Tutorial 2 - Paradigmatic Positions

0:00 hello everyone in the previous tutorial we talked about the basics of research philosophy and those different areas of philosophy that are most relevant to us as researchers we ended the session by looking at some concepts and examples of how these different areas of um of philosophy come together to form a philosophical stance towards research now it's totally possible for us to describe our philosophical position by referring to our ontology epistemology axiology and methodology but traditionally in research we express our position by making use of certain research paradigms now a research paradigm can also be

0:46 called a worldview or a general position or a specific research philosophy and they are something like a template a specific pattern or combination or set of ontological epistemological axiological and methodological assumptions and when you see them in combination they form this kind of a template for um for a research project it's like some assumptions kind of fit together like i said in the previous tutorial um you can have a realist ontology objectivist epistemology value value-free science belief in terms of axiology and a quantitative methodology

1:32 it doesn't always work this way and it can become quite complicated but in many instances it does work this way and it's a good good way to understand research philosophy to look at the paradigmatic positions now today we are going to start by looking at two old-school kind of euro-waste and paradigmatic positions and positivism and interpretivism they are probably the easiest to understand and and they are also almost like direct opposites like the difference between objectivism and subjectivism and that that we discussed in the in the previous tutorial then we are going to look at a position called something like the transformative or the critical position and then we're going to look at something called critical realism which is interesting because it combines

2:18 certain aspects of different philosophical positions um thereafter we're going to stand still a little bit at an interesting and fast emerging philosophical position that is specifically relevant for us here in africa and that is the decolonial indigenous post-colonial positions i i kind of group them together but they're emerging and different terminologies are used all over the place and then in the last place i'm going to look um at pragmatism which is like a very practical way of looking at research and often used in organizational studies now positive as in the sense of positivism means something that is not speculative or tentative but for sure

3:04 almost like when somebody asks you is the library open at the moment and you answer yes i'm positive it means you're sure about your facts it's not positive like in the emotional state it's it's being certain and already you can hear something about the ontology here positivists believe in an external reality so it's free from our experiences or ideas about it an absolute truth that is free from speculation a reality that is true for everybody so a universal reality that is stable so through now and through a bit later so we can call the ontology realist or objectivist so if we also take the library idea the

3:51 library is open or closed independent of whether i think it's open or closed if the library is open it's not a little open or a lot open it's absolutely open or absolutely closed if it is open it's open for not one or two students but open for everyone and it's closed if it's closed for one it's closed for all together with the belief that the truth the truth is absolute and objective we can already understand that the axiology of positivism will be that science is value free because we are trying to be objective right we are trying to be universal right so there's not a lot of space for feelings and ethics and emotions it's a neutral story

4:36 this reality can then be objectively known the truth is out there it's not inside of us and we can know it through observation through proof through evidence we call this belief that knowledge can be gained through scientific methods and empiricist epistemology for the library again you can only only say you are positive the library is closed if you have seen it with your own eyes or have some evidence to prove it if you say it is closed because i believe it is the person will not find your proof sufficient and they will want to go and have a look for themselves in life there are many instances where reasonable people expect a positivist approach where the

5:22 logics of positivism is at the order of the day like in a democratic country we feel seriously about voting and strict processes are followed votes are counted and we expect the iec to go to great lengths to ensure that no skewing takes place and that the vote can be verified and the outcome regarded as fear and objective in the end in business we don't think it's strange that you must provide proof of your story and measure to exact standards standards in order to convince somebody to invest or to buy your product we expect proof proof is regarded as universally acceptable when somebody is convinced of a convicted of a crime for instance um we cry foul if the proof did

6:07 not convince us of the facts so also in our research in many contexts the there it's suited um for um is suitable for empiricism it is the context and the problem the theory the traditions that should all be considered together with your personal preferences of course and the preferences of those you work with in terms of methodology positivist researchers use mostly quantitative methods with the purposes of predicting and testing and measuring relationships between variables associated with a phenomenon for positivists it's important that their findings are objectively valid and reliable and free from human bias

