Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 Why interpersonal relations matter for economics
- 2 From transactions to encounters: the joint generation of relational goods and conventional values
- 3 Fellow-feeling
- 4 Interpersonal interaction and economic theory: the case of public goods
- 5 Under trusting eyes: the responsive nature of trust
- 6 Interpersonal relations and job satisfaction: some empirical results in social and community care services
- 7 On the possible conflict between economic growth and social development
- 8 The logic of good social relations
- 9 The mutual validation of ends
- 10 Hic sunt leones: interpersonal relations as unexplored territory in the tradition of economics
- 11 Authority and power in economic and sociological approaches to interpersonal relations: from interactions to embeddedness
- 12 Interpersonal relations and economics: comments from a feminist perspective
- 13 Economics and interpersonal relations: ruling the social back in
- Envoi
- References
- Index
Preface
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 Why interpersonal relations matter for economics
- 2 From transactions to encounters: the joint generation of relational goods and conventional values
- 3 Fellow-feeling
- 4 Interpersonal interaction and economic theory: the case of public goods
- 5 Under trusting eyes: the responsive nature of trust
- 6 Interpersonal relations and job satisfaction: some empirical results in social and community care services
- 7 On the possible conflict between economic growth and social development
- 8 The logic of good social relations
- 9 The mutual validation of ends
- 10 Hic sunt leones: interpersonal relations as unexplored territory in the tradition of economics
- 11 Authority and power in economic and sociological approaches to interpersonal relations: from interactions to embeddedness
- 12 Interpersonal relations and economics: comments from a feminist perspective
- 13 Economics and interpersonal relations: ruling the social back in
- Envoi
- References
- Index
Summary
While searching for a suitable example for this preface one of the editors of this book had the opportunity of hearing a senior manager reporting on an executives' training course, and was particularly struck by one image. Participants in their forties and fifties were asked to engage in groups in a game. At one point they had to pass through a network of cords without touching them. After a while they were playing so excitedly that, in order to ease the passing, not only was everybody's clothing reduced practically to underwear but somebody's protrusive stomach was pressed by mates' hands during the most crucial phases. Interestingly, this unconventional session ignited a fruitful communication among participants that contributed positively to the course's educational outcome.
We are not advocating that our readers should be involved in similar learning procedures. What we claim is that invisible and hardly definable interpersonal elements – such as those that made training more effective after that bizarre game than before it – do matter in economic life, even though this is usually viewed as the province of the material, the measurable, the objective. And, secondly, that this has momentous consequences for how we depict, conceptualise and manage economic life.
According to conventional interpretations of the thematic and methodological boundaries of economics, interpersonal relations seem not to be the business of economists at all.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Economics and Social InteractionAccounting for Interpersonal Relations, pp. xiv - xviPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005