4.

1 Why is philosophy important

The way one chooses to collect data belongs in the centre of the research ‘onion’, as displayed below. The
research onion depicts the aspects underlying the choice of data collection techniques.

4.2 Why research philosophy is important

Research philosophy is a term that describes the development of knowledge and the nature of that
knowledge. Understanding research philosophy is important because the very purpose of research is also
to develop new knowledge. It is not true that one philosophy is better than another, but they might be
suited to achieve different things. Two major ways of thinking in philosophy are: ontology and
epistemology (See table 4.1 on page 129).
A pragmatist is someone who thinks that concepts are only relevant where they support action. He
believes that one philosophical position could be more likely lead to the answer to his research question
than another. In addition, a pragmatist also believes that it is possible to work with multiple philosophical
positions. According to a pragmatist there is not one way of thinking.

Ontology
Ontology is a philosophical position that refers to the nature of reality. One aspect of ontology is
objectivism. This means that things exist with a purpose independent of those social actors concerned with
their existence.

Another aspect is subjectivism, which holds that social occurrences are created through the perceptions
and consequent actions of the involved social actors. People who adopt a subjectivist way of thinking find
it is necessary to explore the details of a situation to be able to understand what is going on. This is termed
social constructionism.

Objectivists think that the culture of an organisation is something that an organisation ‘has’ while
subjectivist tend to view the culture as something an organisation ‘is’. Management theory is leaning
towards the objectivist way of thinking.

Epistemology
Epistemology regards what constitutes acceptable knowledge in an area of study. It addresses the questions:
‘What is knowledge?’, ‘How is knowledge acquired?’ and ‘What do people know?’.

Positivism
The philosophy of positivism refers to the philosophical stance of a natural scientist. This philosophy
holds that collecting data about an observable reality and searching for regularities and causal
relationships will lead to the creation of a new theory or new generalisations. Other characterizations of
positivism are:

 The researcher is independent of the subject of the research, he is value-neutral (his feelings are
included in the research)
 Cyclical relationship between hypothesis testing and theoretical development
 Quantifiable observations that lend themselves to statistical analysis

Realism
Realism claims that whatever we sense is reality: objects exist without concern of the human mind.
Therefore realism contradicts idealism, which states that only the mind and its contents exist. Just like
positivism, realism also assumes a scientific approach to the development of knowledge. There exist two
kinds of realism:

 Direct realism – what you see is what you get, what we perceive and experience with our senses
displays the world in an accurate way.
 Critical realism – what we experience are sensations, images of existing things in the real world,
not the existing things themselves. What we experience are mere illusions.
There is a difference between these two kinds of realism regarding the capacity of research to change the
world. A direct realist would state that the world is relatively unchangeable whereas a critical realist would
claim that the researcher’s understanding to that which is being studied could be changed. Many researchers
claim that what we explore is just part of the bigger picture. Thus researchers usually adopt a critical realism
point of view.

Interpretivism
Interpretivism claims that it is necessary for researchers to understand the differences between humans in
our role as social actors. We interpret our daily social roles in accordance with the meaning we give to
these roles. Interpretivism stems from two intellectual heritages

 Phenomenology considers the way in which we as humans make sense of the world around us
 Symbolic interactionism: we are all in a continual process of interpreting the social world we live
in and we interpret the actions of the people that interact with us. These interpretations lead to
adjustments of our own meaning and actions.

It is important for a researcher to understand the world of his research subjects and to understand the
world from their point of view.

Axiology
Axiology is a strand of philosophy that studies judgments about value. This includes values in the fields
of ethics and aesthetics. One’s own values play a crucial role in all stages of the research process. Our
values are the guiding line for all our actions (Heron 1996).
Research Paradigms
The term paradigm is frequently used in the social sciences, but it often leads to confusion because of its
many meanings. Here we define paradigm as a way of examining social occurrences from which
particular understandings of these phenomena can be gained and explanations attempted. In Figure 4.2 on
page 141 there is an image of how the four paradigms can be arranged:

 Functionalist paradigm – this paradigm is frequently used in business management. Functionalists

assume that an organisation are rational entities, in which rational explanations will provide
solutions to rational problems.
 Radical structuralist paradigm – this paradigm is concerned with understanding structural patterns
within organisations (hierarchies for example) and reporting relationships and the extent to which
these relationships may produce dysfunctionalities.
 Interpretive paradigm – when adopting this paradigm one is concerned with understanding the
fundamental meanings attached to organisational life. Instead of rationalities this one wishes to
discover irrationalities. In this paradigm being involved in the everyday activities of the
organisation in order to understand and explain what is happening is more important that to try to
change things.
 Radical humanist paradigm – this dimension adopts a critical perspective of organisational life. It
emphasizes the consequences of one’s words and deeds on others. Working with this paradigm one
wishes to change things.