6:53 from positivist thinking grew another version of positivism called post positivism positivism also believe in in an objective and external reality but they see the limitations of the researcher and other influences in the research process so they believe that absolute and objective knowledge cannot really be achieved but that we could still strive for it now the position called critical realism can be seen as a type of post-positivism most social science researchers have a post-positivist or critical realist view rather than a pure classical positivist view social sciences work with behaviors and

7:40 attitudes and opinions and even in quantitative studies um it becomes very difficult to be a pure positivist so we will talk about bit more about critical realism in a while but just so you know that peer positivism is a rare thing in the social sciences then almost in direct opposition to positivism is interpretivism basically interpretivists believe that reality is created by humans and resides in our subjective experiences so reality is not universal but it's unique among people it's not external but it's internal to people not objective but subjective not one size fits all but as

8:25 many realities as we are people this is like somebody asking you what is love the answer will be different for every person you ask and there's no single one way to understand love can you see from this ontology how the axiology already emerges many people many subjective realities that implies that individual values individual morals are at play when reality is created so researchers value the fact that people are humans and we call the research empathetic as researchers recognize emotion and personal value systems and also have their own

9:11 personal value systems as they conduct the research also very easy to understanding that researchers will see themselves as humans just as they view others as humans and therefore believe that knowledge is interpreted so it's not absolute and that we know by understanding or by trying to understand and that knowledge lies in the perceptions and of those who hold the knowledge if we take the love example again human values will greatly influence the way each person sees love and the emotions and feelings of both the one who is asking the question and the one who's giving the answer will feature in the report on what is love

9:57 some scholars differentiate between an interpretivist paradigm and a constructionist paradigm these two share most of the underlying assumptions but constructivist believes um are more focused on how meaning is shared and negotiated and our reality or aspects of reality is hidden and revealed so it's a little bit more political and suspicious when compared to the intention of pure interpretivism um to that that understanding in an empathic kind of way constructionism therefore in all is in also some ways similar to transformative and critical approaches to research and favored in specific areas of social research if we see um love in a constructionist

10:43 kind of way we would say that what love is is made up between people in society through human interactions our interactions with the media religion and so on we together built this idea of love and the television soap version of love hides certain real life aspects of love the religion construction of love focuses on specific qualities over others and so on some parts of what love is can be hidden and some parts privileged depending on how the power relations in society works from the interpretivism from the interpretivist beliefs about knowledge you can also see something about the methodology interpretive research is about

11:29 understanding human experiences so it's important that data collection happens in natural settings through qualitative methods interpretivism is something we as humans understand easily we know that people are unique we know that we differ from everybody else so many aspects of interpretivist research might appeal to us in the social sciences we use a lot of interpretivist thinking because a lot of our subject matter is about human behavior perceptions interpretations and so on but because we are busy with academic research and those of us who are focused on organizational research we also like some aspects of positivism and this is

12:15 where the pragmatic position comes in we will talk about pragmatism in in a few minutes next up is a transformative or critical position a transformative paradigmatic position um that is for research that's specifically how to transform the world to change society in other words it's almost activist in nature transformative research aims to empower people expose myths critique the way the world works and dig deep to find the truth transformative research is about topics of injustice and control and it prioritizes the idea that research must lead to positive change this worldview is is also sometimes

13:01 called an advocacy or participatory paradigm the ontology of this paradigm is that we that there are multiple realities and that reality is also layered with some layers more difficult to observe and to know than others reality from this view is also socially constructed so constructionism that we mentioned in the interpretivist discussion and that reality is also seated in issues of human rights and justice privilege and power in society transformative scholars believe that knowledge should have practical value so it must lead to practical change linking to the belief that some parts of reality is hidden transformative

13:47 scholars believe that knowledge is about uncovering the hidden parts that we cannot know from the outside but must know from the participants point of view from this we can see that the axiology of the transformative of transformative research lies in the belief that freedom from domination human rights social justice and so on should be valued and therefore research is in effect a moral and political and ethical activity for example if you believe that men rule the world unfairly and that organizational experiences of women have been marginalized by positivistic and interpretivistic research in the past you might take a transformative stance

