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- Research Paradigms: Burrell and Morgan combine objectivistic-subjectivistic continuum and regulation-radical change (ideological orientation of the researcher towards the social world) continuum into a set of four paradigms of assumptions which describes the frame of reference and mode of theorising. These paradigms are ‘Functionalist’, ‘Interpretive’, ‘Radical structuralist’ and ‘Radical humanist’.
- Functionalist: Research paradigm with ‘Objectivist’-‘Regulation’ position. Here research is concerned with rational explanations and developing recommendations within the existing framework.
- Interpretive: Research paradigm with ‘Subjectivist’-‘Regulation’ position.
- Radical structuralist: Reasearch paradigm with ‘Objectivist-Radical change’ position.
- Radical humanist: Research paradigm with ‘Subjectivist-Radical change’ position.
- Research Philosophy: It involves the systems of beliefs and assumptions about the development of knowledge, position of the researcher in the continuum between extremes within the research paradigms. A researcher’s research philosophy encompasses assumptions about the way in which he/she views the world which influences all other aspects of his/her research.
- Rationalism: The assumption here is that the state of the world and being can be best understood by a systematic logical reasoning. It views reason as the source of knowledge or justification and that it is derived from first principles or axioms. This approach has originated from very early days of scientific inquiry as a shift from faith based approaches and attributed to Greek philosophers like Aristotle, Plato and Socrates.
- Empiricism: British philosopher Francis Bacon said that knowledge can only be derived from observations in the real world and that knowledge acquisition is an empirical activity rather than a reasoning activity. This led to inductive approach to scientific inquiry as basis of ‘scientific method’ – which is systematic observation, measurement and experimentation.
- Natural philosophy: Galilei Galileo and Sir Isaac Newton combined the ideas of empiricism and rationalism into natural philosophy as a way to understand nature and the physical universe. Galileo combined experimentation and mathematics to seed the field of astronomy.
- Positivism: Coined by Auguste Comte – founder of the sociology – this refers to an assumption that legitimate knowledge can be found from experience and that the research produces facts and accounts about an independent reality which is value free and believes in observation and measurement as critical elements of scientific method. This believes in a circular relation between theory and observations – while theory is created by reasoning of the observations, it needs to be verified by observations thus separated science from philosophy and metaphysics.
- Sociological positivism: Scientific method is applied to social sciences.
- Antipositivism: In contrast to positivism where quantitative research methods are used, antipositivism uses qualitative research methods emphasizing on the interpretation of the social actions. This was to address the criticism of usage of positivism in sociology.
- Postpositivism: This suggests that it is impossible to prove the truth and it it only possible to reject false beliefs, while retaining the positivist notion of an objective truth and the positivist notion’s emphasis on scientific method.
Dr. Selvaraj Vadivelu 