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Against the So-called ‘Standard Account of Method’

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Abstract

Explains why the debate initiated by Stephen Lloyd Smith’s plea to jettison the so-called ‘Standard Account of Method’ (SAM)—the conventional wisdom of how research philosophy and methodology ought to be taught to management students—is of the utmost importance to the teaching of management studies in British universities. Identifies a fully-developed presentation of the SAM framework in a well-considered and widely-used text-book— ‘Research Methods for Managers’ by John Gill and Phil Johnson—and demonstrates that the book’s argument is both logically and scholarly defective. Identifies the SAM as a form of dogmatic rationalism; one that is oblivious to the possibility of applying deductive inference in the service of a critical rationalism. Outlines the logical role of deductive testing in empirical research and demonstrates that there need be no great divide between nomothetic and ideographic research problems once appropriate distinctions are drawn between different forms of explanation. Nonetheless, questions the relevance of these research problems to the concerns of practising managers by highlighting the contrast, as made by philosophers, between social science and social technology. Concludes that the continued presentation and defence of the SAM, as the conventional wisdom of how research philosophy and methodology ought to be taught to management students, is thoroughly lamentable.

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References

  1. Acknowledgements: A previous version of this paper was presented at Philosophy of Management 2012, St Anne’s College, University of Oxford, 19–22 July 2012. The author is grateful for the comments that he received at this event and for those that he received from Stephen L. Smith and the anonymous referees and managing editor of Philosophy of Management. The author’s thoughts on the problem that is addressed by this paper also benefited from his participation in a weekend study school on the legacy of Karl Popper that was organised by the Department of Continuing Education, Oxford University, in November 2007. He gratefully acknowledges the efforts of the Department and its tutors. The author would also like to thank David Miller for extensively commenting on an earlier version of this paper and Mark A. Notturno for organising various discussions about the philosophy of critical rationalism to which the author has contributed. The responsibility for all opinions and errors rests with the author. Stephen Lloyd Smith ‘Naïve Expertise: Spacious Alternative to the Standard Account of Method’ Philosophy of Management Volume 9 Number 3 2010 pp 95–133

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  110. An agent ‘A’ understands the exchange value of money in British society and recognises the British monetary currency of the pound sterling; ‘A’ thinks that £1000 has a considerable exchange value; In a situation in which ‘A’ finds sterling money that has a considerable value to him he thinks that the appropriate action to do is to take possession of the money; ‘A’ always acts appropriately to a situation as he sees it; There was a situation ‘S’ in which £1000 of money was sat on a garden wall without an apparent owner; ‘A’ was the first person to observe situation ‘S’ soon after it occurred. Therefore, ‘A’ took possession of the £1000 of money in the situation ‘S’.

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  112. Karl Popper Op. Cit. 1996 p 169. For an example of this approach to deductive explanation see, Rod Thomas ‘The ‘Credit Crunch’ from a Critical Rationalist Perspective’ Philosophy of Management Volume 11 Number 1 2012 pp 5–24.

  113. Karl Popper Op. Cit. 1996 p 178

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  122. They are sometimes joined by teachers of social technologies like accounting, operations management, and information systems who are equally misguided by SAM. Such teachers, if they follow the SAM framework, will equate research with the exploration of their subject from a social science angle, treating questions of philosophy and methodology as answered by SAM, and mastery of technique as uninteresting mere ‘know-how’ or ‘skills’.

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    Rod Thomas

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Thomas, R. Against the So-called ‘Standard Account of Method’. Philos. of Manag. 13, 43–72 (2014). https://doi.org/10.5840/pom20141314

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