14:33 when you study the experiences of female employees in a specific organization the idea is to transform the workplace to be more inclusive and to transform the research scene by bringing in more female voices transformative research is the is the way that it seeks for justice and human rights and it draws on many myths both qualitative and quantitative it's usually important for transformative researchers to specifically include participants in decisions on the study as it's important for um for that research to include participants perceptions and to protect the rights of participants and so on

15:18 as i said earlier the position of post-positivism and critical realism are seen by some as pretty much the same thing and by others it's seen that critical realism is the ontological belief of post-positivism in the latter view a naive or direct realist ontology is associated with positivism and the critical realist ontology with post-positivism but what does this mean if realism is there is an external reality you see is what you get kind of thinking then critical realism is there is an external reality but you can only see manifestations of that reality the critical realist position is about explaining or understanding observable

16:05 events that what can be seen observable events and phenomena in terms of those unobservable forces and structures that shape the observable level besides drawing on aspects of positivism critical realism also draws on aspects we normally associate with transformative or critical research so it is realist in the sense that the critical realist researcher assumes an independent and external reality and critical in the sense that a critical realist researcher must examine observable reality critically not naively believe that what you observe is equal to what reality is

16:54 critical realism therefore is associated with the ontological belief that reality is stratified or layered with the surface level that part that can be seen and experienced and then a deep layer of understanding the causal structures and relations that generate the more surface layers if we take our previous example again workplace experiences of female employees just like the transformative or critical position critical realism sees reality as layered where some aspects are hidden and some are not but critical realism puts emphasis on the idea that the reality of women's experiences cannot be known by only

17:41 interpreting their experiences but it must also include the historical political and cultural stuff that those experiences are shaped by in the case of women's experiences the deeper layers can be uncovered by looking towards the cultural beliefs and practices of the societies those women come from it can also be uncovered by looking at the political history of the country or the industry for instance like the mining industry women has had a very limited space in in in organizations in the past so there's kind of a political history but it's industry related um and you have to look at those deeper historical things um to to see why women

18:27 experience workplaces as they do in terms of epistemology a critical realist position is that reality can only be known in part and can be known imperfectly and we must strive for objectivity although we know that it won't be entirely possible to be objective a critical realist also sees the phenomenon and the researcher as separate but believe that their researchers topic and the theories the hypotheses and the personal background and beliefs of a researcher will influence the process in reality however independent it might be will be interpreted through the social conditioning and through theory and through everybody's ideas so it's not

19:15 easy to uncover and it's in this view researchers cannot really trust their own senses and their own experiences so while the ontology is realist the epistemology of critical realism is relativist so knowledge is not absolute but relative to social cultural and political historical contexts and therefore also subject to change in the case of understanding women's workplace experiences the researcher might be from a different cultural group or have different political beliefs and that will influence how he or she interprets the data from interviews with women participants of the study in terms of methodology critical

20:01 realists use a variety of methods depending on what the subject calls for there are usually two phases to research a direct experience phase where real life and observable things are measured and looked at and then there's a mental processing phase to critically uncover the hidden parts and the underlying parts of a phenomenon and even when the researcher does the second phase of critical processing the findings can never be absolute but can only be probabilities and can be proven wrong by future research then we get to the decolonial indigenous post-colonial positions now this is a collection of positions and in essence it's about

20:46 all the other paradigmatic positions we discussed thus far they are set up in a euro western way of thinking about research so these research frameworks might not be applicable to other contexts and as africans these paradigmatic positions came to us through colonization and still remain mainstream to this day so for us to keep conducting research without questioning why we do what we do and how we go about knowing what we know if we don't question this we will just perpetuate the colonial way of being and this is where a decolonial paradigmatic position comes in nelson maldonado torres says that

