Generating New Knowledge

1. Explaining Reality

By accepting the assumptions of objectivity, the ontology of reality and the determinism of the social world, positivists commit themselves to the search for external reality and the mechanisms that condition it. The positive ideal would be to find a universal law that explains reality and reveals objective truth.

Even the most traditional positivists recognize that this ideal remains utopian (Comte, 1844, 1988). However, they maintain that an understanding of the laws that govern reality is a prerequisite for generating new knowledge. Scientific progress is thus characterized by a reduction in the number of laws as links are established between them. The key idea behind this vision is that these laws exist even if they cannot all be discovered.

The positivist vision of reality leans towards explanatory research, to answer the question ‘for what reasons’. Such research seeks constant concomi­tance among phenomena, and tries to reconstruct chains of cause and effect. In the example of organizational structure, the positivist researcher tries to recon­struct the causes of structural events, so as to determine the laws that, inde­pendently of the actors involved, have governed organizational reality.

The causal approach accounts for a social fact by relating it to another social fact external to the individuals involved. It leads researchers to examine the economic, political and technical reasons for the fact’s presence. As the positivist paradigm has evolved, it has detached itself from pure causal research. It now recognizes more than simply linear causality (one cause – one effect), and accepts the possibility of multiple or circular causality. It is therefore possible to take a positivist position without implying that all laws through which we can explain reality are laws of linear causality. Nevertheless, in gen­erating new knowledge, the positivist paradigm still follows a path determined largely by the idea that knowable reality has its own meaning, and that this meaning does not necessarily depend on a researcher’s personal beliefs.

2. Interpreting Reality

Interpretavism calls the possibility of uncovering causal links into question, because ‘all entities are in a state of mutual simultaneous shaping, so that it is impossible to distinguish causes from effects’ (Lincoln and Guba, 1985: 38). The process of creating knowledge therefore involves understanding the mean­ing actors give to reality – rather than explaining reality, interpretativists try to understand it through actors’ interpretations. This process must take account of actors’ intentions, motivation, expectations, motives and beliefs – which all relate more to practice than to facts. Thus, unlike positivists, interpretativists draw a clear distinction between understanding and explaining.

Positivists make no such differentiation between understanding and explaining; the second, by necessity, encompasses the first. Explanation implies understanding. Nevertheless, this is not an understanding that emanates from the meaning actors give to their actions.

The privileged status that interpretativists accord to understanding is based on the concept of verstehen (understanding) developed by Max Weber. This con­cept unites the two levels of understanding on which the knowledge creation process is based. On one level, verstehen is the process by which individuals are led, in their daily lives, to interpret and understand their world. On another level, and in a more restrictive sense, verstehen is the process by which researchers interpret the subjective meanings behind the behavior of the individuals they are studying (Lee, 1991).

Understanding, or interpreting, behavior must by necessity involve inquir­ing into local meanings (localized in time and place) that actors give to their behavior. In the case of organizational structure, interpretativist researchers will be drawn towards contextualized research to analyze the daily functioning of an organization. This involves carrying out field studies, which favor direct observation and on-site interviews.

3. Constructing Reality

Constructivists share this research approach as far as understanding is con­cerned, but with two essential differences. Whereas for interpretativists the process of understanding consists above all of ‘revealing’ the reality of the actors studied, constructivism sees the process of understanding as contributing to constructing that reality. Reality is thus constructed by the act of knowing, rather than being given by an objective perception of the world (Le Moigne, 1995). According to this hypothesis, the path we take when we generate knowl­edge is constructed as we go along. This conception of knowledge construction is strongly present in the works of Piaget (1970), for whom knowledge is as much a process as a result. Moreover, for constructivists, the process of under­standing is linked to the aim of the researcher’s knowledge project. In this there is a teleological hypothesis, which advances the notion that all human activity involves a predetermined purpose or design. The process of building up knowl­edge therefore has to take account of subjective intentions or purpose. Le Moigne (1995) emphasizes that, in comparison with positivism, the different construc­tivist epistemologies enable researchers to recognize a knowledge project, rather than a knowledge object that is separate from its investigator. To under­stand in terms of purposes or plausible goals becomes the aim of scientific research.

The answers given by the positivist, interpretativist and constructivist para­digms to the first two epistemological questions (the nature of the knowledge our research produces and the path we take to produce it) will have strong implications on the value of this knowledge. The third section of this chapter deals with the status and validity of knowledge.

Source: Thietart Raymond-Alain et al. (2001), Doing Management Research: A Comprehensive Guide, SAGE Publications Ltd; 1 edition.