My Account Wish List
Advanced Search
Print - Close Window
www.greenwood.com/catalog/Q307.aspx
All Greenwood Products
Methodology, Theory, and Knowledge in the Managerial and Organizational Sciences Actions and Consequences
(Click to Enlarge)
Eliezer Geisler
Foreword by Everett M. Rogers
Book Code: Q307
ISBN: 1-56720-307-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-56720-307-3
248 pages
Quorum Books
Publication: 6/30/1999
List Price: $106.95 (UK Sterling Price: £59.95)
Availability: Print on demand
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Related Web Pages:
Description: Geisler argues that the over-reliance on co-variation techniques and statistical methods, instead of process approach and in-depth analysis, produces meaningless knowledge in the managerial and organizational sciences, and indeed throughout all the social sciences. He offers instead a new and different approach, based on the notion of what he calls "dynamic morphologies"--an "architecture of slicing complex phenomena." This way it is possible to explain many inconsistencies in research findings, and to find a cohesive, systematic outlook on research, research design, and knowledge creation. Intellectually challenging and following in the footsteps of Kuhn, Argyris, and Popper, Geisler's approach is frankly revolutionary in research design and contains its own notions, terms, and nomenclature. A provocative discussion for academics and others well trained in the organizational, managerial, and social sciences. Geisler's dynamic morphologies provide a means to research complex phenomena and gain knowledge about them. They are composed of a chain of events, combined logically and temporally, and a method by which this process is studied. Geisler also contends that knowledge in the organizational and managerial sciences is only viable when it describes and explains the complex, higher-order phenomena. Therefore, theory building and research in these fields must be linked to higher-order constructs and the phenomena that they attempt to explain. This is the central notion of "amplitude" that Geisler introduces and describes. His book also criticizes the evolutionary epistemology view of knowledge creation and contends that knowledge in all of these fields of study in general is not evolutionary, but instead, cumulative and expansive.
Table of Contents:
  • Preface
  • Introduction
  • Relationships and Processes
  • Choas and Fractals
  • On the Nature of Dynamic Morphologies
  • Transformations in Managerial and Organizational Sciences
  • The Nature of Consequences
  • Evaluation of Technology
  • Patient Value
  • Knowledge, Evolution, and Learning
  • Towards a Theory of Organizational Knowledge
  • Searching for Answers
  • Epilogue
  • Index
LC Card Number: 98-51673
LCC Class: T56
Dewey Class: 658
All rights reserved. Copyright © 1999-2008 Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc.
88 Post Road West, Westport CT 06881, (203) 226-3571