Four Characteristic Research Paradigms

Transcription

1 Part II... Four Characteristic Research Paradigms INTRODUCTION Earlier I identified two contrasting beliefs in methodology: one as a mechanism for securing validity, and the other as a relationship between researcher and researched. The substance of the main argument of Part II is to explore this contrast in terms of some of the classical approaches to methodology. There are many approaches to social research methodology, some of them based on very fine distinctions. An account of the whole of this range could easily produce ism exhaustion, where there are just too many similar but not identical views for the reader to form a clear overview. We shall look at four broad representative areas. Each of these areas is characterised in terms of the way in which it resolves the contribution/creation issue. One group comprises the approaches which liken management research to natural science positivist and related schools of thought, such as critical realism and grounded theory. Another is the group which rejects the analogy with natural science, but retains the idea that research leads to an agreed depiction of management reality. This includes approaches such as hermeneutics and phenomenology. Beyond these, however, is a dimension which takes the interrelationship between research and practice as a critical feature. Into this category we will put post-modernism and deconstructionism. Finally, there is a category for the approaches which extend the idea of practice further, and present the research process (and the key value in management research) as essentially an interaction between researchers and respondents this category covers participatory and action research. So in Chapters 5 8 we shall look at these key approaches to management research. In each case we shall encounter difficulties with 95

2 Part II Four Characteristic Research Paradigms the idea that these methodologies on their own provide a secure route to knowledge. The key conclusion which we shall argue in Part III is that these different methodologies reflect different complementary aspects of the process of discovery about management. In other words, they are not alternatives at all, but reflect different aspects of the process of developing management knowledge. Central to the question of how far management research is valid is the position on the link between social and natural science. The debate concerning validity starts from the way in which this link is evaluated. One model relating to this which is often espoused is a linear depiction of methodologies, stretching from a strongly positivist position at one extremity over to a strong subjectivist position on the other. Figure II.1 below illustrates a cluster of different polarisations which embody this linear image of methodologies. Such polarisations over-simplify what many writers say, but this kind of modelling underlies much of the critique of naturalist approaches such as positivism. This way of looking at social research methodology is severely misleading. Some of the key terms here, such as hard information are maybe less clear than we presume. Some other ideas here are fairly vague in what way might knowledge be a creation? Clearly not in the way that fantasy is a creation. Also most of these are highly relative terms some items may be more or less objective. This approach tends to work from a stereotyped idea of a traditional approach, rooted in the natural science analogy, and then defines methodological positions in terms of how they react against this. The very word structure of some terms, such as post -modernism, demonstrates this: a concept that depends for its existence on the position it attacks. It is convenient to divide concepts into two opposing types, but in the case of social research methodologies it has the effect that the variety of non-naturalist approaches get lumped together, social science should parallel natural science hard information independent researcher focus on facts theory grounded in external evidence objective quantifiable data knowledge mirrors an external reality social science is fundamentally different from natural science soft information engaged researcher focus on feelings theory imposed upon evidence subjective unquantifiable material knowledge is a creation Figure II.1 The traditional opposition. 96

3 Introduction when they actually have significant differences. Admittedly, the division I give below is itself an over-simplification, but it does have the merit of demonstrating the range of non-naturalist approaches. In contrast to the one-dimensional depiction of methodologies, I want to use a two-dimensional model based not only on the division between acceptance or rejection of the analogy with natural science, but also on the relationship between theory and practice. There are two elements here. The first is the extent to which the research approach is focused on the material itself or on the researchers. The second is the nature of the research activity as providing foundations of knowledge or as a dynamic process of investigation. I shall call these four approaches paradigms as illustrated in Figure II.2. The term has been much misused. What I intend by it is that they represent, not specific theses about management knowledge so much as directions, or trends, in people s thinking about knowledge in management. It is the general style of an approach which matters here we are looking at characteristic approaches to methodology, not the specific views of individual writers. 1 One view on paradigms of methodology is that they should answer three different kinds of question: 2 (a) a question of what kind of thing a piece of social knowledge actually is and what kind of reality social knowledge represents; (b) a question of how we can know this social reality; and (c) what are the most appropriate ways of finding out about this reality. Lincoln and Guba call these the ontological question, the epistemological question and the methodological question respectively. 3 In Chapters 5 8 we shall move between these questions focus on knowledge naturalism: social science methods should parallel those of natural science focus on knowers interpretavism: social knowledge is an interpretation of data focus on data as foundational deconstructionism: social knowledge can only be understood in terms of the concrete practices of those who possess it participant inquiry: social knowledge comes about through collaborative investigations of its stakeholders focus on the dynamics of investigation Figure II.2 Four methodological approaches. 97

