organization, whereas the behavioral model recognized the equal importance of the social system— a system comprised of informal, multidimensional, and nebulous networks of relationships between individuals or groups within an organization. The research team of the well-known Hawthorne experiments, via field research methodology, accidentally found that organizations serve the purpose of‘‘creating and distributing satisfaction among the individual members of the organiza- tion,’’in addition to creating goods or services (Roethlisberger and Dickson, 1939, p. 562). The Hawthorne conclusions were reaffirmed in Chester Barnard’s work. Frameworks such as the needs hierarchy (Maslow), Theory X and Y (McGregor), the need for achievement (McClelland), equity (Adams), expectancy theory (Vroom), and goal-setting (Locke and Latham) have been adopted and extended by many public administration scholars to develop empirical hypotheses about a central question, that is, why bureaucrats do what they do. For example, Wilson (1989) argues that several factors drive the behavior of bureaucrats and bureaucracies: situational imperatives, peer expect- ations, professional values, and ideology. Wilson concluded that successful bureaucracies are those in which executives have created a clear sense of mission, identified the tasks that must be achieved to fulfill that mission, distributed authority within the organization according to those tasks, and provided subordinates with enough autonomy to achieve the tasks at hand.
The fifth idea identified by Holzer, Gabrielian, and Yang (2006) is program effectiveness or performance. As a result of growth of government programs with new missions, combined with the rapid technological and demographic changes experienced since the turn of the twentieth century, and, the shrinking of public resources, the effectiveness or performance of public organizations has become a primary concern of public administration. By and large public administration began to view itself as a syntheticfield, one that has to balance competing, often contradictory, values and which is open to continuous adaptation and improvement in pursuit of productive performance. This idea can be related to the productivity movement, performance measurement, program evaluation, and even governance. For example, Lynn, Heinrich, and Hill (2000) present a model of governance logic as O¼f [E, C, T, S, M], where O¼outputs=outcomes; E¼environmental factors such as political structures, levels of authority, funding constraints, legal institutions, and technological dynamism;
C¼client characteristics; T¼treatments or the primary work or core processes of the organizations such as missions, objectives, and technologies; S¼structures such as organizational type, level of coordination and integration, centralization of control, functional differentiation, administrative rules and incentives, budgetary allocations, contractual arrangements, and institutional culture and values; and M¼managerial roles and actions such as leadership characteristics, staff-management relations, communications, decision-making tools, professionalism=career concerns, mechanisms of monitoring, control, and accountability.
Paradigms, thus seen, are radically or fundamentally different. In a multiparadigm reality, however, thefirst stance does not suggest a linear revolutionary process. Rather, it simply presumes that it is impossible or nearly impossible to communicate effectively between adherents to different paradigms. Therefore, although different paradigms help advance our understanding of the same phenomenon, these paradigms can only be separately developed and applied (Burrell and Morgan, 1979; Jackson and Carter, 1993).
Assuming incommensurability or nonpermeability, there are two analytical strategies that can be adopted. One strategy is sequential, where paradigms are applied one after another in a project.
Paradigms are considered different but mutually complementary, rather than exclusive. Therefore, they are used sequentially as complements to reveal sequential levels of understanding within an integrated research project, enabling one paradigm to inform another (Schultz and Hatch, 1996).
The influence between the paradigms, however, operates in one direction in a linear fashion:
findings from one paradigm are recontextualized and reinterpreted in such a way that they inform the research from a different paradigm. Another strategy is parallel, where paradigms are applied on equal terms rather than sequentially. This strategy is usually used to emphasize differences and conflicts between paradigms rather than similarities. For example, Martin (1992) applies each of Burrell and Morgan’s four paradigms separately to organizational culture research.
The second stance is an extreme opposite of thefirst. It assumes that there are no irresolvable tensions between paradigms, which can be integrated and submerged into a new paradigm (Reed, 1985; Willmott, 1993). In the process of constructing this new paradigm, researchers assess and synthesize a variety of contributions from competing paradigms, and ignore their differences. The old paradigms become part of the new comprehensive paradigm.
The third and fourth stances are positioned in between the first and the second ones. They agree on the assumption that paradigms are fundamentally different but nevertheless can be connected. In other words, the boundaries are permeable. The difference between the third and the fourth is that the third one, bridging, focuses on the transition zones between paradigms. As Gioia and Pitre (1990) argue, paradigms are not completely isolated because there are transition zones between paradigms. Within these transition zones, second-order theoretical concepts such as structuration (Giddens, 1976), negotiated order (Strauss, 1978), and organizing (Weick, 1979) can be used to bridge the paradigms. In comparison, the fourth stance, interplay, does not rely on those
A B
A B
1. Incommensurability 2. Integration
4. Crossing
A B
Contrasts
Connections 3. Bridging
A B
Transition zones
FIGURE 3.1 Four stances in dealing with competing paradigms.
second-order theoretical concepts, nor does it conceptualize a transition zone. Instead, it argues that researchers should move back and forth between paradigms so that multiple views are held in tension. Contrasts and connections exist simultaneously between paradigms, and the tension between them should be maintained because oppositions are always defined in terms of one another (Schultz and Hatch, 1996).
For example, functionalism and interpretivism are two of the four paradigms identified by Burrell and Morgan (1979). The two perspectives have led to very different theories and arguments in organizational studies, such as those pertaining to organizational culture (Martin, 1992). Schultz and Hatch (1996, pp. 537–540) demonstrate that there are both contrasts and connections between functionalism and interpretivism in organizational culture studies.
Contrasts
. Analytical framework
. Functionalism: the framework is predefined and universal, assuming that similar levels and functions of culture exist in all organizations.
