PLAN DE OPERACIONES Y LOGISTICA

The philosophical stance represents the assumptions we hold about the way we see the world and it is usually explained through ontology and epistemology (Saunders et al, 2009, p. 108). The ontological stance conveys the “assumptions held about the nature of social reality” (Long et al., 2000, p. 190). The epistemological stance coveys the assumptions held “about the basis of knowledge and in what manner the knowledge can be transmitted to others” (Long et al., 2000, p. 190). Three major philosophical stances are distinguished by Saunders et al. (2009, p. 108) and Wainwright and Forbes (2000, p. 260): positivism, realism and interpretivism. The main characteristics of these philosophies are summarised by Delanty (1997, cited in Wainwright & Forbes, 2000, p. 261) as demonstrated in Table 3.

Positivism Interpretivism Realism

Scientism, unity of scientific method and matter (natural science taken as a model for social science)- objectivist ontology

Anti-scientism (separation of natural and social science in both method and matter)- subjectivist

ontology

Believe in objective reality, whether of entities, theories or values- objectivist ontology Empiricism, where

experimentation leads from observation to verification-

empiricist epistemology

Interpretation of meaning (hermeneutics)- interpretative

epistemology

Emphasis on causal explanation rather than description, via qualitative research- relativist

epistemology

Hypothesis testing, law like generalizations through

Linguistic constructivism

(language defines the social world, tendency towards epistemological relativism)

Structure and agency are given the same weight

Table 3: Summary of major philosophical stances (adopted from Delanty, 1997, cited in 1997, cited in Wainwright & Forbes, 2000, p. 261)

Within realism, the philosophical stance of critical realism has developed. Ontologically it is considered to be least restrictive perspective able to accommodate insights from other philosophies, such as positivism and interpretivism (Bhaskar & Danermark, 2006, p. 295). Lyubimov (2011) argues that critical realism “requires a deep understanding of any social situation, going beyond the observable and investigating the mechanisms behind any event”. This philosophical stance is also argued to be able to account for a complex nature of the social world (Wainwright & Forbes, 2000, 272) and this is particularly beneficial for our study where PIM is recognised to be a complex area of PPM (Teller et al., 2012, p. 600). Furthermore, the fact that our study suggests change in the current PPM practice that lacks considerations of PIs (Rungi, 2010b, p. 5), is in line with the critical realism main

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characteristic of advocating change (Wainwright & Forbes, 2000, 272). Therefore this philosophical stance is adopted in our study.

According to Bhaskar (1998, pp. x-xi) and Platenkamp and Botterill (2012, p.112) critical realism combines ontological realism, epistemological relativism and judgmental rationality. Hereby, ontological realism conveys the belief in the existence of the world independently of our knowledge of it (Sayer, 1992, p. 5), i.e. the existence of an objective reality is acknowledged. Critical realists recognise the presence of various entities in objective reality, which have relationships among them and hence have power to influence each other as well as capability to generate events in a real world (Easton, 2010, p. 128). By objective reality in our research we refer, for example, to the presence of projects in an organisational portfolio that have interdependencies between each other and therefore can affect each other; and de facto the existence of various PIM methods and tools in a PPM practice. Critical realism also states that the world is stratified (Sayer, 1992, p. 5), which means there is a distinction between “the real world, the actual events that are created by the real world and the empirical events which we can actually capture and record” (Easton, 2010, p. 128). The realist/objectivist ontology of the critical realism is reconciled with epistemological relativism (Ryan et al., 2012, p. 304), which means that, first our knowledge about the world is constrained by the access to the empirical events only; and second, the knowledge is always mediated by pre-acquired “conceptual resources” we use to construe, understand and explain the reality (Fleetwood, 2004, cited in Fleetwood & Ackroyd, 2004, p. 30).

Thus the task of the researcher within the critical realism stance is to “uncover the structures of social relations in order to understand why we then have the policies and practices that we do” (May, 2011, p. 11) or to explore and understand the nature of the reality (Platenkamp, 2013, p. 119). This is in line with the “why” part of our research question which is aimed on investigating why organisations from the ICT industry implement PIM. This understanding is attempted to be reached through theoretical explanation built on several theories discussed in the section 2.2.2. This corresponds to the realistic philosophical stance that is argued to take into consideration several theoretical perspectives (Rungi, 2009, p. 1509). Furthermore, since realism in general recognises progress through theoretical and empirical accumulation of research (Pawson & Tilley, 1997, cited in Wainwright & Forbes, 2000, p. 271) we both review the literature and explore empirically the phenomenon of PIM. This allows us “not simply to collect observations on the social world, but to explain these within theoretical frameworks which examine the underlying mechanisms that inform people’s actions and prevent their choices from reaching fruition” (May, 2011, p. 12). The empirical data in our study was collected from people, employees of two case study organisations. Therefore the findings to certain extent should be taken as interpretations of the social world as perceived by the participants of the study (Greener, 2008, p. 17). We, as researchers, are also actively involved in the interpretation, with our own understandings and preconceptions that might have been influenced by the theoretical findings. And here we may face the problem of the double hermeneutic (Myers, 2009, p. 39). Nevertheless adopting critical realism philosophical stance we accept that the reality is partly socially constructed (Easton, 2010, p. 120) and as Sayer (2000, p. 17) argues “there is always an interpretative or hermeneutic element in social science”. Nevertheless, critical realism adopts the principle of judgemental

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rationality, which means that the researchers should provide adequate and rational argumentation in their explanations (Easton, 2010, p. 124; Platenkamp & Botterill, 2012, p. 120). Therefore literature is reviewed and the theoretical model is established in this paper in order to provide better understating of the phenomenon of PI, to suggest study propositions that provide rational direction for the study and the places where to look for evidence and to explain empirical findings (Yin, 2003, p. 22).