Towards a new concept of economic research

The problems which today's institutions and businesses are currently facing have some characteristics which make them different from those that have been studied and treated by means of those models which have traditionally been used. The continuous changes being produced in social, financial and management systems have meant that the world of our time seems to be in an apparent context of uncertainty. In order to take the necessary decisions, members of the government and businessmen need to have access to a framework of action in which there are defined rules or, failing these, more or less broad avenues along which they can go without the fear of assuming uncontrolled risks. In the intention of giving an answer to the profound challenge of these new realities, scientists of several generations have initiated a search for new roads to the Knowledge. A few researchers at first, subsequently a more numerous group, have put their efforts into the treatment of the complex network of the relations which exist in financial and management systems. For this purpose they have used the discoveries emerging from multivalent logic, the principal exponent of which is the fuzzy sets theory, with their many variants. The work has not been easy as it has required the breaking up of several principles, methods and schemes which until recently were considered immovable. But the strength of the facts has been such that the scientific community is accepting the new rules more and more. In consequence, the moment seems to have arrived for the blooming of a new paradigm in decision theory.