a great deal of research is simply being ‘wasted’, because academics may not be skilled at translating their theories in a language that appeals to practitioners, or indeed, because there are no institutional incentives to do so (Keleman and Bansal, 2002, p. 104)
<Pretty much sums up my attitude towards my textbook>
Important parts:
Each school of thought is underpinned by different philosophical assumptions about epistemology and ontology.
Epistemological!
Epistemology - the study of the criteria we deploy and by which we know and decide what does and does not constitute a warranted claim about the world or what might constitute warranted knowledge. Useful link : (
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/). Epistemological objectivists and epistemological subjectivists. The first claim that one can observe "the truth" or "knowledge" with techniques that will not influence it and therefore obtain a proof of theory. The latter claim that any knowledge observed will be influenced by our perception, which is different for everyone(because of cultural background, etc etc).
Ontology raises questions regarding whether or not a phenomenon we are interested in actually exists independently of our knowing and perceiving it. The realist assumptions suggest that there exist a social reality that is independent of out perceptual or cognitive structures and attempts to know, while subjectivists argue that a reality is a projection or a creation of our consciousness and cognition(or in simple words In knowing the social world, one creates it.
The relationship between organization theory and human activities: relationship between people and theories is
problematic. Theories are part of human domain: they are created by it,
investigated by it and they can change it. For natural scientists relationship
is not problematic. People have subjective capacities and they have the ability
to attempt to purposively and self-consciously change their behaviours in the
light of knowledge. Double hermeneutic-
the social sciences are themselves aspects of the social world and they are
affected by it, but they are also causal forces that can act upon and shape
that which they are trying to explain. Double hermeneutic relationship is also between the organization
theory and the organizational practices
Positivist protagonist – the truth is out there
and we can objectively know it.
Type 1 positivists:
explanations of behaviour according to mainstream positivism. Human behaviour
is best understood as a necessary response or effect directly caused by an
external stimulus
Type 2 positivists: explanations
of behaviour- human behaviour is best understood as an outcome of the
culturally derived meanings, interpretations and understandings human actors
attach to what is going on around them.
Epistemological
and ontological disputes, how can we ever know the truth and is there an out
there?
Epistemological subjectivists argue that notions of truth and objectivity are
impossible. The key disagreement between critical theorists and postmodernists
is centred upon the ontological implications of their shared subjectivist
epistemological commitments. Where as critical theorists believe there is an
out there, postmodernists do not. Critical theory adopts a phenomena list
position in which, influenced by culturally derived interpretive processes,
human knowing shapes our realities. We cannot reality as it is away. Critical
theory is a combination of realist ontology and subjectivist epistemology. The
truth about the social world may be out there but we can never know it because
we lack a neutral observational language. Therefore we are always stuck in the
subjective socially constructed reality for us. Postmodernism adopts subjective
ontological and epistemological approach- what we take to be reality is itself
created and determined by out subjective acts of perception. Both critical and postmodernism
reject positivism as naïve and dangerous. Everything is relative to the eye of
the beholder and the subjective means by which we organize what we
perceive. Postmodernists use the
term discourse to refer to the
subjective means by which people organize what they perceive. By creating a
phenomenon discourses influence our behaviour. A dominant discourse (taken for
granted) excludes alternative ways of knowing and behaving, alternative
discourses are always possible but they are suppressed. If we change the discourse we change
the reality (hyper reality). All there is are discourses and nothing beyond
them hence the truth cannot be out there because there is no out there, just
different social constructions that appear to be real. The result is that hyper realities are
mistaken for an independent external reality. Postmodernism- the truth cannot
be out there because there is no out there. By remembering our role we can
challenge the discourses which have come to be dominant and taken for granted. Sometimes postmodernism can be used to describe
the period or epochal view.
