Core Assumptions in Business Theory: A Wedge Between Performance and Progress

Our modern market-based economy has generated great wealth but neglected well-being. It has mastered efficiency but not equity. It can boast size but not sustainability. Economic actors have, in other words, delivered performance but neglected progress. How come? This book, Core Assumptions in Business Theory: A Wedge Between Performance & Progress, explores the hypothesis that flaws and failings may lie in business theory’s core assumptions. Errant assumptions can act as an inadvertent yet sharply damaging “wedge” cleaving apart performance and progress. This is the third volume in a trilogy from the Society for Progress. Here, adopting an interdisciplinary approach, eminent social scientists and philosophers scrutinize core assumptions across each main field of business theory including economics, marketing, strategy, finance, and operations. The analysis highlights how flawed assumptions—such as minimum means rationality, more is better, work is a “bad”—undermine the potential of the decentralized economic system to better integrate performance and progress. Integrating prudential and moral reasoning, the work seeks to spur a paradigm shift in business education and practice.