Epistemology Common parameters and assumptions those are associated with the excellent

way to investigate the nature of the real world.

Ontology Common assumptions that are created to understand the real nature of the society
Methodology Combination of different techniques that are used by the researcher to investigate
different situations.
It is necessary for the researcher to understand the philosophical position of research issues to
understand the different combination of research methods. There are mainly three type of
paradigm to understand the reality, Positivism, Interpretivism and realism.
Positivism:
The concept of Positivism is directly associated with the idea of objectivism. In this kind of
philosophical approach, scientists give their viewpoint to evaluate social world with the help of
objectivity in place of subjectivity (Cooper and Schindler 2006). According to this paradigm,
researchers are interested to collect general information and data from a large social sample
instead of focusing details of research. According to this position, researchers own beliefs have
no value to influence the research study. The positivism philosophical approach is mainly related
with the observations and experiments to collect numeric data (Easter-by-Smith et al 2006).
Interpretivism:
Interpretivism can be referred as the Social Constructionism in the field of management research.
According to this philosophical approach research give importance to their beliefs and value to
give adequate justification for a research problem (Easterby- Smith et al. 2006). With the help of
this philosophical, researchers focus to highlight the real facts and figures according to the
research problem. This kind of philosophical approach understand specific business situation. In
this approach, researchers use small sample and evaluate them in detail to understand the views
of large people (Kasi 2009).
Realism:
This research philosophy mainly concentrates in the reality and beliefs that are already exist in
the environment. In this philosophical approach, two main approaches are direct and critical
realism (McMurray, Pace and Scott 2004). Direct reality means, what an individual feels, see,
hear, etc. On the other hand, in critical realism, individuals argue about their experiences for a
particular situation (Sekaran and Bougie 2010). This is associated with the situation of social
constructivism, because individual tries to prove his beliefs and values.

positivism, in philosophy, generally, any system that confines itself to the data of experience
and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculations. More narrowly, the term designates the
thought of the French philosopher Auguste Comte (17981857
What is Ontology and What is Epistemology?
Ontology is the nature of reality (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988) and the epistemology can be
defined as the relationship between the researcher and the reality (Carson et al., 2001) or how
this reality is captured or known. There are two dominant ontological and epistemological
traditions/ideologies: 1)Positivism, 2)Interpretivism.
Positivism:
The positivist ontology believes that the world is external (Carson et al., 1988) and that there is a
single objective reality to any research phenomenon or situation regardless of the researchers
perspective or belief (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988). Thus, they take a controlled and structural
approach in conducting research by identifying a clear research topic, constructing appropriate
hypotheses and by adopting a suitable research methodology (Churchill, 1996;Carson et al.,
2001). Positivist researchers remain detached from the participants of the research by creating a
distance, which is important in remaining emotionally neutral to make clear distinctions between
reason and feeling (Carson et al., 2001). They also maintain a clear distinction between science
and personal experience and fact and value judgement. It is also important in positivist research
to seek objectivity and use consistently rational and logical approaches to research (Carson et al.,
2001). Statistical and mathematical techniques are central to positivist research, which adheres to
specifically structured research techniques to uncover single and objective reality (Carson et al.,
2001). The goal of positivist researchers is to make time and context free generalizations. They
believe this is possible because human actions can be explained as a result of real causes that
temporarily precedes their behaviour and the researcher and his research subjects are
independent and do not influence each other (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988). Accordingly, positivist
researchers also attempt to remain detached from the participants of the research by creating
distance between themselves and the participants. Especially, this is an important step in
remaining emotionally neutral to make clear distinctions between reason and feeling as well as
between science and personal experience. Positivists also claim it is important to clearly
distinguish between fact and value judgement. As positivist researchers they seek objectivity and
use consistently rational and logical approaches to research (Carson et al. 2001; Hudson and
Ozanne 1988).
Interpretivism:
The position of interpretivism in relation to ontology and epistemology is that interpretivists
believe the reality is multiple and relative (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988). Lincoln and Guba (1985)
explain that these multiple realities also depend on other systems for meanings, which make it
even more difficult to interpret in terms of fixed realities (Neuman, 2000). The knowledge
acquired in this discipline is socially constructed rather than objectively determined (Carson et
al., 2001, p.5) and perceived (Hirschman, 1985, Berger and Luckman, 1967, p. 3: in Hudson and
Ozanne, 1988).
Interpretivists avoid rigid structural frameworks such as in positivist research and adopt a more
personal and flexible research structures (Carson et al., 2001) which are receptive to capturing
meanings in human interaction (Black, 2006) and make sense of what is perceived as reality
(Carson et al., 2001). They believe the researcher and his informants are interdependent and
mutually interactive (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988). The interpretivist researcher enters the field

