Change Management

This section discusses the scientific and structural approach on which this case study is based. 1.1 Scientific Approach Several researchers have noted that all social scientists approach their subject via explicit or implicit assumptions about the nature of the social world and the way in which it may be investigated. For example, Burrell et al. (1979: 1) argued that 'all theories of organization are based upon a philosophy of science and a theory of society'. Burrel et al. (1979) developed a useful framework that can help to clarify these fundamental assumptions. The authors identified two extreme positions that they termed 'German idealism' and 'sociological positivism'. The framework explains the two extremes along four dimensions (see Table 1). [...] The ontological assumptions concern the essence of the phenomena under investigation. The nominalist position revolves around the assumption that the social world is made up of names and labels that are used to structure reality. On the other hand, realism postulates that the social world is made up of hard, tangible structures (Burrel et al. 1979: 1-4). 5 The epistemological assumptions concern the grounds of knowledge. The anti-positivist views the social world as essentially relativistic. On the other hand, the positivist position seeks to explain what happens in the social world by searching for regularities and causal relationships between its constituent elements (Burrel et al. 1979: 1-5). A third set of assumptions concern human nature. The voluntarism position maintains that man is completely autonomous and free-willed. At the other extreme, the determinist position views man as being completely determined by the environment (Burrel et al. 1979: 2-6). [...]