C APTADORES

“All research – the particular question it finds important to ask, the point of view from which the question is posed and, of course, the interpretation and conclusions drawn from the analysis – are surely, albeit invisibly, influenced by the standpoint of the researcher” (Fletcher, 1999, p. ).

One of the most important considerations for any management researcher, when designing a research project, is to create something that produces high quality and defensible findings (Easterby-Smith, Thorpe and Jackson, 2008).

Researchers come to the research process with their own set of life experiences, assumptions and expectations and these are likely to influence the questions the researcher asks and the choices and interpretations they make at every stage in the research journey. This will inform the way they view the world and how they make sense of it – this then becomes their version of reality and will influence how they justify their research to others: “When a researcher’s standpoint is made explicit, it helps readers understand what

particular story is being told and invites them to connect this story to other perspectives they hold” (Fletcher, 1999, p. 8).

Chia (2002, p. 3) describes the questions that each of these considerations raise as philosophical enquiry and argues that our philosophical attitudes

“shape and orient us towards particular strategies for knowledge production”.

As a result he sees our research and philosophical preferences as being inextricably linked.

In the context of management research these philosophical preferences are defined through the researcher’s ontology and epistemology. Ontology refers to assumptions the researcher makes about the nature of reality and epistemology refers to the assumptions he/she makes about how that reality can be studied (Easterby-Smith et al, 2008; Hatch and Cunliffe, 2006; Reed, 2009). However, it has been argued that assumptions are often left hidden by researchers in management and organizational studies, while they focus on issues of methodology and analysis technique. Özbilgin and Tatli (2005, p. 858) believe that it is the “ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions, whether stated explicitly or remaining implicit, that shape the actual process of research and analysis”. Our ontology is, therefore, the basis from which we begin our research and our research design is formed from our epistemology.

How ontological and epistemological positions are described and the labels attached to them vary between different authors. Broadly speaking all descriptions give rise to a range of philosophical approaches in management research from positivism, based on the scientific and objectivist position of the natural scientist, through to the more subjective approaches of interpretivism based on the view that social reality is constructed and reproduced by social actors. Accepting that the researcher needs to make explicit their ontological and epistemological assumptions, I will provide an overview of the approaches to the philosophy of science in the next section and discuss in more detail how, and why, the critical realist philosophical perspective informs my study.

3.2.1 Ontology and epistemology

Positivism considers the world to be a series of discrete events or occurrences (Reed, 2009) and has its origin in natural sciences where the aim is to seek

‘causal relationships and to explain and predict events [with an emphasis on]

empiricism, quantifiable observations and statistical analyses’ (Baker, 2002, p.

22 ). Positivist researchers seek to produce ‘objective’ knowledge believing that they can remain independent of the phenomena being researched. They create research designs based on hypotheses and deduction using large random samples which produce results that can be generalised to a wider population – there is no room for subjective interpretation. Positivism is often criticised for its ‘naïve realist’ claim to produce knowledge that captures reality with accuracy, in a generalizable and context-free form (Guba and Lincoln, 1994). It neglects the impact of the researcher – the ‘subjective other’ with their own values, interests, goals etc. In the social sciences taking a positivist approach to research tends to reproduce rather than test knowledge systems on which the research is based (Webb, Schirato and Danaher, 2002) and is associated with the maintenance of social and cultural power relations.

At the other end of the continuum is interpretivism, which focuses on ways in which people make sense of the world (usually through language) through their experiences, their interpretations of those experiences and the meanings they give to them. In this case, social reality becomes the creation of social actors as they engage in particular social situations and the meanings that they construct from these situations (Reed, 2009). Social reality cannot be observed; rather it is based on an interpretation of it:

“For interpretivism, the social world is the world perceived and experienced by its members from the ‘inside’. Hence the task of the social scientist is to discover and describe the ‘insider’ view, not to impose an outsider view on it.” (Blaikie, 1993, p. 176).

In this case, the researcher is seen as part of the research process, as being involved with what is observed, as an interpreter of the data and as someone who gives meaning to it. Research designs usually involve small, purposive

samples. The researcher then uses an inductive process in data analysis allowing them to move from observation to theory. As a result, conclusions drawn from the research are usually only relevant to the context of the research rather than being generalizable to a wider population.

Hostility and conflict is often seen to exist between researchers at each end of the spectrum perhaps without each fully understanding the work or methodology of the other (Bourdieu, 1996) and, rather than taking one of the two extreme ontological preferences, some researchers have preferred to tread a more middle ground. A philosophical perspective that appears to combine these two extremes, and provide a ‘middle-ground, is critical realism. This will be discussed in more detail in the next section.

