Purpose – This paper is concerned with the quantitative/qualitative divide as a particular feature of recent methodological debate in organization research. While substantively this divide is questionable and problematic, it has figured prominently in the so‐called “paradigm wars”. The...

The purpose of the paper is to explore the potential for applying fuzzy logic to economic decision-making under Keynesian uncertainty, and in particular to circumstances where variety of opinion is important. Fuzzy logic is shown to apply where expectations may differ because the nature of the...

The title of this paper may suggest a specific focus on the possibilities and problems of matching closed models and open systems; however, although the relationships between systems and the models that we seek to apply to them are indeed the primary topics, there is no assumption that all...

The present study addresses the question of uncertainty in individual deliberation in Rousseau’s philosophy. Accordingly, it intends to consider in a new light his account of virtue and citizenship which cannot possibly be defined as systematic obedience to the general will. Weakness of the...

There is evidence of growing plurality in economic theory, alongside an increasing degree of homogenisation at the level of methodology. The purpose of this paper is to explore these developments in the light of the methodological literature on pluralism, regarding meaning of plurality, and the...

Efficiency is generally regarded as a value-neutral concept, concerned with assessing whether an economy produces at its possibility frontier, that is, generating maximum possible market output with given resources. Efficiency analysis generally rejects concerns with distribution – often...

This paper explores the relations between the Kuhnian concept of 'paradigm' and the Foucauldian notion of 'episteme' and how they may help us to think about economic discourse. In the fields of philosophy and history of ideas, such relations, though not deeply investigated, have been noticed...

The premise on which this paper builds is that modern economists unduly neglect history. The paper aims to support the argument that this is undesirable by looking at past episodes in the development of economic thought where economics has benefited from a historical approach. The first example...