21:33 coloniality are those logics metaphysics and power that remain as the legacy of colonialism that makes the coloniality those efforts to counter this to rehumanize the world to break the hierarchies um of difference between communities it's the production of counter discourses counter knowledges and counter creative acts and counter practices that seek to dismantle the colonial legacy and to open up multiple other forms of being and knowing if we think like this when we do research we can see that our ontology is much like interpretivism that one recognizes

22:18 multiple realities that are constructed by us but decal scholars say that the way reality is seen in all other positions exclude some aspects of reality that are part of life in many african cultural settings this is that reality could also include beings that are not human beings where many euro western um setups are are human or human exclusive but that there are also other beings especially non-living and spirit world beings and the dead and those yet to be born and so reality is not only a human reality as it is believed in in euro western um secular research contexts

23:05 decolonialism specifically also says that the ways in which we see reality has been distorted by western powers as we have for so long been subjected to western ways of seeing for instance many conceptions about reality and about social phenomena is sit against the background of individualism and individualism might be the default way of life in western contexts but not in in many other contexts around the world it's maybe not that and a decoy position often expresses ontological beliefs as being communal relational or collective the colonial scholars refer to pluriversality

23:50 where there's not only one reality also not only multiple realities but multiple possible realities that coexist and that are connected with each other epistemology is much like that of the transformative paradigm or critical realism one that asks questions about how we know what we know so it's a critical epistemology the colonial researchers believe they know what they know because they unlearned and relearned in order to gain knowledge we must look again at those things we thought we knew and reconsider all of it we must be epistemologically disobedient and

24:37 de-link from western ways of knowing and researching the epistemology prioritization of indigenous ways for instance the belief that we know and gain knowledge share knowledge and so on by relating to others in the more indigenous and afrocentric expressions of this paradigmatic position we see a lot of priority given to culturally based indigenous knowledges and belief systems i think it's rather obvious that the axiology of the coloniality is a specific value that is placed on those people and those knowledges that have been suppressed and silenced in the past the colonial research values and respect and relationships these

25:23 values also greatly influence research processes um in in in the work from this world view the colonial methodology is very interesting and it includes um not only the well-recognized euro western methodology but interesting and indigenous methods like storytelling songs proverbs dance myths rituals talk circles and bigger forums like imbadu in the last place i want to talk to you about pragmatism a pragmatism is weird because it doesn't really fit the pattern of other positions but actually says that the differentiations between objectivism and subjectivism is not really that important pragmatism are about practicalities

26:11 they are more about action situations consequences and less about fixed ideas of reality knowledge values and methods pragmatists are therefore not committed to a specific belief about reality so we can say that they have a non-committal ontology for a pragmatist research starts with a problem that needs solving and reality matters only insofar as it matters for the specific research project or in the specific moment and pragmatists in principle can accept a realist or a relativist or a constructivist ontology but would argue against the separation of these ontologies in principle

26:57 in the same way pragmatists feel like truth and knowledge is whatever is meaningful and whatever works at the time and for a specific situation the objective of research should lead the researcher to which types of knowledges can serve the practical realities of the study and knowledge is valued for allowing the research project to be successful because of this whatever works for the moment stuns pragmatists pragmatists mix methods they combine methods and approaches from various worldviews pragmatists value the functionality of research and feel that research should be about the real world so research should predict and action

27:43 and solve problems real world problems rather than describing representing mirroring and analyzing without a practical side to it for organizational communication research pragmatism is oftentimes a very good option for applied research because of the strong links between thought and action the relationship between the research and the context in which it's happening it's a position that we often take as organizational communication researchers when you decide on a position for your research you must take into consideration a multitude of factors it's your personal beliefs what's happening in your discipline if

28:28 you're doing research for an organization what they want if you're working with other people other researchers how they do things what your supervisor want what your lecturers want what's happening in your field what's accepted procedures at your university what's your framing theory so many different things need to be considered but the only thing that is really important is you can think of many things or decide not to to consider certain things but you cannot go without at least thinking through your philosophical stance towards research now in the next tutorial we will continue the conversation by looking at different topics in organizational studies and how we get from a topic or an everyday problem to a research problem i hope you enjoy your reading until we

29:15 talk again bye