Abstract Book of the 10th International Conference on Social Sciences in the 21st Century
Year: 2025
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Social Science Paradigms in Management and Organization Studies: Past, Present, and Future
Severin Hornung, Thomas Höge
ABSTRACT:
Philosophy of science is applied in a meta-theoretical model of academic disputes connected to epistemological and ideological heterogeneity in management and organization studies. Ontological (theories), epistemological (methods), and axiological (objectives) assumptions of functionalist (normative), interpretive (hermeneutic), critical (radical structuralist, humanist), and postmodern (post-structuralist) paradigms are contrasted. This includes a review and application of the meta-theory of scientific paradigms in organizational research. The model of paradigm conflict contextualizes controversies, establishing connections with prior debates to reappraise current discourses. Focusing on critical management studies, four paradigmatic conflicts are discussed, including the evidence-debate between critical scholars and the positivist evidence-based management movement; the performativity-debate problematizing collaboration with management; the managerialism-debate, exposing rifts between radical critical structuralists in the labor process tradition and postmodernists; and the ideology-debate, representing spill-over effects on adjacent fields, exemplified by critical work and organizational psychology. Core controversies are summarized, backgrounds outlined, and current examples discussed. Dynamics are analyzed as paradigm delineation, differentiation, disintegration, and dissemination. Future trajectories and implications for the field are outlined. The presented meta-theoretical model can facilitate critical-reflexive and politically informed scholarly practice and conscious self-positioning of researchers within management and organization studies as an ideologically contested terrain of social science.
Keywords: Critical Management Studies, Epistemology, Ideology, Philosophy of Science