aarhus University, Institute for Culture and Society. He was educated at the now former Department of Intellectual History and received his PhD degree in 2011, and is also educated in political science (Aarhus University) and philosophy (Hamburg University). Christian has published several peer-reviewed articles on topics such as the history of management thought, sociology, economic and sociological thinkers, and historiography of the history of economic ideas and has taught a wide range of topics in relation to humanistic understanding of organisations, teaching university students as well as professional managers.
Christian Olaf Christiansen offers the reader a well-researched, seminal historical study describing the general evolution of CSR in the American economy. Most important, he develops a novel descriptive concept - market reformism - that he uses synonymously with the term progressive business. ... This concept has the potential to be useful as a bounded instrumental device for business ethicists and management scholars in their future research endeavors. * Thomas A. Hemphill, Journal Of Business Ethics * Christiansen's work is a welcome contribution in that it explores views of progressive business in different time periods and helps the reader better appreciate those views by also examining the critics of progressive business... It explores necessary territory and should interest business historians and historians of economic thought... Each of his chapters has helpful summary charts that either list the key points of progressive business or juxtaposes the core ideas of progressive business with those of its critics. His conclusion, Progressive Business and Its Critics in Retrospect, provides a good analysis of the significance of his work. * Robert Van Horn, American Historical Review *