Focus in this paper is on building a science of economics, grounded in understanding of organizations and what is beneath the surface of economic structures and activities. As a science Economics should be concerned with its assumptions, logic and lines of arguments, and how to develop theories and formulate ideas of reality. There is a disconnection between a science of economics focuses on structures and universal laws from what is experienced in everyday of life of business activity. The everyday of life of business is processual, dynamic and contradictional. This discussion of how to understand the everyday economic life is the central issue and is discussed from the perspective of interactionism. It is a perspective developed from the Lifeworld philosophical traditions, such as symbolic interactionism and phenomenology, seeking to develop the thinking of economics. The argument is that economics first of all is about two things; it is about interaction and it is about construction. If we are not able to understand and describe how people interact and construct, we cannot develop any theory of economics or understand human dynamics. So there are two issues to reflect upon: the object of thought and the process of thinking, e.g. the ontology and the epistemology.
In understanding economics and the organisation of economics, the questions are what constitute economics and the thinking behind economics today? In short what is the field of economics? And in what ways can we connect to and understand this field of study? Of course, the answer to this depends upon the perspective chosen, in which one sees and thinks of economics from a particular philosophical and even political position and perspective. If one takes the perspective on economics from a qualitative paradigm that draws upon the tradition from Kant, Husserl, Simmel, Mead, Schutz, Blumer (see references), then it can be stated that economics cannot only be understood as something that appears in nature. On the contrary, economics must be understood as "something" which results from human behaviour, interaction and groups in human activities and the thinking involved and embedded in those activities. Therefore in analyzing economics it is significant to note that economics belongs to and is being constructed by people due to their everyday lives. What appears as central in those statements, from a qualitative perspective, is that the essences of economics have to be discussed in relation to the mind and thinking related to an understanding of individual and group societal activities. Economics is to be understood as constructed and maintained through everyday human interactions and exchanges, whereby people are creating the meanings of situations with objectives of what are believed as important in the understanding of economics activities, actions and results. Those meanings and definitions of economics are being produced and exchanged in order to become a new comprehensive framework that influences, co-produces, limits and creates contradictions in everyday economic life. This additional qualitative focus [1] outlines the importance of understanding how human cognitions produce meaning of objects, definitions, activities and actions which provides the framework for the field of economics. The epistemological perspective for this is that the objects are not only within themselves. No, instead the objects are as they presents themselves to people, and thereby the meanings we are constructing and attaching to them. The paper will therefore discuss some of the scientific complexities in three areas: mind and thinking; understanding economics as a social activity and construction, and the interplay between economic activities and economic theoretical work.
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