. Interpretivism: the framework is emergent and specific, assuming that opportunities for creation of meaning are unique to each cultural context.
. Model of analysis
. Functionalism: categorical. Identifying cultural elements and discovering causal rela- tions between them.
. Interpretivism: associative. Constructing meanings and exploring the associations between them.
. Analytical process
. Functionalism: convergent. Condensing and bringing elements of cultural analysis together.
. Interpretivism: divergent. Expanding and enriching cultural analysis.
Connections
. Culture as pattern
. Functionalism: culture as a pattern of values or basic assumptions.
. Interpretivism: culture as a worldview or webs of significance.
. Culture as essence
. Functionalism: discovering the deep level of culture makes it possible to decipher visible and espoused levels of culture.
. Interpretivism: interpreting the symbolic expressions and representations of deep layers of meaning.
. Culture as static
. Functionalism: predictable, linear, deterministic stage of development.
. Interpretivism: interrelated, circular relations between interpretations and meaning.
Indeed, attending to both contrasts and connections may help advance public administration researchers’ understanding of social phenomena. For example, the major thrust of the postwar (World War II) criticism came from a debate between those seeking to create a social science focusing on administration and those committed to a normative agenda for the field of public administration. Herbert Simon and Dwight Waldo were the two representatives of the debate. Simon (1947) preferred a logical positivist approach and argued that public administration should focus on facts and become a value-free science. Taking an opposing position, Waldo (1946) strived for development of a democratic theory of public administration, believing that public administration
must give priority to the values of the democratic society, to normative theories rather than empirical theories advocated by logical positivists. The debate indicated that the prewar orthodoxy came under scrutiny (Dubnick, 1999), and the public administration field split into at least two largely different themes after World War II. One is Simon’s tradition focusing on scientific management of public administration; the other is Waldo’s tradition arguing for a normative agenda for democratic theory of public administration. By the 1960s, administrative sciences had developed into the scholarly extension of businesslike administration and organizational studies. Following Waldo, the theory of bureaucratic politics has been developed.
The relative detachment between the positivist approach and the normative approach reflects, to some extent, the Type-1 situation in Figure 3.1 (incommensurability). This detachment, although understandable and reasonable, was a partial reason for the lack of methodological rigor in many public administration studies. As a remedy, recent public management studies have emphasized linking public administration more closely to other disciplines such as political science and business adminis- tration (Moynihan and Pandey, 2005; Pandey and Wright, 2006; Whicker, Strickland and Olshfski, 1993), which have more developed positivist or functionalist frameworks. Whicker Strickland and Olshfski (1993) in arguing why public administration should remain aligned with political science, point out that in several decades public administration was largely nonempirical, unquantitative, and unsci- entific, despite its quantitative roots in scientific management (see also Kraemer and Perry, 1989).
Recent studies show that the distance between normative theories and positivist theories are not insurmountable. For example, administrative discretion has largely been a descriptive and normative term in public administration literature, which has been concerned with questions such as whether more discretion should be granted to competent civil servants to produce more coherent policy making and what appropriate strategies to maintain both discretion and accountability. Huber and Shipan (2002) show, however, that a positivist theory of administrative discretion can and should be developed. They use the length of legislation as a viable dependent variable and demonstrate how policy conflict, bargaining environment, legislative capacity, and other nonstatutory factors determine the level of discretion in the area of Medicaid and medical assistance among state governments.
Lewis and Grimes (1999) provide a more operational guideline about multiparadigm inquiry.
They emphasize paradigms as heuristics that help scholars explore theoretical and organizational complexity and extend the scope, relevance, and creativity of organizational theory. On the basis of a solid review of empirical organizational studies that included multiple paradigms, Lewis and Grimes identify three multiparadigm approaches. The first approach is a multiparadigm review, which emphasizes revealing the impact of theorists’ underlying, and often taken-for-granted, assumptions on their understandings of phenomena. At least two techniques are associated with this approach: bracketing, which is to make different assumptions explicit and delineating paradigm distinctions (Burrell and Morgan, 1979), and bridging, which concentrates on transition zones that span paradigms (Gioia and Pitre, 1990). The second approach is multiparadigm research, which includes two techniques: sequential and parallel. The third approach is multiparadigm theory building, which can be realized by either metatheorizing or paradigm interplay. Metatheorizing refers to bridging as recommended by Gioia and Pitre (1990). This technique explores patterns that span conflicting paradigms treated as debating voices that deliver partial truth respectively. By juxtaposing paradigmatic explanations, the constructs of interest are translated to a metaparadigm level, and a theoretical reference system that links contrasting perspectives is developed (Gioia and Pitre, 1990). Paradigm interplay, in comparison, stresses the importance of recognizing both the similarities and differences between paradigms, emphasizing that paradigmatic insights and biases are most recognizable from opposing views.
Moreover, Lewis and Grimes (1999) detail the theory-building processes of metatriangulation, comparing it with the traditional induction process based on a single paradigm. The single-paradigm induction process of theory building is classified as including three phases: groundwork, data analysis, and theory building. The first phase, groundwork, further includes three substages:
specification of research question, review of relevant literature, and choice of data source. The second phase, data analysis, also contains three substages: design of analytical process, coding, tabulation, or exhibition of analyses. Thefinal phase, theory building, has three substages as well:
development and test of propositions, theory development, and evaluation of resulting theory.
For each of the nine substages, Lewis and Grimes (1999) propose corresponding inductive activities that are based on multiple paradigms. The purpose of these activities is outlined; the activities are exemplified and applied to the study of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT).
3.3 TAKING ADVANTAGE OF MULTIPLE PARADIGMS IN PUBLIC