Method and metaphor in information analysis
Richard J. Boland, Ralph H. Greenberg · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 1987
Sahlins) the orthodoxy would appear to be something of an anachronism.These recent writings are based on problems of language and human agency that are ignored by the orthodox view, but severely undermine its claims to legitimacy.McCloskey (1983) presents an eloquent critique of the orthodoxy as it is found in the work of economists.McCloskey points out that for all the economists' hard talk of rigorous methodologies, the asserted standards of orthodox social science are not to be found in their actual behavior: They claim to be arguing on grounds of certain limited matters of statistical inference, on grounds of positive economics, operat ionalism, behaviorism, and other positivistic enthusiasms of the 1930's and 1940's.They believe that these are the only grounds for science.But in their actual scientific work they argue about the aptness of metaphors, the relevance of historical precedents, the persuasiveness of introspections, the power of authority, the charm of symmetry, the claims of morality (p.482).> McCloskey is used as an example of this kind of critique from a related discipline.Voices like McCloskey's, which question the tenets of the received view, are only beginning to be heard in accounting (Arrington, ; Neimark and Tinker, ).In social theory, Anthony Giddens (1976, 1979, 1984) has extensively critiqued the orthodoxy of social science that predominates the American academic scene.Later in the paper we will use Giddens in an interpretive study, and will draw on the st ructurat ion theory he purposes as an alternative to the funct ional ism of the orthodox methodologies.