Research Concepts for Management Studies

Alan Berkeley Thomas

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781134293827
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

By its very nature, management is a multidisciplinary enterprise. Despite this, management research has tended to be organized around a number of discrete management disciplines with their own methodological outlooks. As a result, researchers in different fields often find it difficult to appreciate work outside their own area of specialization, so inhibiting much-needed collaboration across disciplinary boundaries.

Management has emerged as a major area of research that has attracted students in growing numbers. However, there are still relatively few texts that are tailored specifically to the needs and interests of management researchers. Together with its companion volume, Research Skills for Management Studies (Routledge, 2003), this book offers management students a challenging but accessible introduction to research methods and concepts, irrespective of their field of specialization.

1
What does it all mean?

Language, research and management studies

To understand any complex human activity we must grasp the language and approach of the individuals who pursue it.

Kerlinger (1986)

When American football was first broadcast on British television, it was a new experience for me. I viewed the opening matches with a mixture of fascination and bemusement. This was clearly an exciting sport to watch, but I found the commentary baffling. The ‘snap’, a ‘fumble’, ‘first down and ten’? The words were familiar but they didn’t make any sense. What did it all mean?

I persisted for a few weeks, trying to fathom out the game’s rules as I viewed the play, but without much success. Unfortunately for me, the match commentators assumed that the spectators already possessed the knowledge that was needed to understand their commentaries.

Eventually I realized that I was never going to understand this game simply by watching it. What I had acquired as a spectator was merely an external impression of the game, but what I really wanted was an internal comprehension. To get that, I needed to grasp the language and approach of the individuals who played it. Otherwise, my understanding would be superficial. I would never be able to appreciate what was really going on.

One characteristic of modern society is that it consists very largely of groups and individuals pursuing ‘complex activities’. Many of these pursuits, whether academic disciplines, technical occupations or even simply leisure pastimes or sports, are frequently difficult or even impossible for outsiders to understand. At one extreme, physical sciences such as particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology, have become so specialized that a minor ‘popularization’ industry has grown up, seeking to translate them into a form that inexpert readers can appreciate. Yet even everyday occupations, such as management, have become less intelligible to the uninitiated as they have become more complex.

In part, the difficulty of getting to grips with unfamiliar fields arises because each tends to deploy its own special language. Management research¹ is, of course, another complex activity pursued by people who use a special language or even several languages. Developing competence in management research involves much more than simply learning a new vocabulary, but getting to grips with novel terms and the ideas they express is still an essential part of that process. As Danziger indicates (Box 1.1), language is the most fundamental of our research tools and yet one that is typically taken for granted. Attending to the language of research is, however, very necessary. It enables us to develop what Hughes (2002, p. 3) has called ‘conceptual literacy’, so enhancing the quality of our research thinking.

Box 1.1 Language as a research instrument

Among the instruments of investigation the most basic one is often overlooked. It is language. Without language the other instruments could not be constructed, the results of investigations could not be described, hypotheses could not be formulated, and investigators could not arrive at a common understanding of what they were doing. No wonder that the role of language is so often overlooked in texts dealing with the technique of investigation. It is a case of the fish being the last animal to discover water. The entire investigative enterprise is so immersed in language that it is simply taken for granted and its role becomes invisible. Language, however, is not a neutral medium; it is crucial for the constitution of the phenomena under investigation.

(Danziger, 1997, p. 187)

Some features of language and discourse

In one sense, we all know what language is because we use it all the time. Whether in everyday life or in specialized contexts, language is the means whereby we attempt to communicate our meanings to others by means of writing and speech. Yet, despite its familiarity, language use is always accompanied by problems of meaning, interpretation or understanding. This is seen most obviously in the case of foreign languages; a page of Arabic or Japanese writing is completely unintelligible to someone who only understands English. However, because the same concepts can be represented by different words in different languages, it is often possible to translate from one to another. Alternatively, a lingua franca may develop which serves as a common language, enabling communication between those who cannot understand each other’s native tongue. A lingua franca may thus serve to promote relationships between individuals and groups that would otherwise remain apart.

Language and discourse

We can think of language as a medium for the conduct of discourse. The term ‘discourse’ has been much in vogue in the social sciences, and discourse analysis has become an important genre of social research.² The way discourse is understood here is akin to that adopted by Ross (1991, p. xviii):

I understand discourse as conversation, developed over time, centering around certain problems, setting the terms of discussion for those who enter into it, and at the same time responding to the different intentions of participants. Discourses are numerous and overlapping …

A discourse consists of a language – ‘a special idiom or rhetoric’ (Ross, 1991, p. xix) together with a vocabulary – and the actual contributions constructed using this language. The language therefore involves both a style of communication as well as the use of a specialized lexicon. In science the lexicon may be partly specific to a given group (what I have called its substantive vocabulary) and partly shared with members of other groups (what I have called its methodological vocabulary). Similarly, the rhetorical style may be partly specific and partly shared. For example, scientists are expected to communicate in a particular manner (see Box 1.2) but non-scientists may also choose this precise, impersonal mode of communication under certain circumstances.

Language is a means of communication but it does much more than simply carry explicit meanings from one person to another. It also has a social function. By definition, language is a social phenomenon; a speaker presumes a listener just as a writer presumes a reader. A language is therefore shared by individuals and groups. It helps to give different people and the groups to which they belong, or which they aspire to join, their identity. Language is therefore a central element of a group’s culture. Joining a cultural group involves, amongst other things, learning its language.

Box 1.2 The language of science

The common features of scientific language use include:

• direct and precise expression, avoiding vagueness and ambiguity

• objective, rather than personalized, intuitive or speculative

• specific, and logical in presentation

• unemotional

• exact and exclusive use of terms

• standardized meanings and styles of expression

• cautious rather than flamboyant or dogmatic

• economical style using only the words necessary

• words have precise and unchanging meanings.

Adapted from Hertzler (1965, p. 353)

Discourse communities

The social integration of communities and groups depends importantly upon the common language their members share. The emergence of specialized languages (dialects, argots) that are used and understood only by sub-groups may weaken integration. Dauber (Box 1.3) refers to these specialized language groups as ‘discourse communities’. Communication difficulties are likely to arise between such groups and outsiders. Ultimately the wider community may fall apart if sub-groups develop strong identities and find themselves unable to communicate across group boundaries about significant matters. In order to continue to interact and cooperate effectively, group members may therefore need to acquire new vocabularies and rhetorical styles. In Ross’s (1991) terms, they need to acquire a new language.

One example of the emergence of a specialized language is the burgeoning growth of terms associated with computers and information technology. Barry (1991) has dubbed this ‘technobabble’. When computers were largely confined to work organizations, the growth of computer departments created a new discourse community and new problems of communication with those in other functions. With the spread of personal computing the division between those who are and those who are not computer literate has been extended beyond the confines of the work organization and into society as a whole.

A second example is the injection of poststructuralist and postmodernist language into the broader discourse of management studies.

Box 1.3 Language and discourse communities

Through language, groups of individuals form what can be termed discourse communities. By using slang and jargon unknown to the outsider, individual members of specific groups form bonds of identification with one another. The language used within a given community serves both to construct a vision of the world into which initiates are socialized and to draw a line between those in the group and those on the outside. In official language, this occurs through the use of technical terms – acronyms and jargon. In informal language, it is accomplished by knowledge of terms whose meanings are not available except through direct participation in the group – meanings that appear in no formal glossary.

(Dauber, 1999)

In a short space of time, a whole new vocabulary appeared: deconstruction, intertextuality, plurivocity, heteroglossia, panopticism, performativity and so on. Initially,...