Philosophical Background to Research - Dan Remenyi - Chapter Summary

The starting point in all research undertakings is to focus clearly on the fact that the ultimate purpose is to add something of value to the body of accumulated knowledge and in this case accumulated business and management knowledge.   This means that an unanswered question or unsolved  problem will be identified and studied and the researcher will attempt to produce a useful and logical solution to the problem. Of course the  problem is  difficult and  the solution is not obvious. When the problem is solved, the answer will add material value to the subject area being studied.

Philosophical Questions

There are at least three philosophical questions about research itself that should be addressed at the outset of the research. These are:

Why research?
What to research?
And How to research?
It could also be argued that Where to research? And when to research ? Although of lesser philosophical importance, also deserve attention.

Why Research?

The Need for research is related to the fact that there are many issues and subjects about which we have incomplete knowledge.

The second aspect of the need for research is related to ‘Homo sapiens’ compulsive need for growth.  There appears to be an endless requirement for increased performance in all aspect of life. Therefore there is the need continually to break the frontiers of knowledge through the research process.

What (and where) to Research ?

The questions what to research? And Where to research? Are closely related.

What to research may at first seem obvious. In business and management the main focus of research should be on issues related to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the business and management  process.

Every would-be researcher will previously have studied a particular subject or discipline in some considerable depth.  This may have been achieved through an undergraduate degree in economics, sociology, psychology or accounting, to mention only few possible options.  It may also have been achieved without a degree, through many years of working experience, especially where the individual has made a definite effort to keep up with the latest thinking in the field by reading the appropriate literature.

These studies and/or experiences will have provided a strong base on which to build a research programme.  However, as well as having in-depth knowledge of the subject, the aspirant researcher should also be widely read in order to put the research into context as well as to identify and draw on interdisciplinary linkage and connections.

Although some people do change disciplines, such a change will demand a substantial amount of work before the candidate becomes fully up to date with the subject matter and acquires sufficient familiarity  with the relevant body of academic thinking.

In addition to the researchers’ own competence there is the issue of the expertise of the chosen institute and potential supervisors.

Whether or not such a personality oriented approach is adopted, it is most important for the student to find a research field in which the faculty has expertise and interest.

Business research is commonly aimed at helping to develop management understanding of how business organizations work.   It is frequently suggested that the best business research should lead to the development of guidelines by which individuals in positions of responsibility can manage their business responsibilities more efficiently and effectively.

How to Research?

At the outset it is important to appreciate that the nature of the research process is often relatively unstructured and frequently unpredictable. It is something described as a voyage of discovery during which the researcher learns much about research methodologies, about the subject in which the research problem falls, about the research phenomenon or thesis and he  may even learn something of him or herself.

A major concern to the researcher is the ability to deliver a convincing, or at least a credible, answer or solution that will be accepted by his or her peers.  It is important for the researcher to be able to convince the peer group that the approach to the research has been sound.  This requires an understanding of the nature of the processes required to create knowledge.

To claim that a valuable or significant addition has been made to the collection of knowledge, the researcher should comply with a scientific method, or approach, which is a set of guidelines/rules that have evolved to ensure the integrity, reliability and reproducibility of the research work.

Research Methodologies in Perspective

Research methodology refers to the procedural framework within which the research is conducted. It describes an approach to a problem that can be put into practice in research programme or process, which Leedy (1989) formally defines as “an operational framework within which the facts are placed so that their meaning may be seen more clearly.

In the modern physical sciences, the solid tradition of experimental research and careful observation was combined with a rigorous formulation based In mathematics.  Indeed,Needham(1988) has argued that “Modern [as opposed to mediaeval or ancient]  science is the mathematisation of hypotheses about nature …  combined with rigorous experimentation.’

This is so much the case that now the rules of scientific experiments are seldom explicitly taught to aspirant natural scientists.

