Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry

Evaluating Organizational Change: The Role of Ontology and Epistemology

Butler, Jim Scott, Fiona Edwards, John

School of Education, The University of Queensland | Graduate School of Education, The University of Western Australia

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Abstract

The evaluation of organizational change is a thorny issue. Firstly, accurate data depicting the organization's response to a change process are very difficult to collect, and the process can be corrupted by the Macnamara Fallacy. Secondly, the evaluative conclusions derived from the data are complex high-inference chains of reasoning based on implicit, taken-for-granted beliefs and values. Specifically, ontological and epistemological paradigms broadly determine the context for the conclusions of the evaluative inference, even though they are rarely made explicit. This paper presents two sets of ontological and epistemological paradigms; one set is modernist, and the other is postmodernist. It then applies them to organizational change data to demonstrate the divergent evaluations that can be constructed.

Metadata

Journal Tamara: Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry 
Volume 2 
Issue 2 
Issue date 2003 
Type Article 
Language en
Pagination 55-67
ISSN 1532-5555