Pursuing a “justifiable view of a particular organizational phenomenon”
Avenier, Marie-José
Pursuing a “justifiable view of a particular organizational phenomenon” - 2010.
80
This article examines what can be qualified as a “justifiable view of a particular organizational phenomenon” and how to construct such a view in research projects explicitly conducted within the radical constructivist epistemological paradigm. This paradigm neither denies nor asserts the existence of an objective world populated by mind-independent entities—a “world-as-is.” It only postulates that humans cannot know such a thing as an independent, objective world that stands apart from their experience of it, while they can, however, know a “world-as-experienced.” In this paradigm, “a justifiable view of a particular organizational phenomenon” can be defined as a richly informed representation of the phenomenon, where “representation” designates a symbolic construction expressing an interpretation of a subject’s experience. Of particular note, in this paradigm it is not known whether a representation is similar or not similar to the world that has induced the experience. As a result, such a “justifiable view” remains a situated and goal-oriented construction. The construction of justifiable views concerning organizational phenomena can be considered as a major goal of scientific research in organization studies, no matter the archetype of science in which the research is carried out—be it a science of nature or a science of the artificial. The legitimization of the justifiable character of a particular view concerning a certain phenomenon rests on the ethics, rigor, and transparency with which the epistemic and empirical work contributing to the construction of this view has been performed.
Pursuing a “justifiable view of a particular organizational phenomenon” - 2010.
80
This article examines what can be qualified as a “justifiable view of a particular organizational phenomenon” and how to construct such a view in research projects explicitly conducted within the radical constructivist epistemological paradigm. This paradigm neither denies nor asserts the existence of an objective world populated by mind-independent entities—a “world-as-is.” It only postulates that humans cannot know such a thing as an independent, objective world that stands apart from their experience of it, while they can, however, know a “world-as-experienced.” In this paradigm, “a justifiable view of a particular organizational phenomenon” can be defined as a richly informed representation of the phenomenon, where “representation” designates a symbolic construction expressing an interpretation of a subject’s experience. Of particular note, in this paradigm it is not known whether a representation is similar or not similar to the world that has induced the experience. As a result, such a “justifiable view” remains a situated and goal-oriented construction. The construction of justifiable views concerning organizational phenomena can be considered as a major goal of scientific research in organization studies, no matter the archetype of science in which the research is carried out—be it a science of nature or a science of the artificial. The legitimization of the justifiable character of a particular view concerning a certain phenomenon rests on the ethics, rigor, and transparency with which the epistemic and empirical work contributing to the construction of this view has been performed.
Réseaux sociaux