Please look at the website of The New York Times - www.nytimes.com - and find an
ID: 409505 • Letter: P
Question
Please look at the website of The New York Times - www.nytimes.com - and find an article which you can relate to the topic of the week. Be creative - don't just search for a key word! In your first post, summarize the news being reported (event, issue, etc.) and then explain why you think it reflects/relates to the issue of that week.
Topic of the week:
In this session we will be examining one way of thinking about how we (individually and collectively) make sense of our experience and the world around us. Throughout the ages a wide variety of thinkers have tried to describe the relationship between humans and our ideas and beliefs. For this course it is important to have some kind of framework for makings sense (!) of the readings, concepts and opinions that we will be discussing. Are they "Truths" in the sense of something absolute and necessarily good, as Plato saw the Truth outside of the cave in his Allegory? Or are they something else? Ideas about different aspects of business and its environment vary so dramatically across time, geography and groups of people that it seems pretty much impossible to think of any one set of ideas as "Truth" - at least that's what I would argue.
The reading by Thomas Kuhn that I have assigned for this session outlines the idea of "paradigms" and how ideas come to be understood as "normal". I would urge you to consider this as an alternative way of understanding how the different ideas we will encounter this semester relate to each other.
Kuhn was a physicist, an American who wrote in the second half of the twentieth century. In the course of his research in physics he became interested in how scientific knowledge is created. In the excerpt you are reading he defines "normal" science as "research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for further practice" (10). The concept of "paradigms" is "closely related to normal science" . Paradigms are "accepted examples of actual scientific practice - examples which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together - provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research" (10). Examples include Ptolemaic astronomy, Aristotelian dynamics, wave optics, etc.
Kuhn described how a student "because he joins men who learned the bases of their field from the same concrete models - will seldom evoke overt disagreement over fundamentals (what I call "assumptions"). Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice" (11). This can be constraining but, Kuhn points out, we need paradigms in order to proceed with the creation of knowledge, otherwise every scientist is forced to "build anew" (13) "Acquisition of a paradigm and of the more esoteric type of research it permits is a sign of maturity in the development of any given scientific field" (11). A paradigm allows people to take "fundamentals" for granted - it is a set of basic assumptions.
If we look at history we will see that there are important "variants of a pattern" (11). For example, the understanding of light has changed greatly over time. In the 18th c. there was general agreement that light was material corpuscles (Newton), in the 19th and early 20th c. it was understood in terms of transverse wave motions and now it is understood in terms of photons. Howver, BEFORE Newton there was NOT a pattern of one dominant paradigm: rather, there were simultaneous and competing paradigms. "At various times all these schools made significant contributions to the body of concepts, etc. from which Newton drew?" (13)
Another example of non-similar paradigms involves the study of electricity in the early 18th c. "As many views about the nature of electricity as there were important electrical experimenters" (13). Theories had "no more than a family resemblance" (14). But most of the different theories couldn't account for all of the discernible effects of electricity. "Only through the work of Franklin and him immediate successors did a theory arise that could account with something like equal facility for very nearly all these effects and that therefore could and did provide a subsequent generation of "electricians" with a common paradigm for its research" (15).
Only a few fields (mathematics and astronomy) have paradigms that date from pre-history (15) or are the result of the combination of other fields (I.e. biochemistry). Otherwise all have proceeded the way the electrical theorists did: circling around until some theory seemed to account for all phenomenon. Until there is a paradigm the research is pretty random bec. People don't know what they're looking for.
Technology (the methods that have been established by people who looked at the subject before us) plays a big role in which facts are discovered and considered. In general, "intertwined theoretical and methodological beliefs" that influence WHICH facts get kept and which are rejected, not seen. "If that body of belief is not already implicit in the collection of facts - in which case more than "mere facts" are at hand - it must be externally supplied, perhaps by a current metaphysic, by another science, or by personal and historical accident" (17) Or by teachers, schools, parents, communities, etc.
Therefore, it isn't a surprise that in the early stages of a science there are so many different opinions, theories, etc. "What is surprising, and perhaps also unique in its degree to the fields that we call science, is that such initial divergences should ever largely disappear" What does this mean for what happens to knowledge as it becomes more "scientific"?
"To be accepted as a paradigm, a theory must seem better than its competition, but it need not, and in fact never does, explain all the facts with which it can be confronted" (18) This is important! In MGT 365 we are trying to consider as many "facts" as possible and see to what extent different explanations (different truths, assumptions etc.) can account - or can't - for them.
A paradigm allows people to narrow their research and be more effective (but does effectiveness sometimes rule out other possibilities?). "Fact collection and theory articulation become highly directed activities" (18) Scientists get more and more esoteric". Management theory focused on very minute variables - not very "big picture". Scientific work ends up being read by only a narrow set of people in specialized journals, not the general public. Books become less important. (this has happened in natural sciences, Kuhn says it might now be happening in social sciences as well).
The social structure of the field of knowledge also changes. The new paradigm implies a new and more rigid definition of the field" (19) Those people who don't want to "fit in" either end up in philosophy (as opposed to natural science) or are otherwise isolated from the mainstream of their field.
If we apply Kuhn's ideas to the topics in Business and its Environment, we are encouraged to recognize that at one time, for example, it was considered "normal" for workers in the U.S. to work 6 or 7 days a week, for 12 or even 14 hours a day. Now the normal workday is 8 hours and the workweek consists of 5 days. At a certain point, the definition of normal changed. The important question is "Why did it change?" The change was not, I would argue, an act of Nature or some deity. It was the result of an almost infinite series of actions, taken by an equally large number of individuals and groups, acting - as Kuhn would emphasize - within very particular contexts and circumstances. The significance of this is perhaps very commonsensical: certain things make sense to certain people and not to others. Does this mean that everyone's views are equally valuable and that we cannot reject anyone's? Not as far as I'm concerned. I think it means three things. First, that what seems normal - and even "necessary" - often, if not always, conditional and changeable. Second, particular paradigms matter because they encourage certain kinds of behavior and values and discourage others. If we think, for example, that African Americans are only three fifths a human, as compared to Anglo-Saxons Americans (as the writers of the Constitution thought), we will find it much easier to be slave holders than if we believe that people are equal, regardless of their skin color. Some paradigms may have more attractive consequences and implications than others to each of us - depending on the particular characteristics of WHO we are, WHEN and WHERE we live, and HOW we understand our interests. Third, I think that these ideas mean that as individuals and members of groups we are very powerful in shaping what the "normals" are for our time and place. If we don't think that something makes sense we can often change it.
Explanation / Answer
The article under discussion is:
“Brands Heed Social Media. They’re Advised Not to Forget Word of Mouth.” Which was published on 26 Nov 2017.
The article talks about the changed marketing construct in times of an all-pervasive social media. The norm has completely changed and all brands are concerned about managing their reputation on the online platform, which has become a new paradigm of marketing. This is because most of the firms and brands recognize the power of social media and its ability to reach millions of consumers in a very short time. Since the belief is shared by most of the marketers, it has become kind of a paradigm.
However, the article also talks about keeping alive an alternative approach of maintaining focus on “mouth of word” marketing and combine the best of both worlds approach to ensure the best for all brands. Thus in its discussion, the article is talking about an alternative paradigm worth exploring. Since the topic for the week is a discussion on paradigm, the new paradigm of marketing suggested in the article is aligned with the same topic.