Maximilian Carl Emil Weber

Max weber was a German political economist and sociologist who was one of the founders of the modern study of sociology and public administration.
In the book,The protestant ethnic and the spirit of capitalizm(1905),he concluded that "capitalist accumulation" was born from protestant ethnic.He compared protestant and catholic and showed that Protestant save more money and have higher productivity.in contrast,Catholic was less productive but spent more.
Weber defined bureaucracies as goal oriented organizations designed according to rational principles in order to efficiently attain their goals (Verstehen).
His main thesis -Verstehen doctrine- is that social,economic and historical research can enver be fully inductive or descriptive.One must approach it with a conceptual apparatus which is identified as " ideal type".There are 4 categories of "ideal type".
1) zweckrational (rational means to rational ends),
2)wertrational (rational means to irrational ends),
3)affektual (guided by emotion)
4)traditional (guided by custom or habit).

Weber also discussed authority.He used ideal types and explain this in terms of traditional authority (pre-modern), rational-legal authority (modern), and charismatic.
Max Weber said that sociology is a science that is concerned with a social action and the course and consequences of the action. He had a large influence on many of the ideas that are used in sociology today.

references:http://zoo.parkingspa.com/nmssad.htm
http://www.6sociologists.20m.com//weber.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Weber