Miller (2000) begins her essay on common ground from the post-positivist perspective by recalling a conversation that she had with three prominent org comm colleagues - Linda Putnam, Scott Poole, and Charles Conrad. I was particularly intrigued by Conrad's response to the Burrell and Morgan's (1979) typology as well as Deetz's (1996) revision. His response was to question "the underlying utility (and even morality) of typologies such as these, commenting that 'the greatest weakness of all research paradigms is the way in which they constrain researchers' vision' "(Miller, 2000, p. 47). I too have been having these same thoughts which Conrad so clearly articulates especially after last week's readings of Morgan & Burrell (1979), Deetz (2001), and also engaging in the research proposal and scholarly identity paper. I have beginning to question the utility of paradigms and the corresponding tables, charts, continuum's, and models. With these ideas in mind, I pose the following questions:
1.) If we operated in a scholarly world without paradigmatic distinctions & typologies, what would our research conversations sound like?
2.) Is there merit to Conrad's position of questioning the very existence typologies?
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