Research in the Social world

Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas and many others through the ages have made important contributions to social science. Research into business and management is even more recent with the Hawthorne experiments in the late 1920s and early 1930s probably being among the earliest structures business research studies.

Because research into business and management has developed relatively recently, much attention is given to the methods employed to justify the claim that something material and valuable has been added to the body of accumulated knowledge. As a result, research methodology is explicitly taught to those undertaking business and management studies.

Furthermore any material research in business or management, such as that undertaken for a masters or a doctoral degree, requires that the methodology used be clearly spelt out, perhaps in a chapter of its own (Remenyi,1990b),so that the results of the research are convincing or at least credible.

A degree of generality is intrinsically built into the laws developed by the social scientist even when generalisation is not a key issue.  This occurs because once a phenomenon has been identified, even only once, the probability of it being unique is so low as to make it almost impossible.  In fact there is a growing confidence among social scientists that their work is fully scientific and that in some cases traditional physical and natural scientists are actually being left behind because of their reluctance to consider new ways of thinking about scientific methods.

Perhaps in the end the view of Marx(1844) will prevail, ’Natural science will in time incorporate into itself  the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science : there will be one science.’

Empirical versus Theoretical Research

One of the most commonly used differentiates research into empirical or theoretical studies.  Empirical is defined by the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary as : ‘based on, or guided by, the results of observation or experiment only’, While theoretical  is defined as, ‘contemplative, of the mind or intellectual faculties’.

The rationale behind this bias for empiricism is a philosophical assumption that evidence, as opposed to thought or discourse, is required to be able to make a satisfactory claim to have added to the body of knowledge.  Of course it is not always easy to collect usable evidence which can lead to convincing and believable results. Furthermore, every empirical investigation presupposes an understanding of the material under investigation and therefore some kind of theoretical position.

The empiricist goes out into the world and observes through experiment or even by relatively passive observation of what is happening.  By studying these observation and collecting related evidence, the empiricist will draw conclusions and make the claim that something of value has been added to the body of knowledge

The research theorist, on the other hand, studies the subject through the writings of others and through discourse with learned or informed individuals who can comment on the subject area, usually without any direct involvement in observation of behaviour and the collection of actual evidence.  The theorist reflects on these ideas and using his or her intellectual capabilities constructs a new or different view of the situation ,which sometimes may be regarded as a new theory.  At the end of the theorist’s work  conclusions are also drawn and a claim is made that the researcher has added to the body of knowledge.

A paradigm or theory is no more than the conventional wisdom of the subject .

On the other hand theoretical research, although not directly based on evidence collected from observation, also relies on ideas which have at some previous time been based on specific observations or original  evidence collected by means of empirical work.  Theoretical research does not occur in a vacuum, it is rather the result of thinking about the findings of previous  empirical research and of debating the different theoretical interpretations that others have made.

Empirical research is the dominant paradigm in business and management research.

Empirical research is frequently associated with a positivist view which has sometimes been described as a tough-minded approach to facts and figures, derived from the physical and  natural sciences.

Characteristics of a positivist

Being a positivist, or perhaps more correctly a logical positivist, implies that the researcher is working with an observable social reality and that the end product of such research can be the derivation of laws or law-like generalisations similar to those produced by the physical and natural scientists.  Positivism came into its own with the work  of Auguste Comte (1798-1857)who outlined an approach to positivism in his ‘course of Positive Philosophy’, published in six volumes between 1830 and 1842.

This philosophical stance or paradigm sees the researcher as an objective analyst and interpreter of a tangible social reality.  Underlying positivism is the assumption that the researcher is independent of and neither affects nor is affected by the subject of the research.  It is assumed that there are independent causes that lead to the observed effects, that evidence is critical, that parsimony is important and that it should be possible to generalise or to model, especially in the mathematical sense, the observed phenomena.  Positivism emphasises quantifiable observations that lend themselves to statistical analysis.

