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Entrepreneurship and values in a democratic and pragmatic economics: commentary on 'A transactional view of entrepreneurship'
Abstract
Entrepreneurship cannot be explained by any economic theory that isolates innovation from ongoing social processes or locates creativity in a space of given, fixed values. Unfortunately, mainstream economics has committed these mistakes, rooted in instrumentalist and antidemocratic notions of consumption and rationality that permits reasoning only about means toward given ends. Genuine innovation is, on Dewey's pragmatic approach to values, the intelligent modification of both means and ends for experimental action. When joined to an appreciation that consumption is just a phase of production, innovation can be properly seen as productive value-creation. Entrepreneurship is democratic experimentation in the economic realm.
... This holistic perspective was lost as policy science developed with a more narrow technical and empirical focus. There is now growing interest in reclaiming Deweyan pragmatist philosophy as a comprehensive blueprint for public policy and democratic practice (Bernstein, 1998;Dorstewitz & Kuruvilla, 2007;Evans, 2000;Joas, 1996;Mousavi & Garrison, 2003;Ryan, 2000;Shields, 2003;Shook, 2003;Snider, 2000;Westbrook, 1991). The objective of this paper is to transpose rationality as envisioned in pragmatist philosophy to policy science. ...
... Contemporary studies indicate that pragmatist philosophy can better explain political and economic behavior, than other related theories (Mousavi & Garrison, 2003;Shook, 2003). Pragmatist philosophy also offers an ecological perspective on policy-making that emphasizes the interdependence of actors and environments (Alexander, 2002;McDonald, 2004). ...
The hope that policy-making is a rational process lies at the heart of policy science and democratic practice. However, what
constitutes rationality is not clear. In policy deliberations, scientific, democratic, moral, and ecological concerns are
often at odds. Harold Lasswell, in instituting the contemporary policy sciences, found that John Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy
provided an integrative foundation that took into account all these considerations. As the policy sciences developed with
a predominantly empirical focus on discrete aspects of policy-making, this holistic perspective was lost for a while. Contemporary
theorists are reclaiming pragmatist philosophy as a framework for public policy and administration. In this article, key postulates
of pragmatist philosophy are transposed to policy science by developing a new theoretical model of transactive rationality. This model is developed in light of current policy analyses, and against the backdrop of three classical policy science
theories of rationality: linear and bounded rationalism; incrementalism; and mixed-scanning. Transactive rationality is a “fourth approach” that, by integrating scientific, democratic, moral, and ecological considerations,
serves as a more holistic, explanatory, and normative guide for public policy and democratic practice.
KeywordsPublic policy-Public administration-Rationality-Transactive rationality-Pragmatist philosophy-Science-Democracy-Morality-Ecological-John Dewey
... Resource value is thus neither objective nor subjective, but belief-specific, based on what Dewey describes as "value in judgment" (Dewey (1915, p. 516), defined by their use as "tools or means, and instrumentality." Thus, in pragmatism, it is not the resource per se that is priced, but the usage of the resource towards solving a problem (Sen, 1982;Shook, 2003). ...
Building on pragmatism, we advance an entrepreneur-as-scientist perspective and depict entrepreneurs as engaging in causally inferential action by forming beliefs, testing these beliefs, and responding to the feedback received. However, this sequence of entrepreneurial actions arrives with a set of companion doubts, namely doubt about product-market fit because the entrepreneurs’ beliefs are self-chosen, doubt about feedback validity from false positives or false negatives, and doubt about over- and underfitting in responses to feedback. We discuss the rationality of heuristics deployed by the entrepreneur to overcome these doubts. Our insights contribute to the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial action and strategy by explaining how entrepreneurs generate the information to produce value out of uncertainty.
... To determine what is valuable is to posit a thing or an issue in a particular relation of interests and to find out in what situation a desire is experienced as desirable and the prized is appraised (Dewey 1939, pp. 216–218, Shook 2003). Exploration may also make the social–economic constraints more transparent, deliberative, and " moral " rather than dominating (cf. ...
In a world of glossy corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports, the shallowness of the actual CSR results may well be its counterpart. We claim that the possible gaps between aspirations and implementations are due to the company's overrating abilities to deal with the irrational and complex moral world of business. Many academic approaches aim to lift business ethics up to a higher level by enhancing competences but will fail because they are too rationalistic and generalistic to match the pluralistic and situational practice constituted by the mosaic of values and set of constraints. This is demonstrated by describing and analyzing the CSR development of the multinational caterer Sodexo and in particular its Dutch branch. We explain what they do and why they are not successful. We present a new tool named Ethical Room for Maneuver that centers experiences and concrete situations in a playground of inquiry and experiment to enhance abilities to operate in themoral world and to meliorate business and society with more effectiveness.
While personal experiences and family socialization are likely to influence beliefs and behaviors linking faith to work, religious congregations also are likely to play a prominent role in shaping faith-work connections. Our purpose in this chapter is to draw upon a nationally representative sample of over a thousand working adults to describe the role of Christian congregations in making faith relevant to the workplace. Two variables that have particular relevance to the association of faith and work are the Congregational Entrepreneurial Orientation Scale (CEOS) and the Congregational Faith at Work Scale (CFWS). The CEOS variable assesses the behavior of congregational leaders related to being innovative and demonstrating a willingness to take risks, whereas the CFWS variable assesses the extent to which specific beliefs about faith and work integration are emphasized within a congregation. This chapter reports on the association of these congregational variables, across religious traditions, with work attitudes and behaviors and offers recommendations for future research.
1. Introduction 2. Entrepreneurial Theories in the History of Economic Thought 3. The Disappearance of the Entrepreuneur from Microeconomic Theory - A History 4. An Explanation of the Disapperance of the Entrepreneur - The Description 5. An Explanation of the Disapperance of the Entrepreneur - The Rationale 6. An Explanation of the Disappearance of the Entrepreneur - The Motivation.
Economists long have employed evolutionary language and metaphors to characterize economic change, but until recently have largely eschewed the expression of explicit evolutionary theories. Over the last decade, however, a number of explicit evolutionary theories have been developed by economists, and other social scientists. This essay discusses the general analytic art form, and summarizes and discusses a number of the particular models. In the light of those examples, it evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of explicit evolutionary theorizing as an approach to understanding economic change.
The Theory of Economic Progress The Entrepreneur in Microeconomic TheoryThe methodology of institutional economics
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Dewey, John and Bentley, Arthur (1989) 'Knowing and the Known', in Jo Ann Boydston (ed.) The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 16, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Joas, Hans (1996) The Creativity of Action, (trans. J. Gaines and P. Keast) Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
The methodology of institutional economies
- Paul D Bush