POS L1 Introduction Flashcards
What is Philosophy of Science?
The philosophy of science is a filed that deals with what science is, how it works, and the logic through which we build scientific knowledge.
What does the article by Ghoshal claim?
- Ideology-based gloomy vision
- The pretense of knowledge
–> These were the cause of economic failure at the turn of the century
What are the two factors that influence the “Process of Bad Theories Destroying Good Practice” at the beginning?
- Ideology-based gloomy vision
- The pretense of knowledge
What is the pretense of knowledge?
There is a pretense of absolute knowledge in management (Positivism and Determinism)
- casual determinism and denial of any role of human choice and intentions
What is the Ideology-based gloomy vision
Negative image of human nature in management theory. (in economic theory and in particular in the agency theory)
- negative assumptions about people and institutions
Determinism
Determinism, in philosophy, theory that all events, including moral choices, are completely determined by previously existing causes. Determinism is usually understood to preclude free will because it entails that humans cannot act otherwise than they do.
“Process of Bad Theories Destroying Good Practice”
What do
- Ideology-based gloomy vision
- The pretense of knowledge
lead to?
Excessive truth-claims based on partial analysis and unbalanced assumptions
(Theories influence practice, and managers adopt theorists’ worldview)
What is the end state in “Process of Bad Theories Destroying Good Practice”
Negative assumptions become real through the process of double hermeutic
Casuality
Explaining an outcome Y in terms of the necessary and sufficient conditions X for Y.
Casuality and its connection with determinism
The ontology that if we would know all applicable laws of nature as well as the initial conditions, we can perfectly predict what will happen in the future.
What is the counterfactual understanding of causation?
- it is the causal explanation
- the counterfactual understanding of causation is currently the dominant view in social science
An outcome Y, is caused by a cause X, if and only if when X had occurred Y would also have occurred, AND, if X had not occurred, Y would also not have happened.
The laboratory experiment epistemologically ‘operationalizes’ this counterfactual conception of causality in behavioral research. A group and a control group. The control group does not have X. So the hypothesis holds only when Y does not occur for the control group.
Positive theory
- ambition to explain world as it is
- makes explicit positive expectations towards the world
- theory-to-world direction to fit
Positivism, in Western philosophy, generally, any system that confines itself to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculations.
Normative theory
- has the ambition to justify the world as it ought to be
- makes explicit normative expectations towards the world
- has a world-to-theory direction of fit
Normative theories of decision making have provided prescriptions of how people should make decisions. The theories provide prescriptive functions or decision rules to help people maximize expected utility of outcomes. The normative rules serve as the rational standards to which people’s actual behaviors are compared. The assumption underlying some of these models has been that an optimal decision could be arrived at in a very rational, mathematical sort of way.
However, people’s decision-making strategies have been found to deviate from the principles of normative models in systematic ways. Typically, decisions are made under conditions of incomplete knowledge.
What is capitalism?
an economic system that focuses on the investment of money in the hope to make a profit
Two rights of ownership?
- you have the right to act in the manner you want to with your investment
- right to claim profit
