ABSTRACT
In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to understanding how the assumptions which scientists bring to their subject of investigation guide and influence what is seen and studied. In the field of organization studies, the problems involved have been most systematically explored through the notion of ‘paradigm’, and many rival modes of analysis identified and offered as alternative frameworks for the study of organization (Burrell and Morgan 1979; Morgan 1980; Evered and Louis 1981; Morgan 1986). The demonstrated existence of diversity, and more importantly the possibility of increased diversity in the future, poses organizational scientists with a situation that can be interpreted either as threat, opportunity, or some combination thereof.
