Ontology and epistemology are important to consider even before you design your research and select the methods that you will use first collect data and then analyze or interpret what you find.

Ontology is the system of belief about what constitutes a fact. The central question is whether entities should be perceived as objective or subjective. Objectivism or realism reflects a belief that facts and entities exist independent of and external to social actors and the human mind. Alternatively, subjectivism or relativism (and virtual synonyms such as constructionism and interpretivism) asserts that phenomena are created or constructed from the perceptions, interpretations and consequent actions of human actors.

When reporting your research, you should specify whether you adopted objectivism (realism) or subjectivism (relativism) and follow that by explaining the rationale for your choice.

After making your ontological choice, you should consider the implications for your epistemology, research design and methods.

Epistemology is derived from the Greek epistemé for 'knowledge'. It reflects how we acquire knowledge and what we know is true. There are many different potential sources of knowledge, including:

Intuitive knowledge based on gut feel, faith, beliefs, etc.

Authority knowledge obtained from books, research papers, experts, supreme powers, etc.

Logical knowledge created through the application of logical reasoning.

Empirical knowledge based our measurement of different phrnomena.

Obviously, the knowledge that we seek will reflect the design and methods that we will use.

Dear collaegue,

Normally there is no reason to engage in such type of questions. But if there is a misfit of the key concepts involved in business research - for instance societal resistance against the increasing bureaucracy and instrumentalisation, for instance resistance against the assumed self-interest of actors involved - there is a good reason to question the self-evident key concepts involved in management, and to ask what is... questions. these key concepts structure in a way how we experience the business environment we research, and by critically engaging in these self-evident notions, we may have reason to criticize current conceptualizations and construct new conceptualizations. I think this is the role and task of philosophers where they can contribute based on the philosophical tradition. In the attachment you can find an article which I wrote on the question 'what is (business) management', in which I elaborate a bit more on this role of ontology and epistemology. hope it helps and feel free to contact me if you think it can be of help

Dear Muhammad Naseer Akhtar, Maris Martinsons has proffered very good explanation. I believe understanding of ontological and epistemological beliefs help in deeper reflection on the nature of phenomena (variables/concepts/topic etc) the researcher is interested in and choice of research design appropriate for studying the phenomena. Secondly, for knowledge to be acceptable to the readers and community of researchers, it must explain the nature of reality, data collection and analysis process in transparent manner and finally what is the value conclusion drawn from the study? In other words, it help design criteria or yardstick against which knowledge produced in proclaimed paradigms can be evaluated. For example, with positivist orientation we use language which is objective because the reality we explore is singular and researchers will find almost similar conclusion under the same conditions. Conversely, if we believe that reality is multiple, we use subjective language because we have multiple versions of it with each person giving his own view of that reality.

Regards

To answer this question, it would be helpful to learn how exactly you mean to conduct business research. But for now, I will just assume you would like to do it somewhat scientifically (whether that is possibly is another question).

If so, then ontology and epistemology is crucial - as in any science: Science is concerned with explaining observed phenomena. Ontology says what the objects are which explain your phenomenon. Epistemology says how you can know whether any given explanatory claim is valid (i.e. it connects your evidential basis with your explanatory claim).

To provide a simple example: If your observed phenomenon is a rise in market value, then your ontology encompasses objects like supply and demand, and your epistemology will include reliable inferential relations between supply and stocked items on the one hand and demand and bought items on the other hand.

The first anwer is oriented to the depth of the analysis and the scope of the research, the second response is associated with the intention of understanding how research can be understood in business and what is the meaning that frames its conduct.

for something as non-theoretical as business, I would suggest you just get on with it and don't worry about philosophy.

The first 'ontology' is about evaluating the nature of reality and the second "epistemology' how it is possible to know about reality.

A researcher should consider why it is important to understand each philosophical position and the impact this will have on the methodology chosen for a particular research problem.

@Muhammad Naseer Akhtar

It bothers me that neither you nor anyone answering this thread seems to have much of an understanding of the terms 'ontology' or 'epistemology'. You all seem to think that everything is a matter of opinion, and that it suffices simply to 'have' an opinion on the meanings of these terms. Hence, the weird 'logic' to this discussion: the words 'ontology'/'epistemology' are simply disconnected from the history of Western philosophy - really from the 'historical' in any systematic sense altogether - and then just used as if they're 'self-evident', without there being any special need to tease out different meanings, connotations, shifts of meaning across the centuries. They're worth debating, there actually is an intense debate going on in the specialist literature (one can pick out the bits coming from Popper e.g., or from the conventional philosophy of science), but you'd not think that from the way you're discussing it here.

nah, don't be extra. The guy is only asking in the context of business research. Ontology is essentially about 'what exists', and epistemology is the theory of how we can know about what exists.

