TITLE:
Qualitative Economics—A Perspective on Organization and Economic Science
AUTHORS:
Michael Fast, Woodrow Clark II
KEYWORDS:
Qualitative; Interaction; Process; Organizing; Thinking; Perspective; Epistemology
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.2 No.2,
May
23,
2012
ABSTRACT: Focus in this paper is on building a science of economics, grounded in understanding of organizations and what is beneath the surface of economic structures and activities. As a science Economics should be concerned with its assumptions, logic and lines of arguments, and how to develop theories and formulate ideas of reality. There is a disconnection between a science of economics focuses on structures and universal laws from what is experienced in everyday of life of business activity. The everyday of life of business is processual, dynamic and contradictional. This discussion of how to understand the everyday economic life is the central issue and is discussed from the perspective of interactionism. It is a perspective developed from the Lifeworld philosophical traditions, such as symbolic interactionism and phenomenology, seeking to develop the thinking of economics. The argument is that economics first of all is about two things; it is about interaction and it is about construction. If we are not able to understand and describe how people interact and construct, we cannot develop any theory of economics or understand human dynamics. So there are two issues to reflect upon: the object of thought and the process of thinking, e.g. the ontology and the epistemology.