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Cross-Disciplinary Scientific Foundation for Sustainability Chapter j 3 37

The Internet, email, as well as wireless and new technologies heighten our
daily interactions as never before, now on a 24-h, 7-day-a-week, and global
basis. Business and economics are interaction and “exchanges” of anything
(information, knowledge, goods and services, or whatever) that define and
provide meaning and understanding in our everyday lives. Almost everything
people and groups do has some sort of business interaction attached to it.
The reality of business economics has been investigated and explained in
many ways. And the science of business economics is, as it has “always” been,
is central in the social discussion. However, understanding business research
and the method of research along with the (ontological and epistemological)
assumptions lying behind the research and its reality in everyday life is rarely
discussed. Business economics, and its close cousin economics, are not sci-
ences, but “art forms,” as C.P. Snow (1959) would call it, disguised in the aura
of scientism.
The problem with the dominant objectivist paradigm in the philosophical
tradition of neoclassical economics in business and economics today stems
from its historical roots. Many Western philosophers, theologians, scientists,
and laymen have, more or less successfully, contributed to the discussion and
understanding of reality and science. They have agreed or disagreed about
thinking in various traditions about how the broad social sciences have been
developed.
Some traditions have been dominant for some time and have then been
replaced by others. Others have been rediscovered and developed. Yet the
basic philosophy of business economics has continued to follow two particular
traditions. Most of what we encounter in the scientific world today is an
expression of a certain tradition or another that is not presented as one of many
but as the only one giving evidence of reality. A particular tradition, or as Kuhn
(1962) noted as a “paradigm,” has a long history and to a great extent is
dominating the social discussion and the organization of society, including
science itself.
The dominant business economic tradition has come from the objectivist
tradition and manifested itself as positivism and rationalism as contained in the
prevailing schools of thought like structural functionalism, system theory, and
game theory. As Reinert (1994, p. 80) puts it, “Neo-classical economics is
essentially a theory of the exchange of goods already produced, taking no
account of the diversity of conditions of production and their influence on
pricing behavior. Neo-classical theory is, it seems, a theory which cannot
accommodate for the existence of fixed costs, since these create increasing
returns.”
Discussions of philosophy in science and methodology are important for
understanding reality and theorizing on its applications in everyday life. It is
precisely these connections between ontology and epistemology in philosophy
of science that theorizing and methodologies arise to capture the reality, which
must be in the center of any scientific discussion. Furthermore, openness and a