Government Business Relations - Research Paper Example

? Module 2 Module 2 Introduction The inquiry of any issue relating to social science is intrinsically based on two foundations. These foundations are ontology and epistemology, on the basis of which a significant research is conducted. The methodology and methods for the research are entailed with the ontological and epistemological bases of the inquiry. In order to conduct a professional research in the domain of social science, the relevance of issue is necessarily required to be addressed in philosophical terms. Regarding to this, the core purpose of this paper is to evaluate and understand the philosophical underpinning of different perspectives concerning knowledge and theory. As a matter of fact, there are number of paradigms which have been substituted in order to provide reasoning and conducting inquiry for a respective subject of matter. Careful consideration will be given to paradigms of inquiry including positivism, post positivism, critical theory and constructivism. Furthermore, the paper incorporates a framework outlining ontology, epistemology, methodology and methods along with distinction to all the aforementioned paradigms. This is to form a basis for the development of research protocols insisting understanding of the relationship between government and business impacting economic and public policies in Azerbaijan.  Subjective and Objective Perspectives Reality, knowledge and truth have been long debated by those who have tried to discover the meanings and indications within their environment. It is due to this reason that truth and knowledge have been discussed and interpreted by different schools of thought including subjectivism and objectivism. Herein, it is integral to note that objectivism view truth as a scientific figure which can be revisited and measured. Any statement which has been posed in contradiction to measureable results is considered as false according to objectivism perspective of knowledge and truth (MacDonald, 2009). In order to evaluate the subjectivist view of knowledge and truth, it is imperative to discuss truth in distinction to objectivism. As noted above, objectivism views truth to be measureable which is an inappropriate stance for philosophers and investigators who believe that truth and knowledge is subjective. It has also been marked that anything and everything that has concerns or impact over humans have to be studied through the lens of subjectivism. Meaningfulness to the beliefs has determined knowledge and truth about objects and aspects within environment. Subjectivism suspends the presence of factual information which is measurable. Consequently, any statement which is presented in the form of figure is considered as non-social inquiry for subjectivists (MacDonald, 2009). According to the identified distinctions of subjective and objective perspectives of reality, knowledge, truth and theory, the perspective of current research that is to see the influence of the relationship of government and business on public and economic policy of Azerbaijan is subjective. Its subjective perspective is based on the issue which the thesis is relating to that is the assessment of public and economic policy of Azerbaijan in the context of government and business relationships that requires a combination of reflective and critical thinking. In order to assess the aimed question of inquiry, it is important to acquire a subjective perspective of truth, knowledge, reality and theory (MacDonald, 2009). More appropriate reasons and significance of this will be developed in the following headings. Philosophical Orientation The philosophical orientation of the issue of inquiry on the bases of developed ontological and epistemological grounds is found to be identified in the scope of critical theory. Critical theory is the school thought which propose to inquire the society and culture with the perspective of reflective thinking upon it. Critical theory emphasizes to pose critique on society and culture by the implementation of knowledge of social sciences and humanities on society. The stress on reflective thinking is the directedness towards a relative school of thought. Relativity plays its role in two faces for critical theory. Firstly, the relativity is accountable to the specification of society on which the critique has to be posed. Secondly, the personal reflection on society is relative to the individual who is reflecting upon certain society. According to Max Horkheimer, critical theory is the emancipation of human “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them” (Hartas, 2010, p.45). It illuminates the purpose of critical theory that can be found in the thesis on which the research is aimed to be conducted. Critical theory has a contrary relationship to positivism and post-positivism because of the difference in its epistemological and ontological orientations. Positivism holds a realist and objectivist account in which truth and knowledge are identified through its measurability. On the other hand, relativistic account replaces measurability with interpretivism which is subjective in nature (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). However, critical theory is in conformity with the constructivist account in the domain of research inquiry because of the similarity in the ontological grounds, epistemological grounds, methodology and methods for inquiry. The philosophical orientation of currently aimed research is notably associated with critical theory (Hartas, 2010). Research Framework Researchers conduct various forms of inquiries on the grounds of ontology, epistemology and methodology. However, these grounds are rather practically implemented during a research process. These perspectives are present in the study in terms of implicit and explicit factors. Ontological Grounds The sole purpose of utilizing ontological grounds in the research is to make sure that a research approach is critical in nature. On the basis of ontological reasoning, researchers are able to forward a respective research protocols. Ontological grounds have the basic postulate of inquiring about the world as real. Secondly, the nature of the world is a significant inquiry which is made with the implication of ontological ground during investigation process (Smith, 2005). Ontology deals with the questions which are related to the nature of reality, truth, existence and being. In the conduction of any research on professional level, there are two main types of ontological grounds which are acquired by all of the researchers. These ontological bases are realist ideology of reality, existence and truth and the other one is relative ontological ground. The realist account is based on objectivity of truth and it incorporates measurability to evaluate the reality and existence. On the other hand, the relativist ontological ground is highly subjective in which testability of facts becomes replaced with interpretation of reality and existence on subjective level (MacDonald, 2009). The ontological grounds for the aimed study are relativistic because of its requirement of inquiry that is strictly focused on the political structure of Azerbaijan. The domain of political science in order to assess its knowledge and reality is conventionally noted to be identified in a subjective perspective. The ontology of this research is persistent to relativist account for the researcher to inquire with reflective mindset (Smith, 2005). Epistemological Grounds Epistemological grounds for research play the role of a director which guides the researcher about acquiring the appropriate methodology and methods to fulfill the aimed objective of inquiry in an appropriate and significant manner (Bryman, 2012). Epistemology incorporates several distinct beliefs regarding the acquisition of knowledge. In the domain of research, epistemological grounds provide the researcher with the sufficient identification of his relationship with the knowledge which has been aimed to collect. In