Conceptual Integration of Studies of the Regional Economics by Narrative Methods

The article discusses the problem of conceptual integration of research in the socioeconomic subject area on the example of the regional economy of the North-West. According to the results of the analysis of publications of the journal “Economics of the North-West: Problems and Prospects of Development” it is shown that the analytical tool of such integration is the narrative. The shortcomings of this analytical tool are emphasized: arbitrary statements by the author, the lack of clarity of links with facts, and the unverifiable conclusions. An approach is proposed to overcome the noted shortcomings by means of a structural narrative created by methods of analytical coding. This approach combines the semantic and ontological linking of verbal statements of the narrative. On the example of expressing knowledge about the house, the main stages and principles of creating a structural narrative are demonstrated. The advantages of structural narrative as a method of conceptual integration of research in the subject area of regional economics are noted: preserving the usual verbal way of describing socio-economic processes, managing verbal knowledge using ontological methods, increasing the validity of the narrative by presenting semantic relationships in an explicit form. There were discussed: the independence of the difficulty of semantic integration of knowledge from its volume; interweaving of semantic and instrumental parts of a narrative; a decomposition of subject knowledge by the method of analytical coding.