MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

themselves as trade union managers and/or exercise managerial
responsibilities in trade unions. It seeks to have academic validity and
practical application arising from those practical experiences.
3.2. PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACH
Self-knowledge is always valuable. Undertaking a PhD has required
that I extend my knowledge of myself into an area which for over 50
years had not troubled me, namely what, in philosophical terms, were
my basic beliefs about the world.
The reason for this act of introversion was the need to determine the
research paradigm which would determine the course of this project.
Morgan (1979) suggests that this term can be used at three levels:-
• At the philosophical level, where it is used to reflect basic beliefs
about the world
• At the social level, where it is used to provide guidelines about how
the researcher should conduct his or her endeavours
• At the technical level, where it is used to specify the methods and
techniques which ideally should be adopted when conducting
research
In precise terms, I needed to address the notions of ontology and
epistemology; the first, according to Blaikie (1993:6), ‘the claims and
assumptions that a particular approach to social enquiry makes about
the nature of social reality’; the second ‘the claims or assumptions
made about the ways in which it is possible to gain knowledge of this
reality.’
The assumptions or beliefs held by researchers are often said to lie on
a continuum between positivism and what is sometimes called
interpretivism and sometimes phenomenology. I have always found
these terms confusing because both of them refer also to a particular
philosophical tradition, the first originated by Weber and the latter
originally by Husserl. Some writers use the terms ‘quantitative and
qualitative’ as a synonym for the opposing ends of this continuum but
that is even more open to criticism because positivists, to take one
example, undertake qualitative research, even if it is only to validate a
quantitative instrument. I think there needs to be a rational reason for
adopting what might otherwise be an ambiguous word. I will therefore
use the term ‘phenomenology’ for two reasons. First, those
philosophers like Heidegger who studied Husserl’s work wanted, in
Blaikie’s (1993:34) words to ‘establish a method that would see life in
terms of itself’. This is a phrase which usefully encompasses most, if
not all, of those who see themselves at this end of the continuum.
Secondly, one can see the word as a metaphor referring to the study of
phenomena in society, in contradistinction from those who study
societal regularities.
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