Administrative Sciences Quarterly: Canary of Worldview Shift?
Dent, E. B., & Powley, E. (1999). “Administrative Sciences Quarterly: Canary of worldview shift?” in Synergy matters: Working with systems in the 21st century, Castell, et al. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers.
Posted: 10 Apr 2017
Date Written: April 5, 2017
Abstract
This paper is an empirical study of potential evidence in a paradigm shift from the traditional worldview (TWV) to the emerging worldview (EWV). In order to explore worldview assumptions broadly, we have chosen the major sources of academic and practitioner literature. All full-length articles from Administrative Science Quarterly and the Harvard Business Review from 1957 and 1997 are analyzed using narrative analysis. Analysis of four worldview dimensions coded — Level of Explanation (reductionism or holism), Causality (linear or mutual), Observation (objective or perspectival), and Interrelatedness (competition or cooperation) — suggest that a modest shift has occurred in the assumptions authors of these articles made over the 40-year period. ASQ makes more EWV assumptions in 1997 than HBR. The greatest shift occurred in Interrelatedness, with a sizeable increase in cooperation in 1997 and a decrease in competition.
Keywords: worldview, paradigm, philosophical assumptions, narrative analysis, holism, causality, cooperation, constructivism
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