ABSTRACT
When seeking explanations for the type of knowledge produced in mainstream representations of Burns and Stalker’s book, one of the unexpected findings was the difference in interpretation of the same scholarship published in the influential Administrative Science Quarterly (ASQ). Some felt that the papers were confined to objectivist, scientific or positivist approaches; others that the scholarship was more pluralist. This lack of clarity regarding what constituted valid and desirable scholarship may have been the result of a confusion in the definitions of key concepts. Definitions of science and positivism are explored and alternative views of science, scientific method and positivism outlined. The terms scientific and positivist are then linked to constructs of commensurability and incommensurability between approaches in the social sciences and more specifically in the organisation/management field, leading to questions about whether there has been an unnecessary curtailing of the content and approaches of scholarship in that field over the last fifty and more years.