4 Part II Four Characteristic Research Paradigms 98 fairly fluidly. At times any one of them could be of central relevance, and at other times any of them could be less important. Hence the discussion will focus on those issues which are important for a particular paradigm, rather than systematically evaluate each paradigm in terms of each of these three questions. So what you can expect in Part II is a presentation of some key approaches to research methodology (keeping in view the applied nature of management) plus critique in the best sense of the term identifying strengths as well as weaknesses. There is, though, an ambiguity in the way we shall look at these four approaches. The main reason for us examining these approaches is to get a feel for the primary ways in which current researchers in the management field construe their task, and whether there is a rationale or underlying justification for adopting one approach rather than another. However, these approaches also reflect a certain kind of historical progression of approaches to social science. The order in which we look at these approaches will (roughly) recapitulate their appearance as theories of social research. It is as if the current range of approaches includes the key developments which led up to the present day in my view a healthy sign that the theory of social research has not lost sight of its roots. 4 As a very rough and ready illustration of this development, here is a brief indication of the key stages in the historical development of social methodology (at least as it applies to management research). 5 Until the late seventeenth century, there was no formal intellectual sense of the development of societies as a field of potentially scientific study. In 1725, however, the Italian thinker Giambattista Vico in his book A New Science propounded a new approach to the study of history and humanity, one which he placed explicitly in parallel with natural science. Although there were other writers who (in retrospect) implicitly raised similar questions at around the same time, the idea of a science of society did not catch on, and Vico died largely unrecognised as the grandfather of social science. Over a hundred years later the French writer, Auguste Comte, returned to the issue of how we could have a science of society. In the middle of the nineteenth century he advanced the idea that human society could be studied in the same way that natural phenomena could coining the term positivism. 6 Whilst the methods of collecting information about people might be different, the main purpose of such study was the same to establish the laws of human behaviour. Comte s ideas had a lasting impact on many later nineteenth century writers, amongst them Marx, Durkheim and Weber, 7 three of the most important of the early sociologists (though it is arguable that Vico s earlier work had as much influence, but went unacknowledged).

5 Introduction At the same time, almost in parallel, was developing the science of biblical interpretation which went by the name of hermeneutics. During the nineteenth century writers such as Friedrich Schleiermacher and Wilhelm Dilthey began to apply hermeneutic techniques to fields such as history and literature, but it was in the early twentieth century that interpretative techniques began to be recognised as offering an alternative approach to the study of human behaviour. Partly this was political, as positivist theory began progressively to assume a more structured and formal appearance, and became rather too like natural science for the likes of some social thinkers. Partly it was due to the influence of philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Edmund Husserl, who in their different ways emphasised the internal nature of human experience. It was argued by interpretavists that human behaviour could not be understood without an account of its meaning in human terms that is, in relation to texts and utterances. The idea of identifying and establishing laws of behaviour thus were replaced (in the hands of some writers) by the need to understand what such behaviours signified for those who acted thus. Such an approach took the study of societies away from such hard subjects as economics and closer to softer ones such as anthropology. But this was not a simple revolution. Many social researchers were unconvinced, and continued to conduct large scale surveys, collecting large amounts of data and submitting these to statistical analysis. In the USA, for example, this more empirical approach went from strength to strength. The rejection of natural science as a model for social science sparked a great deal of intellectual interest in Europe. Other approaches were developed one notable one was structuralism whereby researchers tried to identify underlying structures within which social events gained their meaning and significance. 8 In France this attracted great interest, and a subsequent spawning of successor approaches, such as post-structuralism, post-modernism and deconstructionism. There was a political inspiration here too, more overt. French intellectual life in the middle and later decades of the twentieth century was dominated by the discussion of Marxism. Whilst the positivist/ realist approaches were decried as simply reflecting the ideological backdrop of capitalist societies (and thus not so much analysing but reflecting the pre-suppositions of such societies), the interpretavist approaches were also seen as essentially conservative not presenting any challenge to the dominant ideology of the ruling class but acquiescing in it. Writers such as Derrida, Foucault and Baudrillard were concerned to illustrate the depth to which human thinking is entrenched in its social context (which for them was almost synonymous with its political context), and the difficulties this creates for any 99