Falsification and Revolution

One of the central tenets of positivism is the idea of falsification, which was introduced by Karl Popper.  According to Popper an idea could not be regarded as scientific unless it was falsifiable.

This may be seen as the way that falsification actually works its way through to theory or paradigm rejection.

Phenomenology

According to Cohen and Manion (1987), ’Phenomenology is a theoretical point of view that advocates the study of direct experience taken at face value, and one which sees behaviour as determined by the phenomena of experience rather than by external, objective and physically described reality.’

The phenomenological school of thought started with the work of Franz Brentano(1838-1917) and was developed by Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) who set out the basic methods of phenomenology in his work Logical Investigations. Unlike the positivist, the phenomenologist does not  consider the world to consist of an objective reality but instead focuses on the primacy of subjective consciousness.

Each situation is seen as unique and its meaning is  a function of the circumstances and the individuals involved.  To the phenomenologist the researcher is not independent of what is being researched but is an intrinsic part of it.

The phenomenologist believes that the world can be modelled, but not necessarily in a mathematical sense.  A verbal, diagrammatic, or descriptive model could be acceptable.

The researcher constructs a meaning in terms of the situation being studied.

Comparison between Positivism and phenomenology

One of the key tenets of positivism is that it takes a reductionist approach to exploring the relationships among the variables being studied.

This reductionist approach should by its very nature lead to simplifications of the real world environment in which the variables naturally or usually exist.

We can describe positive research as the researcher taking still photographs of the situations and the process is repeated until enough evidence has been collected to make some sort of generalisation about the cause presently in all situations giving rise to an output present in all situations.

On the other hand, a phenomenological approach to research is not reductionist but holistic.

At the end of the research study the phenomenological researcher has also produced a still photograph of the variables being studied.  This photograph is more sophisticated as it focuses on capturing more variables than the one obtained by the positivist buts its purpose is still development or creation of theory. 

By definition, it is more difficult to replicate such holistic studies and generalisations are much more problematical.

A map of the world is no less a model than is E=mc2, which is Einstein’s model for the relationship between energy and mass.

‘Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.‘ Research studies have to be acknowledge by peers.

Choosing a Research Strategy

The philosophical orientation that is adopted plays an important role in business and management research and the researcher needs to establish his or her approach early on it the research process.   Usually the choice between the different approaches is not difficult for researchers to make.

Most research at the masters and doctoral level will require both theoretical and empirical work.  Few business and management students would attempt purely theoretical research as this would be difficult and it would be neither academically acceptable nor really possible to undertake a purely theoretical research project at this level.

Whether  a positivistic or a phenomenological approach is taken will largely depend on the background of the researcher.  If the first discipline of the researcher has been in the numerical sciences then he or she will probably be most comfortable with a positivistic research paradigm, but if the researcher has come from a sociological field then the phenomenological approach may be an option for making the  choice.  Whatever research paradigm is chosen the ability to develop a convincing argument in support of the research findings is paramount.

A  researcher has to be able to convince an audience  of the value and relevance of his or her research efforts. This audience, which may be composed of examiners, funders and colleagues, is likely to be critical.

In addition, the academic researcher needs to explain why his or her research should be considered important and needs to be able to point out precisely what was found and what use the findings are to the community.  The researcher needs to be able to argue convincingly that something new and of value has been added to the body of knowledge.

Sound answers to these questions rely on the philosophical underpinning of the research process.

Management Research: An Introduction

Mark Easterby-Smith, Richard Thorpe, Andy Lowe
SAGE, 28-Mar-2002 - Business & Economics - 194 pages
This second edition of the best selling Management Research has been completely revised and updated to represent changes in research methods.
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Commercial research or intelligence is about accessing already established knowledge and presenting it in a more accessible manner for the purposes of routine decision making. This type of research, although conducted by many business schools in order to earn money, may have virtually no scholarly or academic merit.
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Updated on 10 September 2019,  23 July 2019, 4 June 2014