IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nathum/v1y2017i1d10.1038_s41562-016-0015.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Should social science be more solution-oriented?

Author

Listed:
  • Duncan J. Watts

    (Microsoft Research)

Abstract

Over the past 100 years, social science has generated a tremendous number of theories on the topics of individual and collective human behaviour. However, it has been much less successful at reconciling the innumerable inconsistencies and contradictions among these competing explanations, a situation that has not been resolved by recent advances in ‘computational social science’. In this Perspective, I argue that this ‘incoherency problem’ has been perpetuated by an historical emphasis in social science on the advancement of theories over the solution of practical problems. I argue that one way for social science to make progress is to adopt a more solution-oriented approach, starting first with a practical problem and then asking what theories (and methods) must be brought to bear to solve it. Finally, I conclude with a few suggestions regarding the sort of problems on which progress might be made and how we might organize ourselves to solve them.

Suggested Citation

  • Duncan J. Watts, 2017. "Should social science be more solution-oriented?," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 1(1), pages 1-5, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:1:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_s41562-016-0015
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-016-0015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-016-0015
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/s41562-016-0015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Muñoz, Pablo & Dimov, Dimo, 2023. "Facing the future through entrepreneurship theory: A prospective inquiry framework," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 38(4).
    2. Arjen van Witteloostuijn & Nele Cannaerts & Wim Coreynen & Zainab Noor el Hejazi & Joeri van Hugten & Ellen Loots & Hendrik Slabbinck & Johanna Vanderstraeten, 2020. "Co-Creative Action Research Experiments—A Careful Method for Causal Inference and Societal Impact," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 9(10), pages 1-28, September.
    3. Asokan, Vivek Anand & Yarime, Masaru & Onuki, Motoharu, 2019. "Bridging practices, institutions, and landscapes through a scale-based approach for research and practice: A case study of a business association in South India," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 240-250.
    4. Ashley V Whillans & Elizabeth W Dunn, 2018. "Agentic appeals increase charitable giving in an affluent sample of donors," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(12), pages 1-10, December.
    5. Chad S. Boda & Turaj Faran, 2018. "Paradigm Found? Immanent Critique to Tackle Interdisciplinarity and Normativity in Science for Sustainable Development," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(10), pages 1-28, October.
    6. Cinelli, Matteo & Ferraro, Giovanna & Iovanella, Antonio, 2018. "Rich-club ordering and the dyadic effect: Two interrelated phenomena," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 490(C), pages 808-818.
    7. Ari Hyytinen & Petri Rouvinen & Mika Pajarinen & Joosua Virtanen, 2023. "Ex Ante Predictability of Rapid Growth: A Design Science Approach," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(6), pages 2465-2493, November.
    8. Nicolay Worren & Tore Christiansen & Kim Verner Soldal, 2020. "Using an algorithmic approach for grouping roles and sub-units," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 9(1), pages 1-19, December.
    9. Suwen Chen & Garima Sharma & Pablo Muñoz, 2023. "In Pursuit of Impact: From Research Questions to Problem Formulation in Entrepreneurship Research," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 47(2), pages 232-264, March.
    10. Asmeret Naugle & Adam Russell & Kiran Lakkaraju & Laura Swiler & Stephen Verzi & Vicente Romero, 2023. "The Ground Truth program: simulations as test beds for social science research methods," Computational and Mathematical Organization Theory, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 1-19, March.
    11. Muñoz, Pablo & Dimov, Dimo, 2023. "A translational framework for entrepreneurship research," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 19(C).
    12. Anne van Bruggen & Igor Nikolic & Jan Kwakkel, 2019. "Modeling with Stakeholders for Transformative Change," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-21, February.
    13. Jolly, Eshin & Chang, Luke J., 2017. "The Flatland Fallacy: Moving Beyond Low Dimensional Thinking," OSF Preprints h7pwt, Center for Open Science.
    14. Philipp Lorenz-Spreen & Stephan Lewandowsky & Cass R. Sunstein & Ralph Hertwig, 2020. "How behavioural sciences can promote truth, autonomy and democratic discourse online," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 4(11), pages 1102-1109, November.
    15. Vivek Anand Asokan & Masaru Yarime & Miguel Esteban, 2017. "Introducing Flexibility to Complex, Resilient Socio-Ecological Systems: A Comparative Analysis of Economics, Flexible Manufacturing Systems, Evolutionary Biology, and Supply Chain Management," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(7), pages 1-17, June.
    16. Chan Timothy Hor, Shoon, 2023. "Why we need design science in entrepreneurship research an idiosyncratic perspective based on the experiences and learnings of an ex-practitioner in training to be an entrepreneurship scholar," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 19(C).
    17. Akbaritabar, Aliakbar & Stephen, Dimity & Squazzoni, Flaminio, 2022. "A study of referencing changes in preprint-publication pairs across multiple fields," Journal of Informetrics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    18. Hyytinen, Ari, 2021. "Shared problem solving and design thinking in entrepreneurship research," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 16(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:1:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_s41562-016-0015. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.