Metaphors of the Field: Varieties of Organizational Discourse

Field researchers in the tradition of symbolic interactionism such as Becker (1970), McCall and Simmons (1969), and Denzin (1979) view the world as an out there to be measured, that measurements possess various degrees of validity and reliability, and that measurement problems are ultimately to be resolved by data. Critics such as Cicourel (1964, 1968, 1973), Johnson (1975), and Douglas (1976) argue, in a position consistent with the argument presented here, that observers create a domain of interest through concepts and perspectives, affirm it by selective and selected measures and, in a sense, construct the social world through these actions. The critics raise the Spector of solipsism by considering all analyses of the social world to be problematic accounts rather than objective descriptions subject to confirmation or disconfirmation through scientific investigation.