SUMMARY – QUALITATIVE
CHAPTER 2: PHILOSOPHIES UNDERPINNING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
Many different methods available
Process of methodological engagement inevitably articulates and is constituted by and attachment to particular
philosophical or metatheoretical commitments that have implications for research design
Methodological assumptions have very practical consequences for way we do research
Methodology = philosophical assumptions and methods
Goal chapter: explore how qualitative organizational research methods may be deployed differently given
various modes of philosophical engagement
Positivist mainstream: assumptions primarily to do with nature of human behaviour
Epistemology
Episteme: knowledge/schiences
Logos: knowledge/information/theory/account
Knowledge about knowledge
Study by which we can know what does and does not constitute warranted or scientific knowledge
What do we mean by the concept truth
Thought that what is true is something that corresponds with given facts: empirical evidence is ultimate arbiter
This view of warranted knowledge initially seems harmless and unproblematic
Positivist epistemological commitment: possible to objectively or neutrally observe social world in order to
either test theoretical predictions, or describe cultural attributes.
If we reject possibility of neutral observation, we have to admit dealing with socially constructed reality that
may entail questioning of whether or not what we take to be reality actually exists out there at all.
Ontology
Ontos: being
Logos: knowledge
Branch of philosophy dealing with essence of phenomena and nature of their existence
Is it real or illusory?
Does the phenomenon actually exists independent of our knowing and perceiving?
Realist assumptions: it exists out there independent of our perceptual or cognitive structures
Subjectivist assumptions: social reality is a creation or projection of our consciousness and cognition.
What we usually assume to be out there has no real, independent, status separate from the act of knowing.
In perceiving or knowing the social world we create it – we are just not usually aware of our role in these
creative processes.
We should be aware of assumptions about ontology and epistemology and be prepared to defend them and
consider their implications.
Positivism
2 most significant characteristics of positivist epistemology:
1. Claim that science should focus on only directly observable phenomena
2. Theories should be tested, in hypothetico-deductive fashion, by their confrontation with facts neutrally
gathered from readily observable external world.
Key aspect: tendency to reduce human behavior to status of automatic responses excited by external stimuli
wherein subjective dimension to behavior is lost, intentionally or otherwise.
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,Follow what is presumed to be methodological approach taken in natural sciences. Ignoring subjective
dimensions of human action.
Human behavior is conceptualized and explained deterministically: as necessary responses to empirically
observable, measurable, causal variables and antecedent conditions.
Resultant approach = erklaren: investigates human behavior through use of Popper’s hypothetico-deductive
method wth aim to produce generalizable knowledge through trsting of hypothetical predictions deduced from
priori theory.
Methodological monism: notion that only natural science methodology can provide certain knowledge and
enable predicition and control
Qualitative neo-positivism
Objectively investigate human intersubjective cultural processes by gathering facts from readily observable
external world.
Reject key aspects of positivism regarding use of hypotheticodeductive methodology and exclusion of
subjective as meaningless
= qualitative positivism = neo empiricism
Commitment to theory-neutral observational language: it is possible to neutrally apprehend facts out there.
Positivism is generally linked to quantitative methods, here also qualitative research
Assumptions belief science can produce objective knowledge:
1. Ontological realism: there is a reality out there to be known
2. Possible to remove subjective bias in assessment of reality
Context-free truth about reality by rigidly following a research protocol and minimizing researcher influence
and other potential sources of bias.
Researchers attempt to remove themselves from the process, presenting instead an objective picture, free from
potential taint of their assumptions and values.
Although qualitative researchers may seek to distance themselves from positivism – reliance on tools and
techniques – the assumption that bias can be removed, and that with right tools and techniques peoples’
subjective realities can be accessed, shows some continuity with the past
Interpretivism
Human interpretation as starting point for developing knowledge
Verstehen: accessing and understanding actual meanings and interpretations actors subjectively ascribe to
phenomena in order to describe and explain their behaviour through investigating how they experience,
sustain, articulate and share with others these socially constructured everyday realities
Similar to neo-positivism:
- realist ontology is utilized: there is a real world with real phenomena to explore.
- Subjectivist or constructionist epistemology: understanding of reality is socially constructed
Some interpretivist traditions are more subjectivist in their ontological stance.
Researcher becomes focal point of interest in some interpretivist traditions
Lot of different views within interpretivism. Hermeneutics and ethnomethodology are explained:
Hermeneutics
Meaning of a part can only be understood if it is related to the whole
Within hermeneutic circle the link between pre-understanding and understanding is made. No one comes to
interpretation with open mind, rather there is the pre-understanding of the phenomenon that we already have.
Ethnomethodology
Seek to understand and interpret how individuals make sense of their lifeworlds.
