Alfred Schutz's reconstruction of Max Weber's methodology is examined from two points of view: Schutz's decade-long affiliation with the Austrian school of economics and his project for the unification of the social sciences. Biographical and textual evidence shows that Schutz's methodological goals for his first book, Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (published in 1932), wereshaped by the epistemological debates within the Austrian school of economics, rather than some abstract and unmotivated attempt to "synthesize" Weber and Hussl. Schutz modified Weber's concepts of Verstehen and the ideal type to meet Austrian objections, and revised them further to comply with canons of reliability adopted from the logical empiricist theory of science, with which he was familiar through his friend Felix Kaufmann. The essay concludes with a depiction of Schutz's little-known program for the unification of the social sciences, whose origin can be traced to the same intelectual context.