Give It Up! Reflections on the Interpreted World (A Commentary on Meckler and Baillie)

摘要

Meckler and Baillie's (2003) stance ostensibly seeks to find a middle ground that would allow some objective truth to survive. My stance is that if they want to build a passionate case for objectivity on the grounds articulated in their article, then, fine. Do it. The con-structionist position is that this tells us almost nothing about the reality with which people must cope. Furthermore, the upshot of that effort would be to water down positivism and eliminate interpretivism. That would be a truly lamentable outcome, because interpretivism is an approach most appropriate to describing the human social and organizational experience. Positivism would have us believe that the human social experience is best described via physical science assumptions and approaches, which, to me, is a patently mistaken enterprise. Overall, Meckler and Baillie's (2003) essay is an apparently well-intended, but dishearteningly misguided effort. If we were to accept this line of reasoning, we would surrender hope of understanding the essence of the human organizational experience in human terms. Think about the consequence of, yet again, reaching for some small thread of hope for some objective truth when what we really need is to cut loose from our deceptive, safe ground. Once we do that, we stand a much better chance of understanding organization. So, give it up! Let it go. The truth of that realization will set you free.