Autocritique and Reflexive Evaluation of the Research Philosophy

Post-modernist, interpretivist / hermeneutic scholars have concentrated on the interests, values, and biases served by researchers (Van de Ven, 2007). The critically reflective/revisionist (i.e. post-modern) assumptions of this researcher are the biases of this research. They are as follows:

1. That the logistics-rooted positivism dominant in SCM is outmoded: it reveals undue traditionalism expressed in resistance to qualitative empiricism and theoretical exclusion of extra-paradigmatic issues and research topics, e.g. human-factors as influencers of SC performance.
2. That SCM can be epistemologically enlarged and thereby reinforced by the incorporation of non-positivist research.
3. That cultural phenomena are impactful (prima facie indicators such as the high volume of literature on guanxi suggest this) and better explored phenomenologically than positivistically, because the former ontology is humanistic and the latter mechanistic.
4. That qualified inductive reasoning is the most appropriate logic to guide this research, because its scope is purposefully narrow and its extensibility claims modest.

The foregoing could be countered thus:

1. Logistics and SCM remain positivist-dominant because to date the research and practice community have been well served by the empirical and theoretical products of that paradigm. Moreover, the preponderance of globe-spanning SCs implies the successful application of positivist research, which in turn justifies its continuation and the validity of the epistemology.
2. SCM is a business discipline rooted in practice that is ultimately judged on profit and loss – an impersonal arbiter of survival. Thus, enacted SCM will expand or contract according to utility and efficacy. Practitioner demand based on performance-impactful issues determines research requirements. Orchestrated or coerced shaping of the discipline would reveal proponent ideology more than actual epistemological or ontological evolution.
3. The omission to date of cultural factors from inclusion in models of global SCM is due to insignificance. If not negligible, the contribution of cultural factors is discussed with sufficient parallelism in other areas of the business literature.
4. Inductive reasoning must draw upon some ad hoc or a priori knowledge of the subject. Premises could not otherwise be composed. Despite careful qualification, logical statements (premises) underpinning the research are informed by the researcher’s cognition and experience. Hence, the difference between inductive and deductive is in this case possibly trivial. Both build on a combination of subjective and objective knowledge. Either logic is therefore applicable. (Induction is however more compliant with the general humanistic empathy and uniqueness/variability claims of phenomenology/interpretivism).

If this research is to produce meaning, whether as theory or novel insights into the phenomenon in question, epistemological issues will arise. To Putnam (1993), meaning is invariably ideologically mediated. Although no explicit ideology propels this research, subtle ideological influences are likely indelible, such as the inclination to produce meaning that corresponds with the research objectives or support foundational assumptions concerning the discipline’s paradigmatic enclosure.

This researcher also invokes pragmatism in addition to ontological persuasion as an influencer of research design. This duality, although not necessarily internally contradictory, should remain moderated throughout the research. Deviation from design on pragmatic grounds is to be avoided, since paradigm breach could result. However, philosophical pragmatism complements the phenomenology behind this research: Peirce and other pragmatists (and epistemological realists) affirm the theory-laden character of human perception, reasoning, and judgement. The British, atomistic view was criticised on the grounds that unbiased, neutral observation of empirical fact is an impossibility (Mingers, 2004). The anti-positivist concurs: no research can be absolutely objective or sufficiently comprehensive to provide symmetrical representation of every stakeholders’ viewpoint. For such reasons, this researcher, like any empiricist (positivist or anti-) had to be conscientiously reflexive, more so perhaps than a positivist would admit.