BACKGROUND ISSUES IN ORGANISATION RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

1
BACKGROUND ISSUES IN ORGANISATION RESEARCH
METHODOLOGY

• Epistemology
• Ontology
• Helping students reflect on the connection
  between their theories and their realities

2
EPISTEMOLOGICAL CONCERNS

• The way we behave is motivated by the way we
  (individually and socially) give meaning to
  events.
• What demarcates justified belief from not
  justified belief?
• What demarcates rationality from
  irrationality?
• Understandings become so embedded that they are
  our common-sense
• When we investigate the world (as scientists,
  consultants or practitioners or in everyday life)
  these common sense assumptions come into play.
• P Johnson, J Duberley (2000) Understanding
  Management Research, Sage

3
WATCHING ME WATCHING YOU

• Episteme knowledge or science.
• Logos knowledge, theory, or account.
• Epistemology is knowledge about knowledge how
  we come to know what we know.
• Epistemology is one step removed from knowledge
  itself.
• Epistemological assumptions specify what is
  scientifically permissible...
• i.e. how we discriminate the warranted from the
  unwarranted, the rational from the non-rational,
  the scientific from the non-scientific.
• There is however the epistemological paradox.
• The way we discriminate warranted from
  unwarranted is based on that same understanding
  of the nature of knowledge.
• P Johnson, J Duberley (2000) Understanding
  Management Research, Sage

4
AND THEN THERE IS ONTOLOGY

• Ontology is the science or study of being.
• Ontology is our view about what is 'real'
• What exists? What is 'real'? What is not
  'real'?
• N Blaikie (1993) Approaches to social enquiry,
  Polity
• Schein looked at managerial assumptions that
  condition the 'psychological contract'
• Rational economic people maximise self
  interest.
• Social people wish to work together, are
  social.
• Self-actualisation people are autonomously
  self-motivated.
• These are ontological positions
• E. Schein (1988) Organizational Psychology,
  Prentice Hall

5
PROBLEMTISING ONTOLOGY

• What happened on 11th September 2001?
• What is your theory?
• What do you assume to be the reality?
• http//www.dailymotion.com/video/x1dpio_what-happe
  ned-to-wtc-building-7-on_news

6
PROBLEMATISING EPISTEMOLOGY

• What is your theory now? (Has it changed?)
• What is your reality now? (Has it changed?)
• What is the connection between your theory of
  reality (epistemology) and reality itself
  (ontology)?

7
IMPACT OF THE EXERCISE

• R Is there anything about the first three days
  at the university that linger in the memory?
• K Especially myself, when I started having those
  sessions, the thinking of my mindthe way I used
  to thinkit completely changed because you think
  aboutyou limit yourselfyou dont go beyond the
  limitbut there are so many possibilities, so
  many ways of thinking. Those sessions changed my
  thinking completely. I used to think that if
  somebody said something, I used to think okay
  fine without a second thought, but now I think
  could there be something else. I used to believe
  everybody about everything
• R It opened up possibilities?
• K Yes.
• R You dont take things at face value.
• K No not any more.

8
IMPACT OF THE EXERCISE

• R What about the research trainingdid it come
  back and affect the way you thought about things?
• S The September 11th thing always stuck in my
  mind in the sense thatwhen we went through all
  the assumptions, with facts and things. When
  we meet someone, we individually screen somebody
  via their body language. It always stuck in my
  mind dont assume what somebody is going to be
  likedont forget September 11th (laughs).
• R (laughs)
• S That stuff kept coming back to me. I kept
  thinking dont assumeyou havent spoken to
  these people yet. Its so easy to assume