with some sort of prior insight of the research context but assumes that this is insufficient in
developing a fixed research design due to complex, multiple and unpredictable nature of what is
perceived as reality (Hudson and Ozanne, 1988). The researcher remains open to new knowledge
throughout the study and lets it develop with the help of informants. The use of such an emergent
and collaborative approach is consistent with the interpretivist belief that humans have the ability
to adapt, and that no one can gain prior knowledge of time and context bound social realities
(Hudson and Ozanne, 1988).
Therefore, the goal of interpretivist research is to understand and interpret the meanings in
human behaviour rather than to generalize and predict causes and effects (Neuman, 2000;
Hudson and Ozanne, 1988). For an interpretivist researcher it is important to understand motives,
meanings, reasons and other subjective experiences which are time and context bound (Hudson
and Ozanne, 1988; Neuman, 2000).
The following table summarizes the differences between the two research paradigms:
Ontology and epistemological differences of positivism and interpretivism
(Adopted from Carson et al. 2001, p. 6)
Ontology
Nature of being/ nature
of the world

Positivist
Have direct access to real world

Interpretivist
No direct access to real world

Reality
Epistemology

Single external reality

No single external reality

Possible to obtain hard, secure

objective knowledge

Understood through
perceived knowledge

Research focus on generalization

and abstraction

Research focuses on the

specific and concrete

Thought governed by hypotheses

and stated theories

Seeking to understand
specific context

Concentrates on description and

explanation

Concentrates on
understanding and
interpretation

Grounds of knowledge/
relationship between
reality and research

Methodology
Focus of research
Role of the researcher

Detached, external observer

Clear distinction between reason
and feeling
Aim to discover external reality
rather than creating the object of
study
Strive to use rational, consistent,
verbal, logical approach

Researchers want to
experience what they are
studying
Allow feeling and reason to
govern actions
Partially create what is
studied, the meaning of
phenomena

Use of pre-understanding is
important
Seek to maintain clear distinction
between facts and value
judgments
Distinction between science and
personal experience
Techniques used by
researcher

Formalized statistical and

mathematical methods
predominant

Distinction between facts and

value judgments less clear
Accept influence from both
science and personal
experience
Primarily non-quantitative

Positivism
This is generally regarded as a scientific approach with methods used that are highly
organised, measurable and based on approaches taken by the scientific community
involved in researching behaviours in the natural world. The researcher will not be
involved with those involved in the research topic and will often use observations as a
method of obtaining information.
Martyn Denscombe (1998) describes how for positivists, the aim of social research is to
discover the patterns and regularities of the social world by using the kind of scientific
methods used to such good effect in the natural sciences.
This image from Visual diary for ATS/MA, Brookes University Oxford and MAO
captures this quite well:

Interpretivist approach.
Livesey, C (2006) Interpretivist methodology leans towards the collection of qualitative
data and uses methods such as unstructured interviews and participant observation that
provides this type of data.
Interpretive researchers realise that they will both influence and be influenced by the
research activity they are involved with and that a relationship between the two will
develop naturally.
Interpretivists believe that it is important for good research that they analyse how
humans interpret activities and that this can be achieved through methods other than
those employed by the positivist approach.
Weber (2004) Excellent researchers simply choose a research method that fits their
purposes and get on with the business of doing their research. They understand both
explicitly and implicitly the criteria that their colleagues will use to evaluate their
research.
Although there are clear distinctions between the two methods some writers contend
that analysis of the two approaches is irrelevant as good researchers should adopt an
approach that best suits the subject or topic.

I would tend favour the Interpretivist approach. Research activity that interests me is
likely to be linked to areas that I am familiar with and therefore it is probable that I
would be an influence in the research process.