Cheney (2000) discussed Schultz and Hatch’s (1996) technique termed “paradigm interplay”, which “involves living in and with gray areas” (p. 40). Similarly, Miller (2000) discussed finding paradigmatic “common ground” and argued for collaborative coexistence. While I believe that reducing incommensurability among theoretical and research approaches helps us to overcome binary oppositions like those created by Burrell and Morgan's (1979) framework, I agree with Mumby’s (2000) argument that the notion of “common ground” is challenging because it “suggests the danger of the subsumption of diverse perspectives beneath a single, overarching, and possibly totalizing worldview” (p. 73).
It seems to me that to promote finding “common ground”, scholars necessarily assume that each paradigm is of equal merit. Are they? Or, is there a point at which we have an ethical obligation to render judgments about the assumptions and goals of a particular paradigm, rather than continue to evaluate it by/within its own criterion?
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