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http://division.aomonline.org/rm/1999_RMD_forum_paradigms_and_research_methods.htm

Academy of Management, Research Methods Division | Research Methods Forum, Vol. 4 (Summer 1999). |

Introduction: Eclecticism in Methods —David A. HarrisonControlling Method Effects in Self Report Instruments —Mary E. McLaughlinMissing Data: Instrument-Level Heffalumps and Item-Level Woozles —Philip L. Roth and Fred S. Switzer IIIParadigms and Research Methods —Robert GephartImproving the Power of Moderated Multiple Regression to Estimate Interaction Effects —Herman Aguinis and Charles A. PierceLost Time: Reflections and Recommendations on the Treatment of Temporal Issues in Organizational Research —Donald D. Bergh |
Paradigms and Research Methods
ROBERT GEPHART
University of Alberta [e-mail] There has been considerable interest in recent years in the role of philosophical assumptions and paradigms in doing research. During the 1970's and 1980's prominent concerns were raised about the limits of quantitative data and methods often associated with positivism, the prevailing paradigm. Positivism assumes an objective world which scientific methods can more or less readily represent and measure, and it seeks to predict and explain causal relations among key variables. Critics argued that positivistic methods strip contexts from meanings in the process of developing quantified measures of phenomena (Guba and Lincoln, 1994: 106). In particular, quantitative measures often exclude members' meanings and interpretations from data which are collected. These methods impose outsiders meanings and interpretations on data. And they require statistical samples which often do not represent specific social groups and which do not allow generalization to or understanding of individual cases. Finally, quantitative and positivistic methods tend to exclude discovery from the domain of scientific inquiry.
Positivism has become a dominant institutional form in social