The great scientific revolution of our times in Finances - the Modern Monetary Theory - is based on ontological claims about what is money and the role of the State in creating money. There are also epistemological claims about how to measure development (just economic growth/GDP or human development, including measures of happiness).

If you simply say 'premises' or presuppositions or 'hypotheses' or models you're staying within the bounds of the empirical. No one could possibly object. But using 'ontology' or 'epistemology' - with zero indication that you know anything whatsoever about Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, historiography, metaphysics, all the rest - is merely pretentious. It's a plea for a bit of modesty, no more.

Frederick, is your position that one cannot engage philosophical problems in ontology or epistemology without mention of those other philosophers? Surely no need if we are interested in doing philosophy rather than the literary exercise regarding the history of philosophy.

To fully understand what the sun is, one might need to be an astrophysicist; but to be able to reliably state truthfully that the sun rises, it‘s enough to know it’s that glowing ball in the sky. If you do ontology and epistemology of economics, is studying „Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, historiography, metaphysics, all the rest“ not a little bit much...? (Indeed, even for the average philosopher of economics, that might be rather much...!)

Again, a primer like „ontology = set of explanatory objects“ should suffice for most purposes. An analysis of what these objects are and how they work will be much more conducive to economics than studying all of the above. Even a philosopher who prides himself on this tradition should be so pragmatic as to acknowledge as much.

Martin, never mind science, I didn't imply science at all. Doing philosophy is to engage in problems and analysis. To do that well, it isn't necessary to be familiar with past philosophers, even though that may be instructive. Ontology for example is the study of what exists, not the study of 'who said what' about ontology (which is more of just a literary exercise, largely practised in philosophy departments on the continent. English/American/Australian/German departments focus on actually doing philosophy and advancing the problems.

Martin Bohnert, maybe Germany is a mixed case. Anyway, for example, here is a standard under graduate text for DOING epistemology:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Contemporary-Epistemology-Jonathan-Dancy/dp/0631136223/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=introduction+to+epistemology&qid=1582699018&sr=8-5.

Notice a text from the continent which is explicitly titled "The history of..,"

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Study-History-Epistemology-Slovakia-ebook/dp/B076FCNK8J/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=introduction+to+epistemology&qid=1582699088&sr=8-7

Here is an undergradute text for DOING ontology:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Ontology-Nikk-Effingham/dp/0745652557/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=introduction+to+ontology&qid=1582699541&sr=8-1

both contain no roundabouts into 'who said what'. Philosophy itself aims at understanding stuff, not who said what about stuff. Ya get me?

Dear Martin and Daniel

The big names are important references, but not the object of study of Ontology or Epistemology. We cannot pretend we are starting from zero, because there is a history of thought in each of these fields. However, the present time is new and could not be explained by past philosophers fully.

Daniel Maille OK, "doing philosophy is to engage in problems and analysis". The original debating point (Muhammad Naseer Akhtar has been remarkably silent since posing it) was that analysing problems in business research had to have something in addition to what would normally be understood by this, namely "philosophical concepts of ontology and epistemology". He then lists a couple of rather standard notions - objectivism, realism, subjectivism, relativism, constructionism - and provides a classification of different types of knowledge. (Intuitive, authoritative, logical, empirical.) His primary focus seems to be large organizations. That's fine, but it's still quite difficult to get a clear idea of just what he means with 'ontology' or 'epistemology'.

Now you come along and present the standard positivist (reductionist) position, which is basically: 'philosophy is analysis and problem solving. All the rest is literature and history of ideas'.

If ontology were, as you put it, the "study of what exists" then here's the problem: all those areas, in all kinds of fields, where the standard empiricist approach fails. (Psychology, Anthropology, areas of economics, sociology.) What both Kant and Freud have in common is their insistence that every human cognition, right down to whatever it is that's involved in 'evidence-based research', that this is shot through with symbolism, language conventions, habits of thought, all kinds of pragmatic or 'context' type issues, that need to named and understood if science or scholarship is to progress at all. In any field. (The Wittgenstein people have a different terminology but it's the same type of argumentation.) I don't think you would have said the above if you actually had studied e.g. Kant or Freud. (To mention only these.) You'd have been clearer about the difference between an analytic and a synthetic judgement.

