Paradigm Incommensurability

Conceptual Overview

The debate on paradigms and their role in the organizational research process was given momentum by a book published by Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan in 1979 titled: Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis. A central argument in their book was that intellectual traditions are underpinned by certain scientific and political assumptions (i.e., paradigms).

One of the more contentious aspects of their work was that instead of such paradigms being arenas for open, scholarly debate, they represent, instead, hermetically sealed intellectual compartments. Therefore, a synthesis between paradigms is not possible, because in their pure form they are contradictory, being based on at least one set of metatheoretical assumptions. Researchers can operate in different paradigms sequentially, over time, but they cannot operate in more than one paradigm at any given point in time, because in accepting the assumptions of one, the researchers defy the assumptions of all the others.

Their paradigm incommensurability thesis sparked an intense debate in the field of organization studies. The increased fragmentation of perspectives in organization studies and the ensuing paradigm wars attracted a number of responses. (1) Some organizational theorists, usually labeled integrationists, advocate the need for an overarching integrated paradigm. (2) Other researchers, referred to as protectionists, are keen to preserve the identity and distinctiveness of each paradigm. (3) Another camp, usually labeled pluralists, reject the thesis of paradigm incommensurability, advocating the importance of understanding organizational phenomena through multiple paradigms. (4) Finally, some researchers challenge the usefulness of the concept of paradigms as logical and cultural constructs, directing attention to the discursive nature of organizational research and management theory.

Critical Commentary and Future Directions

Supporters of the integrationist position argue that organizational analysis is in a “preparadigmatic” state as it has yet to achieve scientific maturity. Jeffrey Pfeffer believes that there is no future for organization studies unless the academic community reaches consensus over a dominant paradigm, preferably positivism.

The protectionists suggest that paradigms, as discrete intellectual lenses, are not so much complementary as competing, each enshrining a particular [Page 1218]worldview. David Silverman suggested that the attempt to blur the boundaries between paradigms could act as a major obstacle to the growth of organization studies. In the meantime, the position taken by Norman Jackson and Pippa Carter was that incommensurability has emancipatory value for it serves to protect “alternative” modes of organizational inquiry from the imperialistic tentacles of positivism.

An increasing number of researchers question the paradigm incommensurability thesis and advocate degrees of commensurability between them, as well as communication across paradigms and the need to engage in multiparadigm research. The pluralists believe that multiple paradigms enhance theorists' abilities to think paradoxically by entertaining conflicting knowledges simultaneously. Marianne Lewis and Andy Grimes advanced a useful pluralist strategy of research based on the principle of fostering more accommodating understandings by juxtaposing paradigm representations. In the United Kingdom, multiparadigm thinking and research was advocated strongly by John Hassard. His empirical research on the fire service is an illustration of how researchers could muster more than one paradigm and write multifaceted accounts of the same organizational phenomenon. The contributions of multiparadigm research accrue both at a pragmatic and philosophical level. On a pragmatic level, this approach aids the exploration of pluralism and paradox, facilitating the development of understandings more in tune with the diversity, complexity and ambiguity of organizational life. On a philosophical level, multiparadigm inquiry encourages greater reflexivity in research.

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