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Post-positivism is a label for a set of research assumptions that underlie some organizational communication scholarship. Post-positivistic assumptions entail beliefs about reality, knowledge, and value in research. Ontology, or the philosophical study of being and reality, is one way to describe the unique assumptions of post-positivism. Post-positivistic research assumes that social reality is out there and has enough stability and patterning to be known. Social reality is conceived as coherent, whole, and singular. Epistemology, or the philosophical study of knowledge and knowing, is another way to describe the unique assumptions of post-positivism. Post-positivistic research assumes that social reality is measurable and knowable, albeit difficult to access. Together, the ontological and epistemological assumptions undergirding post-positivistic organizational communication research are rarely, if ever, described explicitly in research reports. Those assumptions, however, are the philosophical ground on which data are collected and analyzed and on which this kind of research is sensible as an intellectual enterprise with logical coherence. This entry reviews the major assumptions of post-positivism and its history and explains and illustrates several ways of identifying post-positivist approaches to contemporary organizational communication research. Keywords: communication theory; organizational communication; qualitative methods; quantitative methods |
