Epistemological and Ontological Assumptions - Essay Example

 Introduction When it comes to research methodologies, there are two assumptions research can be categorized into. These assumptions, or approaches rather, are used by researchers in order to understand the world better. For this paper, this writer would like to investigate both epistemological and ontological assumptions that bring about research regarding a variety of issues, particularly when it comes to understanding organizations. It seems that epistemology and ontology are two philosophies around which our knowledge depends on, and this paper would like to focus on the importance of both these philosophies and how they influence research in both a positive and a negative way. The main purpose of this study is to understand the different ways different individuals think, or prefer to think, as well as the different theories that these people come up with. Furthermore, through this paper, the writer would like to study why researchers prefer ontological approaches, or epistemological approaches, or both. First and foremost, this paper also deals with how theories are studied so that people may interpret and understand information, and develop them to form their own research studies. This is known as hermeneutics, and phenomenology would refer to how individuals study the philosophies of the world and what exactly it means to them. For this study, it is important to understand that without these theories, human beings would be lost when it comes to how they understand the world. Knowledge has to come from somewhere and this is illustrated in this paper through the mention of various research methodologies and approaches, dispositions and cognitive theories. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are two main approaches when it comes to research methodology. At this point it is important to first understand both qualitative and quantitative approaches in order to understand how research studies are brought about, as well as the epistemology and ontology approaches when it comes to research work. In a qualitative study, the researcher is not so interested in obtaining a set of facts, but rather is more interested in gaining insight into a perspective (Johnson, 1984). The philosophy of the qualitative approach is that knowledge and facts are subjective and that problems cannot be fully understood in isolation. In this light, should problems arise, they should be viewed as part of a complex pattern of links and relationships (Easterby-Smith et al, 2002). According to Johnson (1984), the main advantages of such a qualitative approach is that it is not only intensive but flexible as well. Therefore for the single-handed researcher who may have a limited number of resources, he/she may find it easier to perform the research. However, qualitative research tends to be slow, and may create anxiety because of the lack of structure in the research design. The more participative and reflexive style of this approach means that the research is more likely to invade the researcher’s way of life (Bryman, 1992). The quantitative method, on the other hand, collects evidence in relation to a study so that a statement can be made about the outcomes of broadly comparable experiences. This way, an objective (or positivist) approach is adopted with reference to the social world (Cohen & Manion, 1989). The philosophy of this approach is that the knowledge and the facts gathered are objective and complex problems can be understood best if they are reduced into simpler component parts (Easterby-Smith, et al, 2002). Furthermore, quantitative methods attract inexperienced researchers in a variety of ways. For instance, one of the main attractions is that the information gathered appears to be clear cut, with more obvious boundaries around the data collection phase. However, there are also disadvantages to such an approach. To meet the requirements of the underlying philosophy of the quantitative method is that the research instrument must be scientifically respectable. In other words, the information released should be backed up by some sort of scientific proof. Johnson (1984), stresses on the point that the development of the research instrument must incorporate ‘rigorous design, administrative control and clerical accuracy.’ What is epistemology? Epistemology basically understands the nature of knowledge and how it is related to the beliefs of individuals, the truth, how it is justified and how all of these relate to each other. It is a theory of knowledge that ponders on the definition of knowledge, how it is acquired and how people know what they know. Belief is a phenomenon that achieves a certain ‘success’ when it is proven to be accurate or true. For this ‘success’ to happen, the belief should also be true because the information turns out to be competent. In other words, if a belief lacks information or knowledge, then the belief is rendered to be inferior. It appears then that epistemology is an approach that focuses on the ‘degree of belief.’ It is an expression of the capabilities of the human mind, and also the lack of capabilities. Statements that make reference to belief are intended to be useful or at least make sense to whoever reads or hears it. To believe in something then means that the individual believing considers that the information held in his/her mind is true. Knowledge, on the other hand, precedes belief but the two words do not necessarily mean the same or are implied to be so. For instance, a person who believes in his/her daily newspaper horoscopes, may not necessarily know so much about the origin of these horoscopes, how they came to be and who wrote them. Therefore, belief is a subjective issue, and it varies from person to person. The truth, on the other hand is objective, and does not depend on any individual. However, the aim of the concept of belief is the truth, so both are interrelated. This is because beliefs only become valuable when they end up being true, as mentioned earlier (Sosa, 2008). There exists a relationship between the phenomenon of critical thinking and epistemology. Critical theory is somewhat a form of hermeneutics wherein knowledge is gained by interpreting symbolic signs or expressions and meanings of man-made texts. Moreover, critical theory describes how the environment is influenced by philosophy and socio-psychology. There exists concepts that need to be understood in order to understand critical theory. To begin with, critical social theory should be directed at society in general in a historical context. This means that the time period information came to be known is found out. This way, critical theory improves the world’s understanding of its society by connecting the social sciences, namely psychology, economics, sociology, history, political science and even anthropology. When it comes to research, critical theory is needed because it establishes the limits where and when a piece of information is valid to be true and valid to be taught or written about. In fact, the world ‘critical,’ came from the word ‘critique,’ which helps the spread of knowledge in the information system by being sceptical. There are actually four levels of epistemological understanding. The first level, the ‘realist’ level, assumes that critical thinking is unnecessary. This is because knowledge is acquired from an external source that is believed to be true. The second level, on the other hand, is the ‘absolutist,’ level, where critical thinking is needed in order to compare assertions from different sources with reality, and determining whether these assertions are true or not. ‘Multiplist,’ would be the third level of epistemological research, wherein knowledge is generated by the human mind, which means that the knowledge is quite uncertain. At this level, critical thinking becomes irrelevant. The final level is the ‘evaluativist’ level. At this level, critical thinking is valued as an important vehicle to promote assertions and enhance the understanding of individuals. This is because knowledge that is generated by a human mind is uncertain and requires evaluation to be proven true, or to be proven false (Kuhn & Dean, 2004). Each person appears to have their own individual critical thinking dispositions. For instance, one of these dispositions is the ‘truth seeking’ disposition, wherein the individual has enough courage to ask as many questions as he/she wants in order to understand the world. The questions from this individual are all honest questions in the sense that he/she is asking because he/she does not know. At this point, the individual is quite eager to seek knowledge. The second disposition is the ‘open-mindedness’ of an individual, wherein the person is open to all sorts of views and assertions by various sources and is quite tolerant to it. He/she is also sensitive enough to be aware that bias exists when it comes to knowing which knowledge should be accepted and which should not. The third disposition is quite ‘analytical,’ where the individual is alert to situations that have the potential to be problematic. At this disposition, the individual anticipates possible outcomes, whether they be positive and negative. ‘Systematicity,’ is another disposition, wherein the individual approaches various issues and addresses them by asking questions or dealing with problems in an ordered and diligent manner. Surprisingly, ‘self-confidence’ is also a disposition, where trust is the key to guide one’s own reasoning when it comes to accumulating information. ‘Inquisitiveness,’ on the other hand, measures the curiosity of an individual, which is always a positive thing as the person is constantly on the lookout to find out how things work and how the world works in general. ‘Maturity,’ is the last disposition which measures how one approaches problems, and his/her inquiries in a mature way. Judgments by this individual are based on standards and this person seeks evidence to be certain about the information acquired (Facione et al, 2001). Epistemic justification is understood to have two properties namely accessibility and truth-conduciveness, both of which are important for research. Naturally, accessibility refers to where and how a piece of information was retrieved from a source and how this information can justify another idea or another piece of information. Truth-conduciveness refers to the contribution that justification appears to make to the beliefs held by other individuals to be true. The concept of justification then, appears to involve a belief forming procedure that results to true beliefs in the typical, normal sense. Both truth-conduciveness and accessibility however, are difficult properties to reconcile if the concept of justification is not present. Naturalism, is also related to epistemology. For the purpose of this study, naturalism can be described to be the truths of nature. This can be called either ontological naturalism and metaphysical naturalism. Methodological naturalism on the other hand refers to how information acquired is founded via a scientific method. In other words, explanations about the world in general, particularly when observed are practical and useful only when they can be proven by hypothesis. In other words, methodological naturalism can only be valid when the results are tested, repeatedly tested and finally proven to be true. Internalism on the other hand refers to how a person has access to justified beliefs and the basis of knowledge. Basically, the