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Cross-Disciplinary Scientific Foundation for Sustainability Chapter j 3 41

our discussion hits directly at the heart or core of what Western industrialized
capitalism has become today through an in-depth analysis of the philosophical
and historical roots of science.
Our argument is that the objectivism paradigm in science became the
dominant one with its theories and arguments for rationalism, empiricism, and
ultimately quantification of social phenomena. In short, numbers without
meaning and definition became economics. The objectivist paradigm has
prevailed for over a century throughout other social sciences as well. The
impact on business economics has led to a reductionist approach in theory and
methods that dictates how economic and business analyses are conducted.
Another paradigm that is an alternative in philosophy is subjectivism.
Through the Lifeworld tradition, this paradigm forms the basis for qualitative
economics. Herein emanates the focus on Lifeworld, everyday life, symbolic
interactionism, and the use of interpretative theories and qualitative methods
that are missing today in business economics and business studies. Moreover,
economics becomes a science when qualitative theories, data, and methods are
used because actors, events, groups, surroundings, and their interactions can be
constructed into hypotheses, which are tested, described, explained, and
analyzed. The outcome can be laws and rules used for forecast and prediction.
In short, economics becomes a science.

Phenomenology: The Tradition of the Lifeworld Perspective
Central in our discussion of a new perspective on economics is phenome-
nology. The connection of individuals in interaction is one of the cornerstones
to understand the development of the firm. The present and past actions and
interactions of people within any situation define an organization. As Fast
(1993) argues, the very definition of an organization, firm, or company is the
sum of all its past, present, and future actions interpreted by the actors and
attached meanings. Consequently, understanding a company can be seen in the
actors’ actions and interactions among the people who comprise it. To
understand how organizations operate in a regional, national, or international
context, it is critical to analyze its interactions within itself and with other
organizations.
Any organization can be understood through the actors who by their
actions and knowledge create the everyday life of any firm. The actions and
interactions exist in a context that is created by the actor through his actions.
The action is related to the actors’ concrete understanding of the situation and
his context of meanings (Blumer, 1969; Schutz, 1972; Mead, 1934; Brown,
1978; Jehenson, 1978). Actors have motives and definitions of situations that
make their social world into an inner logic.
Knowledge can be understood as motion picture of reality: experiences and
information are produced through actions and transformed (by interpretation
and retrospection) to the knowledge that the actors experience as useful and