Technological and Economic Development of Economy

The main research activities in economics during the last five years have significantly increased. The main research fields are operation research and sustainable development. The philosophy of decision making in economics is to assess and select the most preferable solution, implement it and to gain the biggest profit. Preferences are used in a lot of problem situations both in individual and organizational decision making processes. A number of effective decision making methods that support decisions under conditions of multiple criteria have appeared in the last decade. This paper presents a panorama of decision making methods in economics and summarizes the most important results and applications over the last five years. This paper considers decision making in light of the recent developments of multiple criteria decision making methods (because classical methods are overviewed in a lot of earlier publications). Authors of different approaches, pioneering studies and works are presented in s...

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Multiple criteria decision making (MCDM) methods in economics: an overview

It has long appeared to many people that economics is the most successful of the social sciences. It has assumed that people are motivated by money and by the possibility of making a profit, and this has allowed it to construct formal, and often predictive, models of human behaviour. This apparent success has led many other social scientists to cast envious eyes in its direction. They have thought that if they could only follow the methods of economics they could achieve similar successes in their own studies. These sociologists and political scientists have tried to build theories around the idea that all action is fundamentally 'rational' in character and that people calculate the likely costs and benefits of any action before deciding what to do. This approach to theory is known as rational choice theory, and its application to social interaction takes the form of exchange theory.

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Rational Choice Theory

T he principal aim of this introduction is to sketch the contours of the existing literature as it touches upon theories of institutional design. It will situate the contributions of the present collection as well as map the domain of the larger series within which this collection is set. The chapter starts by tracing continuities and discontinuities in the study of institutions, in the first instance, on a discipline-by-discipline basis. I avoid prematurely and preemptorily defining the term “institution,” preferring instead to let each discipline speak with its own voice. Inevitably, each discipline (and indeed subdiscipline) focuses on different institutions as paradigmatic and picks out different characteristics as their defining features. I propose to harness rather than straightjacket this diversity. Once I have let all these disparate disciplines have their say in their own ways, all of them will then be consolidated into a few broader reflections upon the form and function of social institutions. As part of that, I identify a minimalist definition of “institutions” upon which most institutionalists, old and new and across a range of disciplines, can broadly agree. That analysis provides a platform from which to address, in the final two sections, questions about the perfectability of social institutions. Key questions there concern the extent to which institutions accidentally emerge or automatically evolve, and the extent to which they are subject to intentional design and redesign. Insofar as intentional (re)design of some sort or another is a feasible aspiration in any sense at all, further questions arise about what sorts of principles, both normative and empirical, might properly be employed in those endeavors.

The Theory of Institutional Design: Institutions and Their Design

The study of the relationship between accounting and social change has entered the agenda of accounting research. Adopting the mode of analysis of Burchell et al. (Accounting, Organizations and Society (1985) pp. 381–414), this paper develops the concept of the arena as being dependent upon a process of translation (Latour, B., Science in Action, 1987). The process of translation is elaborated through a study of the genesis of the standard setting programme in the U.K.

On the arenas of accounting change: the process of translation

The rational choice approach to social behaviour rationality, egoism and social atomism models of the actor rationality, action and deliberation individualism and social structure.

D. S. King

Papers

Choice, Rationality and Social Theory