Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

The author rejects the usual division of economics (Positive Economics versus Normative Economics). Since actions and perceptions are not contrary but complementary phases of the same process such an economics seems to be right which is able to serve both economic actions and perceptions. The author argues for the utilization of the Action Research and Evaluation Research methodologies in economics. In the light of these methodologies the constructive and valuative aspects of economics are desirable. Constructive economic researches discover, new earlier non-existent possibilities for the economic activities. Valuative economic researches explicitly valuate the ways economic activities actually run. Constructive and Valuative Economics seems to be appropriate for making of a better economic world than we live in now.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Checkland

P.B.

(1981). Systems Thinking, Systems Practice. John Wiley.

Ekins

(ed) (1986). The Living Economy. Routledge and Kegan Paul.

Friedman

(1953). Essays in Positive Economics. University of Chicago Press.

Gigch

J.P. Van

(1984): “The meaning of truth in the systems age” Human Systems Management, 1984. No. 4.

Guttentag

Struening

E.L.

(eds) (1975). Handbook of Evaluation Research. Sage.

Kornai

(1971). Anti-Equilibrium. North-Holland Publ. Comp.

Lewin

(1946). “Action research and minority problems” Journal of Social Issues.

Lewis

(1973). Counterfactuals, Harvard University Press.

Popper

K.R.

(1957). The Poverty of Historicism, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

10.

Schumacher

E.F.

(1974). Small is beautiful, Abacus.

11.

Senior

(1836). An Outline of the Science of Political Economy, London.

12.

Stalin

(1952). Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR, Moscow.

13.

Susman

G.I.

Evered

R.G.

(1978). “An Assessment of the Scientif Merits of Action Research” Administrative Science Quarterly, December.

14.

Thompson

(1984). The Cultural Construction of Nature and the Natural Destruction of Culture, Laxenburg, IIASA.

15.

Weilenmann

(1980). Evaluation Research and Social Change, UNESCO.

16.

Zsolnai

Kiss

(1985). “Different dissolutions of the Man-and-World problem” in Grauer

(eds): Plural Rationality and Interactive Decision Processes, Springer Verlag.

Beyond Positivism and Normativism

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References