Scientific Paradigms and Logics of Inquiry in the Management Disciplines

This course will introduce students to the foundations of knowledge generation in the social sciences and different business research disciplines. This course will encourage students to ponder and tackle core questions regarding the fundamental paradigms, including their ontological and epistemological assumptions, as well as logics of inquiry underlying management research. To do so, the course will emphasize the relation between a) paradigmatic assumptions, b) logics of inquiry and c) research methods with two main intertwined objectives. The first is to convey that the same research method can be employed under different paradigmatic assumptions, but its logic of inquiry and the quality criteria that apply would differ. The second objective is to provide students with the know-how required to coherently ground and structure their current and future research endeavours.