Search results

The authors are interested in building descriptive – real life – models of successful investors’ investment reasoning and decision-making. Models designed to be useful for trying to replicate and evolve their reasoning and decision-making. The purpose of this paper, a case study, is to take the substantial material – on innovating the investing tools – published in four books (2006/2012, 2010, 2011, 2015) by a US stock investor named Kenneth Fisher (CEO of Fisher Investments, Woodside, California) and sketch Fisher’s investment innovating reasoning model.

To sketch Fisher’s investment innovating reasoning model, the authors used the Radical constructivist theory of knowledge, a framework for analyzing human action and reasoning called Symbolic interactionism and a qualitative analytic technique called Conceptual analysis. The authors have done qualitative research applied to the study of investment decision-making of a single professional investor.

In the paper, the authors analyzed and described the heuristics used by Fisher to build subsequent generations of investing tools (called by Fisher “Capital Markets Technology”) to try to make better forecasts to beat the stock market. The authors were interested in studying the evolutive dimensions of the tools to make forecasts of a successful investor: the “how to build it” and “how to evolve it” dimension.

The paper offers an account of Kenneth Fisher’s framework to reason the innovation of investing tools. The authors believe that this paper could be of interest to professional money managers and to all those who are involved in the study and development of the tools of investing. This work is also an example of the use of the Radical constructivist theory of knowledge, the Symbolic interactionist framework and the Conceptual analysis to build descriptive models of investment reasoning of individual investors, models designed to enable the reproduction/approximation of the conceptual operations of the investor.

The aim of the study is to better understand how lesson study (LS) contributes to challenging teachers' views of mathematics teaching and learning.

This study is part of a wider ongoing project aiming at improving primary mathematics teaching in Malawi through professional development (PD) of teachers using a LS model. The units being analyzed are teachers' written reflections and lesson plans. The analytical approach is qualitative content analysis.

Initially, the participating Malawian primary teachers report traditional views of mathematics teaching and learning. After having participated in a LS cycle, they reported on the need to work on how to involve and create space for learners' participation in mathematic lessons and highlight the importance for learners to discover mathematics on their own.

This is a small-scale study due to LS being quite new in the Malawian context and the need to test before possible upscaling.

The paper includes a description on how LS might contribute to challenging Malawian teachers' views of mathematics teaching and learning; this can be valuable information for others who are attempting to use LS in a similar context.

This paper fulfills an identified need to learn more about how LS might contribute to challenging teachers' views of mathematics teaching and learning worldwide.

Attention is paid to the similarities between pragmatic philosophy and symbolic interactionism on the one hand, and radical constructive epistemologies on the other. Referring to the work of George Herbert Mead, symbolic interactionism has frequently been designated as a naive and idealistic sociological theory promoting the liberty of the individual by the use of the metaphysically echoing concepts as “the self”, “the I and the Me” and “taking the role of the other”. In reading the work of Mead closely, however, one is struck by the theoretic nature of these concepts which is not always clearly mentioned in symbolic interactionism. Furthermore, the work of Mead treats very similar topics and in a very similar way to the work of present theorists on autopoiesis and auto‐organisation and its origins in the relation between individuals and society. It is the purpose of this paper to suggest the work of Mead as a possible frame of reference for the elaboration of present discussions on the matter.

To the extent that management accounting is based on neo‐classical economics, all decision‐making is assumed to be rational, aimed at utility or profit maximisation and all circumstances influencing decisions are accepted as stationary. The approach excludes all social, cultural or historical considerations and is based on perfect information that is freely available. Neo‐classical economics further assumes that minimum government intervention, which is regulated by competition, will result in maximum benefit for society as a whole. This paper aims to determine the extent to which management accounting theory has been based on these limiting assumptions and finds that emerging management accounting theory is increasingly based on alternative, more liberating foundations. This situation is in contrast to management accounting education in South Africa, which remains almost entirely based on neo‐classical economics.

Determining the skills required for salespersons to maximize their effectiveness was the main driver for conducting the present study. In order to identify those necessary skills, this study aims to review various research techniques drawn from multiple disciplines and applied that knowledge to salespersons.

This study used a mixed-method methodology. This study began by conducting a literature review and then interviewed experienced salespersons with varied backgrounds to develop a comprehensive list of sales skills and themes and categorize them into competency categories. This study then conducted a quantitative analysis to determine the respective importance of the skills and themes by surveying a sample of internal stakeholders of a multinational company. Finally, this study calculated the reliability and validity of the themes.

A total of 206 relevant skills (later reduced to 110) and 28 themes were identified and grouped into three competency categories: conceptual, human/interpersonal and technical. Survey respondents rated the skills and themes higher than the “somewhat important” score of 3 out of 5, with the overall mean importance for skills being in the “important” range (score of 4.27 out of 5). All identified skills were believed to be important to a salesperson’s success.

This study’s expanded list of sales skills will improve employability, reduce turnover among employees and build better groundwork for fostering learning through work, resulting in better performance. These skills represent a 2020 updated list that could be used for future academic research and training and research in the business world.

