AquestionoftimeDoeconomistsandstrategicmanagersmanagetimeordotheyevencare.docVIP

A QUESTION OF TIME: DO ECONOMISTS AND STRATEGIC MANAGERS MANAGE TIME OR DO THEY EVEN CARE? Sanja Pfeifer* Received: 08. 06. 2001 Review Accepted: 10. 11. 2001 UDC: 330.13 The article explores the notion of time in an economic thought. Opposite to the importance of time, it has been shown that economic thought has no clear conceptual frame of the relevance of time in its investigations. The usage of time as a context of economic processes is being discussed. Different approaches toward the future are presented. Management science forecasting tools are systematized and presented as a tool for controlling and perpetuating present behavior instead of creating future behavior. Management science needs to adopt a new form of the question eligible to it, as well as to adopt a new quality of the answers relevant in management science. Future development depends on the imagination and passion for creating a future behavioral pattern more than the passion for explaining and rationalizing the future as the continuity of the present behavioral pattern that management science has historically inclined to do. 1. INTRODUCTION Comprehension related to time in economics is, opposite to its relevance, quite primitive. Time has been referred to in numerous contextual settings. It has been perplexing researchers for decades now (Becker, 1965; Georgescu-Roegen, 1971; Jacoby, Szybillo and Berning, 1976; Coveney and Highfield, 1990; Khaneman and Tversky, 1979; Prigogine and Stengers, 1982; 1984; Faber et all.; 1987; Godet, 1994; Leydesdorff, 1994; Allen, 1994) in their pursuit for the answers to the controvert parallelism of the old adages: Nothing is new under the sun and Everything changes. Western science has, so far, shown preference toward timeless, permanent laws, eliminating the passage of time that resulted in time exterritoriality of economic theory (Prigogine and Stengers, 1982; 1984). Western cultures have a linear - separable view of time, comprehending tim