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The Horizons of Experience: The Limits of Rational Thought upon Irrational Phenomena
Abstract
Social researchers consciously and intentionally set out to understand the life-world (Lebenswelt). It is different than knowing the inanimate world of objects. Social study is systematic and as rigorous as natural science but focuses on human experience. The social world we inhabit cradles all human experience. It is the context for meaning, for all being and becoming. Life is a temporal stream of experience that, if we are to understand it, needs to be kept at bay (bracketing it). In doing so, it is as Husserl said at the 'horizon of experience,' pre-theoretical. It is only through critical reflection that we understand our lived experience in relation to others, present and past. This chapter reflects on Husserl's notion of 'horizon of experience' to intentionally understand the limits of rational thought on irrational objects. It offers insights through these reflections and possibilities for researching information systems applying phenomenology.
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An earlier version of this paper was submitted to the joint IFIP WG 8.1/8.2 conference on method engineering, held in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1996. The paper was presented by a panel at the conference. We are grateful to the reviewers of the paper for their insightful comments. Frank Land also read a previous version of this paper and, as always, made many positive contributions and suggested some important new ideas for the paper. Finally the paper has also benefited greatly from the feedback and suggestions from presentations to Yair Wand and his colleagues at the University of British Columbia and Rudy Hirschheim and colleagues at the University of Houston, Texas.
This article was subsequently published in Logistics Information Management, Volume 10 Issue 5.
In this paper, we argue that the path to better IS evaluation in organizations is to get beyond the dualisms of subject/object, mind/body, and cognition/action that limit our analysis, under- standing, and practice of evaluation in the flow of organiza- tional life. We present a discussion of the unity of cognition and action using the work of phenomenologists such as Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Henry. We argue that the subject/object dualism as described in the evaluation literature only seems to exist because we accept and depend on another dualism, namely the assumed split between cognition and action. We propose that managers do not apply methods, propose alterna- tives, argue costs and benefits, and attempt to subvert these, in order to judge or decide. Rather the applying, proposing, arguing and subverting—the discourse—is exactly already the judging and the deciding. We proceed to present a set of principles that take the unity of cognition and action seriously. We believe these point to a way of making IS evaluation more skillful while taking into account both the rational and the
This paper presents a framework within which to examine and compare the main philosophical assumptions underpinning management science methods. It takes the position that they all have in common the basic mechanism of modelling, but that they differ in terms of what they model (ontology), how they model (epistemology), and why they model (axiology). A wide range of both hard and soft methods and methodologies ace categorised within the paper. One of the purposes of the framework is to assist in the process of multimethodology—that is, combining together several methods in an intervention. In particular, it will assist users in understanding both the implicit or explicit assumptions underlying methods, and their principle aims and purposes, in order to be able to make more informed and critically aware choices when designing particular combinations in practice.Journal of the Operational Research Society (2003) 54, 559–570. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601436
The interpretive approach to organizational research has been gaining increasing attention as a legitimate alternative to the more traditional positivist approach. The organizational literature has already provided thorough descriptions of each approach, and clarified the differences between them. Indeed, it often appears that the two approaches are opposed, with the differences irreconcilable.
This paper will go beyond the differences and establish an integrated framework for the two approaches. An actual, published organizational study will be used as an exemplar for the integrated framework (Nardulli 1978, 1979).
Human Relations was founded in 1947 as a collaborative transatlantic project between the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in London and the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Its objective was to encourage theoretical and methodological contributions to the social sciences and to promote their practical application to solve community problems. This article traces the development and evolution of the journal and seeks to assess its contribution to social science research. It examines the intellectual role of the Tavistock Institute and the tensions and pressures that the journal has faced over the past 60 years as it has sought to fulfil its mission and achieve its academic goals.
An abstract is not available.
The use of enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems to deploy the panoptic gaze remains unresearched in the UK. Though there are studies outside the UK which use panoptic theory to investigate ERP systems, they do not analyse the influence the interaction between ERP technology and organisational culture have on the development of the panoptic gaze. The aim emerging from these issues was to understand whether ERP technology, organisational culture, or a combination of both could support development of the panoptic gaze in an organisation from the UK. The method selected was a qualitative case study of a UK organisation’s finance division, and the techniques used were semi-structured interviews and observations. The study suggests the ERP technology provided an infrastructure from which the panoptic gaze could be deployed. It was not deployed in this instance however, as the finance division’s culture did not emphasise workforce surveillance. The study therefore suggests that in addition to ERP technology a culture emphasising workforce surveillance was needed to develop the panoptic gaze. The findings support the social shaping concept as it was the finance division’s cultural context that influenced whether the ERP technology would be used to deploy the panoptic gaze.
The field of information systems (IS) has evolved for more than three decades. Although many schools of thought have emerged and even become well established, few historical analyses of research paradigms and methodologies have been undertaken. One of the rare exceptions is Orlikowski & Baroudi (1991). Yet, the IS research community has evolved substantially since 1991 in many aspects. A variety of journal outlets have emerged and become well established. More attention has been paid to paradigmatic and methodological issues. Political and professional contexts have also changed noticeably. Therefore, it should be an opportune time for the field to ask: ‘What changes are manifested in journal publications?’‘Is the field making progress regarding pluralism in IS research?’‘How will the field's publications practices change in the future?’ The purpose of this paper is to investigate these questions and, in turn, reflect on the paradigmatic and methodological progress made since 1991. We examined 1893 articles published in eight major IS publication outlets between 1991 and 2001. Our findings suggest that the long-term endeavours of interpretivist researchers might need to continue because the paradigmatic progress appears somewhat inconsequential; positivist research still dominates 81% of published empirical research. In particular, US journals, as opposed to European journals, tend to be more positivist, quantitative, cross-sectional and survey oriented. With respect to research design, survey research is still the most widely used method (41%), although case studies have gained substantial recognition (36%). Further, the increase of qualitative research (30%), empirical studies (61%) and longitudinal cases (33%) at the expense of laboratory experiments (18%) might suggest that IS researchers have become more interested in obtaining scientific knowledge in real world settings. In summary, we suggest that the field has been dominated by the positivist paradigm, despite calls to the contrary. Indeed, if the field was to truly embrace pluralism, it would have to find ways to fundamentally change the publication practices of the journal system, including the current tenure and promotion system, which pose considerable obstacles for the acceptance of alternative paradigms.
This article discusses the conduct and evaluation of interpretive research in information systems. While the conventions for evaluating information systems case studies conducted according to the natural science model of social science are now widely accepted, this is not the case for interpre- tive field studies. A set of principles for the con- duct and evaluation of interpretive field research in information systems is proposed, along with their philosophical rationale. The usefulness of the principles is illustrated by evaluating three published interpretive field studies drawn from the IS research literature. The intention of the
In this paper I have attempted to identify some of the structural characteristics that are typical of the "psychological' environments of organisms. We have seen that an organism in an environment with these characteristics requires only very simple perceptual and choice mechanisms to satisfy its several needs and to assure a high probability of its survival over extended periods of time. In particular, no "utility function' needs to be postulated for the organism, nor does it require any elaborate procedure for calculating marginal rates of substitution among different wants.
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