The purpose of the paper is to propose a systems change lens to current approaches to assessing social impact in social ventures. Many existing tools for measuring social impact are limited in their capacity to assess the inherent complexities and interconnected nature of the work done by social enterprises.

The paper uses in-depth interviews with sector experts to gain insights into their needs related to impact assessment, as well as issues they face when attempting to understand and measure their impact.

Expert interviews provide insights into how social impact occurs through interconnected systems. It also highlights the need for impact assessment to better consider interaction within systems and networks. Results support previous work concerning the need for methods that can better account for complexity, interacting problems and the place of power in influencing actions.

Following results from interviews and review of existing literature, symbolic interactionism and Social Worlds/Arenas theories are used to gain insight as to how impact can be conceptualized in terms of systemic shifts in social equilibria. The model proposes to capture the contested definitions of problems and their negotiation in social structures.

Grounded in sociological theory, the model brings a new theoretical approach to social impact assessment, one that provides a different view of social structures than existing models that are grounded in economic metrics. The proposed model, therefore, provides a new lens for the detailed assessment of the complex interactions between systems.

In this paper we rethink the conventional ways of explaining the change process of new company formation. We base our analysis on two well established and dominating categories of entrepreneurship models, stages inspired models and interactive contingency models, and we argue that these do not sufficiently conspire to capture the entrepreneurial start‐up process as an everyday phenomenon of multi‐dimensional individual, social, and environmental interaction. In an effort to address this hypothesized theoretical gap, we apply ideas origination from Symbolic Interactionism to suggest a complementary conceptual model for comprehending the entrepreneurial process as an interactive construct. From here the idea of entrepreneurship as an ongoing “Social Journey of Opportunity Construction” arises. We argue that this idea has a potential impact on the practice of research, since it encourages scholars to step out of predictable zones of positivist research and enter a riskier research zone in which it is everyday interaction that makes the entrepreneurial process emerge.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the boundaries of rhetoric have excluded important theoretical and practical subjects and how these subjects are recuperated and extended since the twentieth century. Its purpose is to foster the awareness on emerging new trends of rhetoric.

The methodology is based on an interpretation of the history of rhetoric and on the construction of a conceptual framework of the rhetoric of judgment, which is introduced in this paper.

On the subject of the extension of rhetoric from public speeches to any kinds of persuasive situations, the paper emphasizes some stimulating relationships between the theory of communication and rhetoric. On the exclusion and recuperation of the subject of rhetorical arguments, it presents the changing relationships between rhetoric and dialectics and emphasizes the role of rhetoric in scientific research. On the introduction of rhetoric of judgment and meanings it creates a conceptual framework based on a re-examination of the concept of judgment and the phenomenological foundations of the interpretative methods of social sciences by Alfred Schutz, relating them to symbolic interactionism and theories of the self.

The study on the changing boundaries of rhetoric and the introduction of the rhetoric of judgment offers a new view on the present theoretical and practical development of rhetoric, which opens new subjects of research and new fields of applications.

Any adequate analysis of the nature of mathematics and its role in sciences necessarily requires fundamental understanding of the world views underlying the views expressed with respect to the nature and role of mathematics. Aims to discuss four general views with respect to mathematics and its role in sciences, corresponding to four broad worldviews.

This paper starts with the premise that any worldview can be positioned on a continuum formed by four basic paradigms: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. It looks at the current state of mainstream academic finance and notes that it is founded only on the functionalist paradigm. It argues that any view expressed with respect to the nature of mathematics and its role in sciences is based on one of the four paradigms or worldviews.

Emphasizes that the four views expressed are equally scientific and informative; they look at the nature and role of mathematics from a certain paradigmatic viewpoint.

Concludes that there are opportunities for mainstream academic finance to benefit from contributions coming from the other three paradigms, if it respects paradigm diversity.

The purpose of this paper is to show how different philosophical schools of thought view the relation between globalization and culture differently.

This paper places the existing philosophical schools of thought into four broad categories: functionalist, interpretive, radical humanist, and radical structuralist. This paper then shows how each of these four broad categories view the relation between globalization and culture differently.

This paper finds that the functionalist paradigm views globalization and culture as universal, the interpretive paradigm views globalization and culture as particular, the radical humanist paradigm views globalization and culture as a domination ideology, and the radical structuralist paradigm views globalization and culture as causing conflict between classes.

This paper assumes that each school of thought can be located in one of the four broad categories of philosophical schools of thought. However, this may not be applicable to each and every philosophical school of thought.

This paper implies that one would benefit by becoming familiar with other ways of seeing the same phenomenon. This paper shows that the relation between globalization and culture can be viewed at least from four different vantage points and therefore one would have a better understanding of the relation between globalization and culture if one becomes familiar with all four different view points.

The contribution of this paper is the advice that in the era of globalization it is better for people to become open‐minded because different people from different parts of the world have different perspectives and the best way to be able to live together is to learn about how others think.