Archive for 4 December 2006
Levels Issues II — Do Levels Exist?
| Nicolai Foss |
As I indicated in my earlier post on levels issues in social science research, I am confused by these and I suspect that many others are also confused. Perhaps this merely reflects my lamentable lack of serious philosophical training, and it is therefore with very considerable hesitation that I venture into issues of ontology, explanation, and causation that pertain to levels of analysis. (In fact, the following to some extent has the character of a bleg).
Do levels of analysis exist? Well, obviously levels of analysis only exist in our models. Still, there may be some stuff reality that is “like” our analytical levels. If so, is there some kind of mapping from the levels of analysis of our theoretical accounts to the levels (conceivably) existing in social reality? Or, are levels (of analysis) “merely” methodological devices — features of our model — that are not necessarily mirrorred by anything in reality? (more…)
You Know You’re Nobody If. . .
| Peter Klein |
. . . your entry gets booted off Wikipedia.
(I’m sure there is a serious lesson here about distributed knowledge, the voluntary enforcement of social norms, crowdsourcing, open-source programming, rational ignorance, or something. No time to think about it, though; gotta write my own Wikipedia entry.)
Management Theory and the Social Sciences
| Peter Klein |
The theme for the 2007 meeting of the European Academy of Management (Paris, 16-19 May) is “Current Management Thinking: Drawing from Social Sciences and Humanities to Address Contemporary Challenges.”
Researchers in management are invited to join us in Paris to reflect on the roots of Management, both as a scientific discipline and as a practice. In particular, Management’s focus on organisational performance is one of the critical underpinnings that transform the discipline’s borrowings from established social sciences into an autonomous field of academic investigation. This raises questions about the degree of subordination vs. emancipation of Management vis-à-vis the basic disciplines from which it draws.
Of course, the relationship between management theory and its core academic disciplines — economics, sociology, and psychology, primarily, but also history, philosophy, and political science — are key themes of this blog.
Here is the call for papers. Submissions are due 2 January 2007.
Organizations and Markets 
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