The critiques to positivism direction of inquiry in comprehending the complexity of governance in managing cities competitiveness

Abstract

The complexities in managing cities are real in the ethos of global cities competition and indeed, the governance of urban complexities are further compounded by the discoveries of new tangible and intangible determinants, vehemently contributed by the increased structural changes on a global scale ceased to be the main axes and reference points in societal organization. Whilst deterministic about deploying competitive cities interventions, the initiatives have always exposed local authorities to other related issues in the governance of complexity, which usually infers to their organizing capacity in attaining organizations competitiveness. For most modernists' scholars, they tend to agreed that learning is associated with efficiency and thus, it exposed organizations to learn new impositions of social artefacts. Exaggerated from realist ontology definitive foundation of structural functionalism, it clearly underlined Weberian positivism bureaucratic efficiency, which echoed local authorities in attaining the balancing act between 'de jure' and 'de facto' that constitutionally empowered in managing cities in the ethos of globalization. On the contrary, the realism in local authorities suggested otherwise, which perhaps lead to epistemological debates on the governmentality. Apparently, local authorities are facing dramatic challenges not only reframing to achieving global interventions on cities competitiveness and urban sustainability interventions - de jure; but also intensely faced-off with severe ignorance, resentment and dissonance from the entire workforce itself - de facto. As such, it warrants this paper to explore the validity on the dominant used of positivism direction of inquiry among social sciences researchers' on organizational bureaucratic efficiency, when most positivism line of inquiry researchers suggested that local authorities are learning organization entities, or is it so?