Marlina Davidson

Martin (1992) does an excellent job of introducing the three perspectives of integration, differentiation, and fragmentation while showing examples of how each relate to organizational research. I appreciated the way that Martin describes these perspectives as subjective and how we shouldn’t necessarily look at these perspectives in categories. Although Martin suggests that we shouldn’t be limit ourselves by trying to fit into just one category all the time, my first question for you is this, where do you fit in these three perspectives and is there one that you relate more to than the others?

Martin (1992) states that “the three social scientific perspectives are used in this book to describe the primary emphasis of a single study, with the understanding that secondary emphases within that study or other studies by the same researcher might be more congruent with another perspective” (p. 14-15). This statement reminds me of some of our conversations about changing paradigms and perspectives as we grow/change as researchers. I remember talking in previous discussions about how we often don’t change very often and when we do it’s a slow change.

My questions for you are as follows: What do you think of this statement? Do you believe that most researchers move between the perspectives or do you believe most researchers tend to devote their time in one social scientific perspective?