researcher should be aware that he/she has access to this basis and knows what the basis of this knowledge is. Externalists, on the other hand do not agree to the fact that an individual can always have access to this basis for knowledge and beliefs that are justified (Pappas, 2005) In other words, externalism describes any theory that rejects the accessibility condition, which is the first-person condition, or both. When working with methodology, epistemic naturalism ensures that the results of methodologies in the course of scientific methods are compatible with externalist theories of justification than with internalist theories (Wheeler & Pereira, 2007) When it comes to research, particularly academic research, the issue to be determined and addressed first is methodological epistemology before the research can be assumed and conducted effectively. Great confusion occurs when it comes to methodology and method. Methodology is a systematic procedure that needs to be orderly arranged in order to reach an end result, according to the American Heritage Dictionary. This means that when a researcher sets out to do methodology, the individual should determine how he/she should approach the research and process information that is related to the subject in question. In addition to this, research is done in the first place so the individual can find out more about the world and understand it more (Rima, 2009) What is Ontology? Ontology is traditionally related to a branch of philosophy that studies the existence of nature and its being. In other words, the question that ontology aims to answer is the existence of entities and how these entities can be said to even exist. One of the primary methods or approaches to address ontology is to divide these entities into various categories, and it is the researcher’s duty to see how these entities are related to each other and how they coordinate with each other, if at all. There are two types of ontologies. The first one is theory focused, while the other is pragmatically-oriented. Theory-focused ontologies are created by the usage of philosophical theories. Pragmatically-oriented ontologies, on the other hand, are quite common in the practice of information systems in organizations that deal with issues such as banking and taxation. There exists a concept called a conceptual schema that addresses relationships between general explanatory categories and the facts that exemplify them to belong to a particular domain. These conceptual schemas are of contrast to ontologies since conceptual schemas involve specifications of the meanings of the explanatory categories for a particular domain. Furthermore, conceptual schemas also give meanings of consequent dimensions of possible variations among data that is acquired and is relevant of a given domain. According to Guarino (1998), ontological information systems are constituted by a particular vocabulary used to describe a certain reality, in addition to the set of explicit assumptions with regards to the intended meaning of vocabulary words. There exists a theory known as the ‘first-order logical theory,’ wherein vocabulary words come off as unary or binary predicate names, which can also be referred to as concepts and relations. In other words, ontology describes a hierarchy of concepts related to each other, and suitable axioms are added in order to explain the relationships between these concepts, as well as to constrain interpretations intended for them. When it comes to research, ontologies help to provide a basis for causally based understanding and explanations about various concepts. For instance, it is expected that when people purchase a car, this individual’s decision is ruled by issues regarding economical constraints, as well as environmental conditions, and the question of why the car is needed in the first place. Ontologies provide a general framework for causal inference, and enables the conceptual schema to express certain rules and expectations that are unique to this decision or domain (Emeritus & Fonseca, 2007). Ontology is a complex field of study that refers to the knowledge of information organization, the processing of languages, extracting the information acquired from the language, artificial intelligence, the way the knowledge is presented and its acquisition. Understanding Organisational Structures A certain form of action research could and should be developed when understanding organisational operations and their structures. Mainstream social research often causes difficulties by accepting a division of labour between the researchers and the ones being researched. Action research works with the process of learning and how the acquisition of knowledge produces basic insights. Therefore, through epistemology and ontology, research methodologies can be designed in such a way since it focuses on where information is acquired from and if that information exists in the first place. This means that both epistemology and ontology approaches decide where an organisation or an individual may acquire knowledge from and how this knowledge can be used. The modernist perspective of knowledge is that epistemology is quite one-dimensional. This means that knowledge is considered to be ethically and neutral political-wise. It follows then, that for practical knowledge to become useful, or rendered as good, scientific methods must be applied and the knowledge gained should be ‘research-based.’ Otherwise, the knowledge gained will come off as obviously untested and lacking in factual knowledge. Things to be studied move and change naturally and in order to be explained, it is a necessity that they first be understood When it comes to organisations, the concepts mentioned earlier are very important when it comes to research methodologies especially when the goal of an individual is to study the structure of a particular organisation (McTaggart, 1997). In fact, these concepts have been proven to be particularly beneficial for organisations. Epistemology in particular, is used to understand a company’s activities when it comes to their competitive strategies. This is because it is crucial that the research team of the company find ways how and where they can acquire their knowledge and how they can transmit this knowledge within the organisation to improve organisational performance. Emphasis on organisational structures is given, how decisions are made and the relationship of this organisation with technological and market environments (Winter & Munn-Giddings, 2001). In the technology industry for instance, the examination of the activities of the firms and their profiles are used to show the relationships and interactions between markets and technology. In addition to this, market growth is another aspect to be considered. The epistemological framework is applied in order for the analysis of knowledge bases to be brought about. This means that the kind of knowledge categories, its acquisition, organisational structure and the formulation of strategies are needed to be known. Technological development on the other hand, needs to be carefully planned or mapped and studied. Through theory and evidence, conclusions about what a company may set out to do provides the applicability of the theoretical framework. In other words, epistemology works in such a way that it guides an organisation’s strategies so that they may come up with great decisions to further organisational operations and development (Boden, 1988). Ontology, on the other hand, is also very useful for researching organisational structures. Since it basically deals with the different relationships between different phenomena, ontology helps organisations in the sense that all these relationships can be understood better. The success of an organisation is hinged on harmonious relationships, and for successful operations and increasing development of this organisation, these relationships need to be understood. Ontologies are normally thought to be how vocabulary is controlled. However, more than this, it is actually how knowledge is represented. Culture within organisations go by a certain code, which is necessary since many individuals have various views when it comes to the messages that they want to deliver. The different interpretations of different things are done in such a way that it matches an individual’s personality or social attribute. Ontology steps in to bridge these barriers and develop communication within an organisation. It organizes information in such a way that it can be processed, and this information can also be customized over time. Studies on realist ontology has stated that economically oriented organisations that are based on values may face problems such as market pressures, which in turn affects these values in a negative manner (Foster & Akdere, 2007). In the European Union for instance, the social economy sector is of great importance with focus being on the employment problem and how the leaders of the EU are able to effectively deliver their services to the public. Others, on the other hand, view social economy organisations as an important part of civil society, and think of them as advocates of those who are at a disadvantage and those who seek social justice. According to Aiken, (2003), a study was performed on six such organisations in the United Kingdom, via semi-structured interviews, groups discussions and the help of documentary evidence. Organisations that were chosen ranged from commercial organisations and those organisations that are of the co-operative kind. It was through an ontological approach where it was found out that the decline of organisational values are not necessarily inevitable, which means that it can be avoided. This way, ontology can help in finding out effective developmental strategies a company can use and the mistakes that they can stay away from. Conclusion Researching about organisations is not an easy task. Organisational cultures are quite a challenge to try to research about and understand in particular. This paper focused on the usage of two phenomena in particular. These two concepts are namely epistemology and ontology, which are two concepts that can help a researcher be able to understand organisational structures. The collection of data from reliable sources are crucial for a successful research undoubtedly, but all the more will the research be valuable when the knowledge acquired from this knowledge base is found to be proven. References Aiken, M. 2003, ‘Managing values: the reproduction of organisational values in social economy organisations,’ Open University (United Kingdom). Boden, J.M 1988, ‘Competition and technological development in the U.K home industry, an essay in the epistemology of the firm,’ United Kingdom, Computer Industry, pp. 367-376. Bryman, A. 1992, ‘Quantitative and qualitative research: further reflections on their integration,’ Mixing methods: Qualitative and quantitative research, Aldershot: Avebury. Cohen, L. & Manion, L. 1989, ‘Research methods in education,’ London: Routledge. 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Sosa, E. 2008, ‘Knowing full well: the normativity of beliefs as well as performances, ‘ Rutgers Philosophy Department, pp. 1-11. Wheeler, G. & Pereira, L. 2007, ‘Methodological naturalism and epistemic internalism,’ Springer Science + Business Media B.V, pp. 315-318. Winter, R. & Munn-Giddings, C. 2001, ‘A handbook for action research in health and social care,’ Routledge, London and New York. Read More