ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on key concepts discussed in preceding chapters of this book. It highlights a critical and penetrating comment made by Bertrand Russell about a century ago at the beginning of his book Our Knowledge of the External World: "Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning". Reflecting on the state of the management discipline from the 1920s to the early 1950s, Perrow maintains that "there was widespread agreement that management was becoming a science". Borrowing Kuhn's concept of paradigm, he cautions against theoretical and methodological pluralism and argues that researchers should attempt to reach some level of consensus, which is a critical precondition for advancing paradigm development in management and raising management's status relative to its peer disciplines such as economics. Science adopts a realist ontology and an objectivist epistemology whereas postmodernism adopts an anti-realist ontology and a social subjectivist epistemology.