3.2.2 Critical realism

Objectivism aims to establish objective regularities independent of individual consciousness and will, but, in doing this, it creates a disconnect between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge and suggests that social actors will decipher the world around them in the same way. Subjectivism argues that the world is nothing but an imaginary universe, “dependent on the decrees of the consciousness that creates it and therefore entirely devoid of any objectivity” (Bourdieu, 1990, p. 42). Critical realism bridges the gap between objectivism and subjectivism by presupposing an independently existing social reality that cannot be reduced to a discreet set of observable events. It draws a distinction between reality itself - intransitive objects of science, and the tools for explaining reality – transitive science (Blaikie, 1993). Instead social reality is seen as always mediated through a social actor’s pre-existing knowledge acquired through previous experiences of the world and how it works (Reed, 2009). Critical realists see positivists as being blind to context, personal meaning and individual interpretations and they see social constructionists as being too subjective and relativist (Neuman, 2006).

Bhaskar’s (1989) concept of critical realism (originally known as transcendental realism) views reality as being multi-layered and governed by hidden structures and processes. Bhaskar describes three levels of reality, the empirical (the

level of reality that is accessed and perceived through our senses, these are observable events); the actual (consisting of events and activities which exist whether they are observed or not) and the real (unobservable/invisible laws and structures which underpin the real level; e.g. societal and organizational laws/culture). Partington (1998) sees these levels of reality as overlapping domains as shown in Figure 3-1.

Figure 3-1: Domains of reality in the critical realist ontology (Partington, 1998, p.13)

It is the dynamic and synergistic interplay between these domains that leads to the emergence of new phenomena, which cannot then be reduced down to the levels from which they originated. The key principle of critical realism is to reveal the underlying mechanisms and structures which give rise to observable phenomenon (Blaikie, 1993).

Critical realists do not reject the concept of causality. Instead, rather than look for direct causality between observable phenomenon as a positivist ontology dictates, critical realism “advocates a conception of causal processes and relations redefined as powers or tendencies that inhere in particular social entities …… over time and place” (Reed, 2009, p. 435). Critical realists are not

Real Domain underlying structures or mechanisms

Actual Domain events (observed or not)

Empirical Domain observed phenomena

concerned with prediction but with description and explanation as they seek to discover patterns of events and the deeper, underlying, generative mechanisms that create these events (Tsang and Kwan, 1999).

3.2.3 The case for a critical realist perspective

Critical realists accept the existence of structural and cultural conditions and are interested in using theoretical models to explain phenomena that arise as a result of these conditions. However, they also accept that knowledge and knowledge production is fallible and refer to this as the ‘epistemic fallacy’

(Bhaskar, 2008). This fallibility is the result of context and individual interpretations of that context and their experiences within it. Fleetwood (2005, p.199) argues that for critical realists there is “no unmediated access to the world: access is always mediated …. by a pre-existing stock of conceptual resources, which we use to interpret, make sense of, understand …. and take appropriate action”. This means the researcher will need to be cognizant of these different levels of reality.

Taking a critical realist perspective allows me to see structural and cultural conditions within the investment bank of this study as having an existence. The promotion process is part of that structure and its enactment will be influenced by the cultural context of the bank and the wider social system of which it is a part. Social capital theory provides a possible explanation for different levels of career success between individuals, particularly at senior levels. Using SC theory as the lens through which to investigate how individuals experience a senior-level promotion process will enable me to identify the mechanisms, both seen and underlying, which may influence outcomes from that process. Each participant in this study tells their story of going through what should be the same process but each has a different story to tell – they describe their behaviours and the motives and intentions behind those behaviours. Each experience is mediated and influenced by the individual’s personal context – e.g. by their gender, whether or not they were appointed, the country in which they live, their current location within the firm, the culture in which they grew up etc. Then, rather than applying an inductive approach to data analysis (moving

from data to theory) or a deductive approach (moving from theory to data) critical realism allows a retroductive research strategy enabling me, as the researcher, to move iteratively between an existing theoretical model and the empirical data (Archer, Bhaskar, Collier, Lawson and Norrie, 1998). In this way I will be working back from observation to explanation, meaning and interpretation using “a combination of reason and imagination” (Blaikie, 1993, p.

169). As Bhaskar (1989, p. 2) states:

“We will only be able to understand – and so change – the social world if we identify the structures at work that generate those events and discourses […]. These structures are not spontaneously apparent in the observable pattern of events; they can only be identified through the practical and theoretical work of the social sciences.

I have adopted critical realism as the philosophical perspective for this research project as it is consistent with the research question, the proposed methodology and my beliefs about the world. Subjective experiences will be explored and emerging patterns of individual action will be related to what is known about SC in the context of career advancement. Moving away from the quantitative studies of network analysis which have dominated SC research, and tapping into the ontological depth of critical realism, I anticipate that the results produced from the study will go beyond surface explanations to reveal underlying and unseen structures and mechanisms which produce the phenomena that form the basis of this enquiry (Kilduff and Tsai, 2003).

Critical realists are concerned with explanation rather than prediction – in this study I am looking to ‘understand’ the intervening mechanisms which may indicate, but not prove a causal relationship between SC and MD promotion. In addition, the methodology used by critical realists must view social systems as open systems and be able to capture subjective meaning and context.

Remembering that critical realists see knowledge as fallible and situated there are no claims of objectivity or impartiality in this research but I will aim to be value-aware, robust, transparent and trustworthy (Patton, 2002).

I will now explain how the research project was designed.