Reference no: EM133176385

Despite significant progress in the accumulation of enormous body of scientific knowledge there remain many unanswered questions about fundamental areas of focus for business and management, and related research. Some scholars attribute this lack of progress to methodological and philosophical divisions that have both defined and disrupted the discipline for the last 50 years. The pursuit is characterised by different paradigms, meaning "the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by members of a given community" (Kuhn, 1970). While the preoccupation of researchers is to conduct research in accordance with quality standards which promote acceptance within their community (Rodwell & Byers, 1997), these standards often differ between paradigms. Furthermore, social scientists from different paradigmatic backgrounds show a clear orientation towards either the use of qualitative or quantitative research methods. The importance of the 'paradigm wars' in influencing methodological development in the social sciences during the 1980s and 1990s cannot be underestimated. Acknowledging the impact of the paradigmatic divisions, Guba & Lincoln (1994:116) admitted that "paradigm issues are crucial; no inquirer ... ought to go about the business of inquiry without clarity about just what paradigm informs and guides his or her approach". Central to the issue is the belief that different paradigms were incommensurable: "constructivism and positivism/post-positivism cannot be logically accommodated any more than, say, the ideas of flat versus round earth can be logically accommodated" (Guba & Lincoln, 1994:116; Smith & Heshusuis, 1986). Kuhn's notion of different, and incommensurable paradigms became fundamental to issues raised within the 'paradigm wars' in which their incommensurability became 'deeply ingrained' (Bryman, 2008) and, in the view of some, served to "split the field into two non-communicating parts" (Gorard, 2004: 129). The 'paradigm wars' were grounded in contrasting ontological beliefs and positions (theories of being or reality) and epistemological beliefs and positions (theories of knowledge) about the nature of the social world (Wyse, Selwyn, Smith and Suter, 2017:13). However, the focus of the 'paradigm wars' has largely rested on the merits and assumptions of quantitative versus qualitative research, where quantitative and qualitative approaches were "frequently depicted as mutually exclusive models of the research process" (Bryman, 1988: 105). However, according to Wyse et al. (2017:13), even the terms 'quantitative research' and 'qualitative research' are problematic. All quantitative research involves qualitative judgments and all qualitative research involves quantitative judgments. Looking at social research methodology in terms of paradigms is unhelpful as it exaggerates empirical differences and leads to a narrow characterization of the difficult methodological issues that social researchers face. According to Hammersley (1995:3), "thinking about social research methodology in terms of paradigms obscures both potential and actual diversity in orientation, and it can lead us into making simplistic methodological decisions". It is often unclear whether proponents of paradigmatic divisions are arguing that there is a link between epistemology and method or whether there ought to be. According to Bryman (1988:108), the two approaches might not be as far apart as is sometimes implied. For example, like qualitative research, quantitative research attempts to attribute meaning to the social world and quantitative methods can also gain access to people's interpretations and the ways in which they view the world: "a preoccupation with meaning and subjetcs' perspectives is not exclusive to the quantitative traditions" (Bryman, 1988:124). A good example of a dominant thought pattern in research is the assumption that quantitative research is more valuable and legitimate than qualitative research because the former is empirical and positivistic, grounded in measurable numbers and verifiable statistics. Qualitative research is often maligned and called soft science, meaning it is hard to quantify, assuming that all data have to be quantified to be true. People's meanings, wisdom, and interpretations of their own lives are not measurable; hence, they do not matter. These assumptions reflect the deeply ingrained paradigms of Newtonianism and positivism. Newtonian thinking holds that objective reality comprises predictable, measurable, linear, cause-and-effect phenomena. Positivism assumes that the only way one can be certain that one has knowledge is if it is produced using the scientific method. Qualitative studies are often undervalued, minimised, and even dismissed as not good research because they cannot be judged as empirically valid and reliable, nor do they yield desirable proof of cause and effect (McGregor, 2018).

Question:

The 'paradigm wars' were grounded in contrasting ontological beliefs and positions and epistemological beliefs and positions about the nature of the social world (Wyse, Selwyn, Smith and Suter, 2017:13). In light of the observation above, and on the basis of the ontological beliefs and positions, and epistemological beliefs and positions about the nature of the social world, distinguish between the quantitative and the qualitative paradigms of business and management research