@ Alfredo Pereira Junior, Frederik van Gelder , Martin Böhnert.

Lets get back to the original question about ontology and epistemology in the context of business research. After expressing bewilderment about these terms being used in the same breath as "business research", I deemed it adequate to point out the basic distinction of 'what there is', and 'how we can know about it'. Straight-forwardly informed on those notions he can then get on with the real work within in his context of research. The thought that he needs to read Hegel and Nietzsche and the history of philosphy, or even any philopsohy at all is absurd. He would better ignore all that second order stuff, and just get on with DOING ontology and epistemology.

Daniel Maille

I will point to two philosophical issues that seem to be relevant to business today:

1) Ontology: What is the economic system? Is it only what is currently accounted in commercial transactions, or also other goods not yet accounted (natural resources, domestic work of women, human emotional development and mental health, etc.)?

2) Epistemology: How to measure wealth? Is it just the GDP, human development measures (infrastructure, education, longevity), or also subjective values to be studied with qualitative methods (happiness, mental well being)?

The vast majority of RG contributors seem to come from technical, medical, engineering backgrounds, and that's more or less the same as saying they have a natural science background. Physicists are quite prominent, and so are anthropologists. Most of them would call themselves 'empiricist' in their approach, and most would probably say, if one did a poll, that their approach to research is 'evidence-based'.

In epistemological terms: all of the above subscribe to the 'copy theory of truth', and only at the outer reaches of Physics or the social sciences will one find someone who would question that our ordinary notions of time, space, causality have something problematic about them.

So if someone with an apparently economic background says: let's look at the epistemology/ontology of business practice, one's first response is, this is interesting, let's hear what this person has to say. Political economy has been highly controversial for centuries, no one who's read Stiglitz, Krugman, Roubini, Piketty, needs to be told this. Or that many people battle with the causes of the 2008 crisis, or what the economic consequences of Brexit are going to be, or now this nemesis Covid-19. Or what the consequences were of watering down the Glass-Steagal Act. These are all legitimate - even pressing - issues, so if someone pipes up with something that seems to be addressing any of that, one's first response is: o.k. let's hear this person out. And then all that comes is some sort of waffle that shows this person doesn't have a clue. RG is an egalitarian medium, the initial assumption is that you have a background in research or scholarship, that you're serious, but if you're simply bluffing, if you don't actually know anything, you don't seem to read much, you're simply being argumentative for some private reason of your own, it's not possible to hide that for long.

Alfredo Pereira Junior fair enough, but my point is that the guy will be aware of the entities he is targeting and may need to consider how to measure them, depending on the sort of business research he is aiming at. He can get on with that within his context without reading about ontology or epistemology.

Frederik van Gelder Do you think your response will help the questioner?

I certainly hope so. There's not a single branch in research or scholarship where it's possible to make a contribution - that is after all what RG is about - without a clear notion of just what the 'foundational premisses' are, how to use them, and at the very least know a bit about the history of your own field. Most researchers on RG seem to be pretty much empirical in their approach to what they're doing (they emphasise 'evidence-based' methods), and in many cases that suffices. But economics is one of those fields where where it's not just facts, theories, models, math, predictions - there's just as much a subjective/verstehen aspect. If you seem not to know that political economy involves thematising both aspects - and that that in itself means some serious thinking about methodological 'foundations' - well, then that can't really count as a serious contribution on RG. It may help a person to know that words they just throw about because they've picked them up somewhere are pretty meaningless without any knowledge of both the history and the current use of these terms. With which we're back where all this started out - the meaning of terms like 'epistemology' and 'ontology'. That too is a form of help: the clarification of ideas.

It's another matter of course if you come from the financial sector, you're an investment consultant, your whole life, your whole existence revolves around saving someone's 'bottom line' (or even your own). Then the truth of words doesn't mean anything, everything is just a 'pitch', the real truth of which is that if you want to keep your job you have to crank up your sales statistics. Respect for truth and respect for the 'bottom line' are mutually exclusive. (That by the way is as old as the history of science in the West, namely its origins in the Protestantism of Northern Europe.)