Bad for Practice – Good for Practice from Economic Imperialism to Multidisciplinary Mapping

There is a growing argument that economics can no longer provide any guiding schema for solving current management problems. Economic assumptions even destroy good and socially responsible management practice. In this paper, we analyze two reasons why standard economics can indeed be bad for managerial and political practice. One is the negative influence of wrong assumptions in economic theory building which become self-fulfilling prophecies. Another important factor is economic imperialism. We argue that psychological economics is better for practice than standard economics, but that it is still not good for practice as long as it uses an imperialistic approach. We propose a different research strategy to apply for problem solving in management practice, which we call multidisciplinary mapping. It overcomes the problem of imperialism, not only because it builds bridges between different disciplinary approaches, but also between the knowledge of theorists and the expertise of practitioners. Mapping is useful for realizing. It is good for practice as well as for theory building.