Chapter 15: Deliberating Cost: Deliberative Practices in Qualimetrics and the Socio-Economic Approach to Management¹

This presentation is about “deliberating cost.” It represents what I wanted to look at in the practices of qualimetrics and the socio-economic approach to management (SEAM). This paper is based on a five-year research project that came to a close at the end of March. This project was looking at and taking a broader view of the theory of sensemaking and how sensemaking works in society. It was based on studying how people really understand, interpret or even know the signs in the world. By understanding and interpreting, they are giving meaning to and making sense of signs. My own approach is sociological and not based on any mathematical methodology. I was really interested in the public hearing context because there are lots of studies that use hearings as sources of data to study topics such as energy issues but do not look at the sensemaking per se that actually constitutes discourse and deliberation during hearings.