Normative/Descriptive Distinction

The categories of “the normative” and “the descriptive” correspond to moral and factual statements, respectively. In the first case, normative assertions about values and “what should be” are traditionally investigated as the subject matter of moral philosophy. In the second case, propositions about facts or “what is” are typically examined in the descriptive realm of the natural and social sciences.

The methodological issues raised by the distinction are long standing. Notably, Hume's characterization of the difference between ought and is prompted the question of whether normative statements can be derived from factual descriptions. Moore addressed this question by asserting that defining good in terms of natural objects commits the naturalistic fallacy. On the other hand, social scientists have long expressed uneasiness about collapsing normative and descriptive categories, fearing that doing so would render facts too arbitrary and relativistic for objective analysis.

The partitioning of the normative and the descriptive in business research is also due to the influence of conventional economics, which, in the tradition of social science, tends to relegate normative considerations to the arena of ethics while limiting positivistic economics to factual, testable hypotheses. This separation prompts different approaches to the same subject matter. Consider poverty, for example. An ethicist would likely consider the rights claims of the poor, possibly as a justification for ameliorating disparities of income and wealth. In comparison, a positivistic economist would tend to focus on describing or documenting various indicators of poverty and wealth. When the distinction between the normative and the descriptive is followed rigidly, the resulting tendency is to partition ethical inquiry couched in traditional notions of right and wrong from the factual analysis of social issues.

Despite the influence of conventional economics, the distinction between the normative and the descriptive is more often blurred than not in business and society research, due to the cross-fertilization of ethics and social science in the field. For instance, it is common for business and society scholars to document both the facts and moral dimensions of issues such as consumer safety, employment conditions, business and community relations, and ecological sustainability. This coexistence of the normative and the descriptive results from a symbiotic relationship in which one approach informs the other in setting research agendas and influencing applications of research findings.