addition, it helps the reader to investigate the appropriate way of knowledge collection for any specific issue of inquiry for research (Smith, 2005). There are two epistemological perspectives which are acquired by researchers to inquire an issue for social science which include the objective perspective and the subjective perspective. In objective inquiry, the knowledge is believed to be independently in existence with the researcher which he aims to acquire through testing its truthiness. On the other hand, subjective perspective contains believes regarding the existence of knowledge dependent with the researcher to disclose it through interpretation (MacDonald, 2009). The acquisition of knowledge for the aimed study is subjective; however it also contains an objective orientation on the scope of epistemology. The reason for epistemology to be subjective for the current research is due to the assessment with a reflective mindset along with ontological grounds of relativism. The objectivism in the knowledge is only because of its existence in the world which directs towards the existence of knowledge however further inquiry in this domain is require to be entailed from subjectivism(Smith, 2005). Methodology In the paradigm of inquiry, methodology is the most initial step that directs towards the planning of the frame of research. Methodology is strictly based on the developed ontological and epistemological beliefs for any issue of study. The ontological and epistemological grounds provide the researcher with the idea of an appropriate research methodology according to which the researcher plans the direction of the research (Guba & Lincoln, 1994). There are two major types of research methodologies which are being utilized. However the selection of research methodology is highly based on two factors in which its conformity with ontological and epistemological believes is prior to the second that is the issue of inquiry. The research methodologies include empirical methodology and the interpretivist methodology. Empirical methodology contains the conformity with realist ontological and objective epistemological beliefs. Empirical methodology emphasizes on factual objective data on the bases of which the conclusion has to be derived in the form of numbers. Most importantly, empirical methodology has a property of testability by which its conclusion can be reexamined. On the other hand, interpretivist methodology is wholly comprised of subjective analysis through the interpretation of circumstances, cases, interviews or observations (Smith, 2005). On the bases of ontological and epistemological grounds, the methodology which has to be incorporated to inquire the proposed question for research is to be found in interpretivism. Interpretivism is a methodology in which research reflects upon the acquired data with a critical point of view and interprets it to derive a conclusion (Smith, 2005). Method In the paradigm of inquiry, research methods are of significant importance which allows the researcher to practically imply the previously developed beliefs and theories. There are two main types of research methods which are quantitative research method and qualitative research method (Smith, 2005). The quantitative research method is contained with data in the objective form that is number or facts on the basis of which the conclusion is being derived for an issue through testing and calculations. On the other hand qualitative method is strictly subjective which incorporates the types of data which contain the capacity of being disclosed through interpretation. The relative ontological grounds and the subjective epistemological grounds provide the opportunity of qualitative method to be applied in the assessment of an issue related to society or social science (Hartas, 2010). In the combination with interpretivist methodology, this research will be conducted by utilizing the qualitative research method in which the data is acquired through interpretation of interviews, case studies and observations related to the question of inquiry. In order to inquire an issue related to society, most of the researchers acquire the methodology of interpretive analysis which entails qualitative research method (Bryman, 2012). In this research, the collection of data for interpretations will include the techniques of documentary analysis, interviews and reflection journals. Implication of the Framework In the previous headings the philosophical framework of the research has been developed. The philosophical orientation of the research topic that is associated with the ideology of critical theorists. From this philosophical association, the ontology has been derived to be relativistic because the research topic is associated with certain society and its political assessment which comes under the scope of political science in which theories and knowledge are mainly dependent upon subjective perspective. The relativistic ontology is followed by epistemology which is subjective for the research. The determination of methodology and methods for any professional research is to be derived from the ontological and epistemological foundations of a research. Similarly for the aimed research, the methodology which has been derived from the relativistic ontology and subjectivist epistemology is comprised non interpretivistic nature. In regards with this, the paradigm of inquiry which has been adopted for this study is qualitative research method. For this study, the data which will be acquired to interpret is will be consisting of documentary analysis, interviews and reflection journals for which reflective thinking along with critical mindset will be of essence. Its association with critical thinking provides a pathway to assess and provide an internal critique to the certain society which has been aimed to be analyzed. Through qualitative method of research, the study will not only explore the experiences and happenings in Azerbaijan but it will also explore and evaluate the interpretations and meanings of the interpreted data by which the aimed objective of the research will more likely to be fulfilled with excellence. Conclusion This paper has provided the philosophical framework of aimed inquiry on the basis of which the researcher has acquired an overall idea of the aimed research to be conducted. The thesis, that is to evaluate the impact of the relationship of government and business on the public policies and the economic policies of Azerbaijan, has to be explored by utilizing the interpretivist research methodology that is the qualitative method of research. It has been entailed from the analysis of the issue in the domain of philosophical inquiry by which the relative ontological and subjective epistemological grounds of the thesis was identified. The issue contains its association with the philosophical school of thought that is critical theory. The developed framework has also been implied on the issue of inquiry by which the ways of data collection were identified in conformity with qualitative research method. The conclusion of the thesis will be derived through the reflective and critical interpretation of documentaries, reflection journals and interviews from which the researcher will only acquire the experiences but also the meanings which will be disclosed through interpretation. The dependency of researcher with the existence of the issue aroused the authenticity of subjective interpretive analysis as the most appropriate research methodology. List of References Bryman, A., 2012. Social Research Methods. New York: Oxford University Press. Guba, E.G. & Lincoln, Y.S., 1994. Competing paradigms in qualitative research. Handbook of qualitative research, pp.163-94. Hartas, D., 2010. Educational Research and Inquiry: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. London: Continuum. MacDonald, A.J., 2009. The World Perceived. London: A. J. MacDonald. Smith, M.J., 2005. Philosophy and methodology of the social sciences. Thousand Oaks: SAGE. Read More