6 Part II Four Characteristic Research Paradigms attempt to get a fix on social phenomena. In Foucault s hands this became the basis for a different way of approaching the interpretative task, whilst in Derrida s it became almost anarchic. None of these three approaches was developed specifically in relation to management or indeed to any applied social study. They were mainly theories relating to pure social science sociology primarily. Almost at the same time as the last of these was emerging, there was a different approach developing in the USA and UK, specifically in the applied social science fields that of participatory research. This, in the hands of Chris Argyris or Peter Reason, grew up out of their practical experience of trying to conduct small scale research and consultancy projects, and represented an attempt to create a research framework which went even further away from natural science methods (with their emphasis on the separation of observer and observed). So the current position is that we have positivists, realists, hermeneuticians, phenomenologists, Foucauldians, and more, all researching and writing about social phenomena (some of which have lost any intellectual touch with each other, which is not a healthy sign). In Part II, then, we will consider these four different approaches (and others which are not discussed here) as reflecting both the history of the subject and its contemporaneous aspect. As we shall see, though, this does not mean that the earliest one (the analogy with natural science) is in fact archaic and less worthy of attention than the later ones. Far from it all have their value as well as their drawbacks. Each of them has remained popular with some communities of researchers and writers about organisations (whilst there are no Derridan management theorists, there is a Foucault inspired school). The reader for whom this is familiar territory may well wonder what has happened to the idea of critical theory and the work of Jurgen Habermas, briefly mentioned in Part I? His approach is considered in more detail in Part III, and adapted to take account of the issues raised by Part II. For although some may depict critical theory as an offshoot of hermeneutics, this is misleading. Habermas (especially amongst critical theorists) is an inclusive writer, whose approach has provided a model for the account developed in Part III. 100 NOTES 1 Although we shall in fact discuss the views of specific writers, it is less a matter of what they as individuals say so much as the implications of aview of that kind. 2 See Lincoln and Guba s contribution in Denzin and Lincoln (1998). 3 Which is not really more than giving them their appropriate philosophical jargon names.

7 Introduction 4 Would that management theory itself had preserved a sense of history, of where it has all come from. 5 Readers who are familiar with the history of sociological thought may easily skip the rest of this introduction. Readers who are not should read it with another very big health warning this is not a definitive account of the whole of the history of thinking about social research; it is only meant to give the reader a feel for the main trends. 6 His second choice term he initially wanted to call such a science Social physics but was under the impression that it had been used to express a different idea. 7 Though Weber at least, and in some ways Marx and Durkheim also, began to allude to some of the issues which crystallised into interpretavism in later decades. 8 Generally linked to the great French social scientists Levi-Strauss, though arguably the work of Anthony Giddens could be considered as in this tradition (though he uses a slightly different term structuration ). Structuralism is not discussed in this book not because it is not important or interesting, but because the key issue for the methodology of management research are captured by the discussion of interpretavism. 101