Interested in the ways in which interpretive schemas are put into practice and accepted, altered or rejected.
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,Qualitative research in this tradition has focused upon paying attention to how individuals or groups
retrospectively make sense of events
Critical theory
Inherent connections between politics, values and knowledge and thereby provokes deeper consideration of
politics and values that underpin and legitimize authority of scientific knowledge.
Aim of critical theory-based approaches towards organizational research is to understand how practices and
institutions of management are developed and legitimized within relations of power and domination such as
capitalism
Systems can and should be changed.
Belief that systems can be transformed to enable emancipation, which involves continuing process of critical
self-reflection and associated self-transformation.
4 broad themes:
- Emphasis on social construction of reality
- Focus on issues of power and ideology
- Need to understand any social or organizational phenomenon with respect to its multiple
interconnections and its location within holistic historical contexts
- Importance of praxis – on-going construction of social arrangements that are conducive to flourishing
human condition
Rejects presupposition of theory neutral observational language.
Knowledge is seen as contaminated at source by influence of socio-cultural factors upon sensory experience
Researcher is no longer neutral observer
Outcomes of research are influenced by subjectivity of social scientist and his or her mode of engagement
which leads to production of different versions of independently existing reality that we can never fully know.
For knowledge to be legitimate it must be grounded in consensus achievable in ideal speech situation where
discursively produced agreement results from argument and analysis without any resort to coercion, distortion
or duplicity.
Not attained in everyday social interaction due to asymmetrical operation of power relations which
systematically distort communication
Postmodernism and poststructuralism
Debate if both differ from each other or if poststructuralism is another variant of postmodernism
Here treated together
Poststructuralism: focus on language as it relates to institutions and power.
Approaches emerged as response to what were seen as constraints and excesses of modernism and are
therefore experimental and reactionary
Subjectivist ontology
Subjectivist epistemology
Abandoning the rational and unified subject in favour of socially and linguistically decentred and fragmented
subjects
Postmodernist epistemology: dismisses positivist rational certainty in attainability of epistemic privilege and
replaces it with relativist view of science and knowledge
Any attempt to develop rational and generalizable basis to scientific enquiry that explains the world from
objective standpoint is flawed
All knowledge is indeterminate: what we take to be reality is itself created and determined by those acts of
cognition
Social world is not seen as external to us, waiting to be discovered: everything is relative to eye of beholder
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, Renewed focus on language. Language is never innocent: no meaning exists beyond language: knowledge and
truth are linguistic entities and constantly open to revision.
Role of discourse: subjective, linguistically formed ways of experiencing, acting and constituting phenomena
which we take to be out there. Collectively sustained and continually renegotiated in process of making sense. -
> what we take to be knowledge is constructed in and through language.
There is no discoverable true meaning, only variety of different interpretations
Many realities and ways of perceiving and explaining them.
People are not free to make their own interpretations.
Human beings make sense of world through particular historical and socially contingent discourses
Deconstruction: attempts to show how any claim to truth, whether made by social scientists or practicing
managers, is always product of social construction and therefore always relative.
Taken-for-granted ides which depend upon exclusion of other things
Deconstruction denies that any text is ever settled or stable
Does not offer tool to find the truth
Qualitative research focuses upon gaining an understanding of a situation at particular point in time,
recognizing that this only one of number of possible understandings. No reliance on particular methods to
provide accurate correspondence with reality.
Others say: it has ability to evoke rather than just describe.
Postmodernism demand that researchers are skeptical about how they engage with the world, categories they
deploy, assumptions they make and interpretations they impose.
Encourages irony and humility as well as rebellion against imposition of any unitary scientific discourse.
Postcolonialism and indigenous epistemologies
Encourage framing of research questions in different ways
Intensification of globalization makes postcolonialism especially pertinent in that it becomes particularly
important in understanding some of its less visible and more unsavoury facets
Conclusion
More reflecting upon how often tacit, unacknowledged pre-understanding impact upon: how objects of
research are conceptually constituted by researcher, what kinds of research questions are then asked by
researcher, and how the results of research are arrived.
To have credibility, qualitative research papers must address following 4 areas:
1. Theoretical positioning of researcher (motives, presuppositions and personal history)
2. Congruence between methodology, reflecting beliefs about knowledge that arise from philosophical
framework being employed and methods or tools of data collection and analysis
3. Strategies to establish rigour – evaluate research in a way that is philosophically and methodologically
congruent with enquiry
4. Analytical lens through which data are examined
Challenge is not to be able to fit one’s research approach neatly into any particular category but to ensure self-
reflexivity and an awareness of various ways in which our philosophical assumptions have influenced our
research
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