Course coordinators: Johan Gersel and Morten S. Thaning, Department of Business Humanities and Law (BHL)

Faculty

Associate Professor Morten S. Thaning
Department of Business Humanities and Law, CBS

Postdoc Johan Gersel
Department of Business Humanities and Law, CBS

Prerequisites

For whom is this course valuable? For PhD-students who want to strengthen their methodological foundation and research design. The course will improve the students’ capacity to handle theoretical complex and analytical problems while strengthening their writing skills.  The course pedagogy combines extensive discussion of fundamental methodological and epistemic issues with feedback sessions that helps to integrate the course learnings into the PhD-articles of the participants. The course discusses foundational questions of relevance for PhD-projects with both qualitive and quantitative methodologies.

Aim of the course

Structure of the course

The course is structured in three parts (Part I-III): (I) Background readings and submission of background paper and writing sample  (II) contextual lectures and discussion of paradigmatic journal articles (III) interactive module relating to the writing sample submitted and epistemic challenges of the PhD-project.

Before the beginning of Part I of the course the students will be asked to submit:

·     A Background Essay defining their research question and epistemological position

·     A Writing Sample consisting of a specific journal article draft they plan to submit.

This material (total of 4 pages) is to be submitted a month prior to the starting date (see more information below)

From the beginning of the course the students will be working closely with their own theoretical or empirical analysis and selected texts relating to their projects. The intention is to work actively with the students’ PhD projects to guide their writing and justification of their research design. Throughout the course we will discuss selected readings and work through the papers written by the course participants to discuss questions about epistemology and decipher the analysis and argument attempted in the texts.

Part II of the course will present four key epistemological traditions:

The aim of Part III is to refine the epistemic tools and criteria presented in the second part of the course so as to customize the research design of the participant’s project in a coherent and valid manner. This part also presents the opportunity for participants to focus the discussion on sub-fields within business, management and organization that are of particular relevance to their research, for example, economics, finance, law, strategy or work-life studies. In Part III the students will also be given an opportunity to discuss the epistemic challenges in a plenary format to review and guide their future research.


Learning objectives

Relevance for the Nordic Nine (N1, N2, N6 and N8)

This course in philosophy of science develops the ability of researchers to place and justify their research in a broad historical context (N1; see Learning objectives 2 and 3). The course cultivates the academic virtues of critique, curiosity and rigor, and thereby prepares the participants to handle ambiguities and analytical complexity in their future research processes (N2; see Learning Objectives 1 and 4). In terms of the pedagogical approach, the course emphasizes openness to critique, collaboration in peer research processes as well as the value in iterative learning processes for scientific research (N6 and N8; see Learning Objectives 4).


Exam assignment

Write a max. 5 page individual essay that critically discusses the implications, limitations and consequences of the empirical analysis. The essay should address the following questions:

1. A reflection on the epistemological point of departure for the analysis. What are the most important epistemic challenges of your project and its methodology in its current form?
2. An identification of the criteria of quality guiding the analysis. What aspects of the academic traditions and methodologies discussed in the course can be used to overcome the epistemic challenges of your research project?
3. Discuss the relative strength and weaknesses of the theoretical traditions and methodologies that you draw upon and relate this discussion to your project.
4. Relate your discussion of strengths and weaknesses to relevant conceptions of the nature, aim, and scope of human knowledge. What is your view on the nature, aim, and scope of the knowledge you produce, i.e. the researcher position taken in the essay and the implication this position has for the outcome of the analysis?
5. Explain and exemplify how the same case material could have been analyzed differently based on a different understanding of reality. Justify the epistemological choices underpinning your research design.

Pre-course Assignment

Before the beginning of the course every participant is asked two assignments, a Background Essay and a Writing Sample (total of 4 pages)

The Background Essay should address the following three questions (1-2 pages):

1. What is the theme or object of your research project?
2. What are the most important theories of your research project and why are these theories relevant?
3. Describe the most important epistemic challenges of the project and its methodology in its current form? (e.g., What type of knowledge do you seek to produce? What is the nature of your empirical material? What are the challenges in accessing and interpreting the empirical material?)

The Writing Sample (2-3 pages)

The papers should be submitted in the Assignments section of Canvas. The submission deadline is one month before the starting date.


 Course Plan

The course is taught in 6 sessions of each 3.5 hours (e.g., three days from 9.00-16.00). 

Workload 

*1 ECTS = 28 hrs

List of readings

(preliminary; see Canvas at beginning of semester for finalized list)

The readings for the overview seminars are divided into two categories.

Position – These readings provide an overview of the position and its core assumptions, often as formulated by one or more of its main representatives.

Application – These reading exemplify an article review process to be analyzed in the course. 

Session 1+2: Diagnosing epistemic challenges in research

Read all Background Essays and Writing Samples (available on CANVAS)

Alvesson, Mats and Sköldberg, Kaj. 2000. Reflexive Methodology – new vistas for qualitative research. London: Sage.

Seale, Clive. 1999. The Quality of Qualitative Research. London: Sage. Chapter 1: Why Quality Matters. Chapter 3: Trust, Truth and Philosophy. Chapter 5: Guiding Ideals.

Gersel, Johan and Thaning, Morten S. 2020. The plight to choose. Journal of Management Education, Vol. 44, No. 5, 10: 663-676.

Session 2-4: Epistemological positions

Heidegger, Martin. [1927] 1993. Being and Time. (excerpt)

Titchen, Angie ad Hobson, Dawn. 2005 Phenomenology. In: Research methods in the social sciences. Sage

Anderson, Elizabeth. 2020 [2000]. Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (free internet resource).

Watts, Lynelle and Hodgson, David 2019. Critical Social Science and Critical Theory. In: Social justice theory and practice for social work.

Haraway, Donna. 1991. Simians, Cyborgs and Women – the reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge. (excerpt: Chapter 9: Situated Knowledges p. 150-183).

Latour, Bruno and Woolgar, Steve. 1986. Laboratory Life – The construction of scientific facts. Princeton University Press. (excerpt).

Knorr Cetina, Karin D. (1999), Epistemic Cultures: How the Sciences Make Knowledge, Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press.

Session 5-6: Peer Session and Common Epistemic Challenges and Individual supervision

Read all Background Essays and Writing Samples  (available on CANVAS)

Registration deadline and conditions

The registration deadline is 6 May 2024. If you want to cancel your registration on the course it should be done prior to this mentioned date. By this date we determine whether we have enough registrations to run the course, or who should be offered a seat if we have received too many registrations.

If there are more seats available on the course we leave the registration open by setting a new regsitration deadline in order to fill remaining seats. Once you have received our acceptance/welcome letter to join the course, your registration is binding and we do not refund your course fee. The binding registration date will be the registration deadline mentioned above.