Truth

Conceptual Overview

Conceptualizing a field is inherently problematic, particularly when it deals with truth. Central to conceptualizing truth, however, is the idea that claims are made about its nature and in that way they establish what truth is. But of course, conceptualizing what truth is, is in itself a form of truth making. One brings certain characteristics into focus while screening out or silencing other thoughts and ideas. Thus, conceptualizations, rather than being neutral, as they are sometimes presented, are inherently theory-laden. In understanding how truth is conceptualized, it is of critical importance to examine closely how different researchers bind concepts together to establish what constitutes the truth of reality and the nature of particular phenomena. What follows provides an overview of three broad schools of thought that have shaped the theorization of truth in organization studies: positivism, social constructivism, and postmodernism.

Positivism asserts that truth should be determined by reason and factual analysis, which is equated with objectivity rather than faith, dogma, or religious teachings, which are said to be subjectively derived. This means that for a statement to be sanctioned as truth, it needs to be grounded in observable facts in the material world. Positivists are thus proponents of realism, empiricism, and the scientific method. Indeed, a reliance on empirical science is often considered to be the hallmark of modern rationalism. Such thinking binds truth, science, and its methods to a correspondence with fact. Science is associated with veracity—freedom from deceit or falseness. Positivism has dominated as a theoretical basis of organization studies. It has spawned key theoretical approaches including contingency theory, which is concerned with analyzing organizational structures to identify those that best “fit” given performance criteria. Contingency theorists maintain that the behavior we observe in organizations is the result of patterned causal relationships between an organization's structure and its various contingencies. Their aim is to establish the structure that is optimal as varying according to certain factors or contingencies such as organizational strategy, environment, technology, and so on. For contingency theorists, organizations are treated as an objective reality. Following a natural sciences model of investigation, contingency theorists have asserted that it is possible for science to achieve universal truths about social facts.

Social constructivism holds that truth is constructed by social processes. It is a school of thought introduced by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in their seminal text, The Construction of Social Reality. The focus here is on uncovering the ways in which individuals and groups create their version of perceived reality. It is argued by social constructionists that truth is the result of human choices rather than laws resulting from divine will or nature. By this, they aim to unsettle the thought that ideas or events may be accepted as “natural,” “neutral,” and “true.” They point to how ideas and events are inventions of particular cultures and societies. They reason that cultural elites are not alone in defining what is real: Ordinary individuals also have ideas or produce bodies of knowledge that define reality.

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