Abstract
Abstract During the period known as the economic and global financial crisis, economic forecasting came under heavy criticism for its inability to predict the crisis, to the point where said crisis was deemed not just a crisis of the global economy, but of economic thinking as well, in particular mainstream, neoclassical economics. The critique of economics has focused primarily on the following aspects: its unrealistic assumptions regarding markets and human behaviours; its poor track record in predicting phenomena such as the crisis itself; its over-reliance on models that bear little resemblance to real world conditions, and also that it has a very narrow focus, reluctant to integrate useful inputs from other fields, which is perceived as leading to stagnation and hindering progress in the field. Following the crisis, several academic debates occurred within the field of economics, with several heterodox schools of economic thought receiving renewed attention, while universities have begun to expand the range of disciplines included in their business programmes, gravitating towards a multidisciplinary approach. The present paper aims to examine the concept of multidisciplinarity with a focus on its role in business education today and to assess the extent to which its spread and prevalence can usher in a new paradigm in economic thinking.
Highlights
The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 began in the United States and spread throughout the global economy, giving way to the economic decline known as the Great Recession, arguably the most severe recession since the Great Depression, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica
The objective of the paper was to analyse the concept of multidisciplinarity, settle upon a working definition of the term, analyse its potential impact on economics and discuss on whether or not it can produce a paradigmatic shift in economic thought
The paper provided a background of why a reassessment of economics is relevant in light of the criticisms that emerged against the backdrop of the last global financial crisis, where PICBE | 272 neoclassical economics and its predictive capabilities were subjected to harsh evaluations, and it was established that as the current paradigm has since been called into question, we may look into the prospects for a change in this sense
Summary
The global financial crisis of 2007-2008 began in the United States and spread throughout the global economy, giving way to the economic decline known as the Great Recession, arguably the most severe recession since the Great Depression, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (https://www.britannica.com/list/5-of-the-worlds-mostdevastating-financial-crises). All three terms share the same root and involve holistic approaches by incorporating insights from several disciplines, the concepts of multidisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are not interchangeable and as such, we need to pinpoint the key differences between them One such distinction is made by Choi & Pak (2006). Interdisciplinarity is seen through the lens of its integrative nature that gives way to the creation of new methods and theories irrespective of the limits of the disciplines they were derived from, this view tends to overlap with the previous authors’ definition of transdisciplinarity. She argues that unlike multidisciplinarity which focuses on the domain, interdisciplinarity focuses on the process. We examine what multidisciplinarity means for economics and how it can aid in developing economic theory
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