Surrounded by White Water: Conflicts in Management Sciences Regarding Truth and Reality

Abstract

This paper addresses two academic perspectives having different implications for management scholars. The first reflects the thinking of an empiricist or positivist, a perspective familiar to graduates of schools of business in universities throughout North America. The second represents postmodernism, a perspective familiar to social scientists but most likely foreign to graduates of schools of business in North America. This paper speculates on how differing assumptions about the nature of truth and reality can be used to interpret a hypothetical dilemma faced by two management scholars invited to respond to a perplexing situation facing a business executive. Further, this paper brings to management scholars a debate that has raged with force for decades across the social sciences and places that debate within a framework not unfamiliar to management scholars.