Answer to Question #270177 in Marketing for nanyala

Question

Why would a researcher in the business environment prefer to use both phenomenology and positivism methods? Explain with clear examples. 

Answer 1

Phenomenology helps us to understand the meaning of people's lived experiences. A phenomenological study explores what people experienced and focuses on their experience of phenomena. As a research methodology, phenomenology is uniquely positioned to help health professions education (HPE) scholars learn from the experiences of others. A phenomenology is a form of qualitative research that focuses on the study of an individual’s lived experiences within the world.

Positivism on the other hand implies that there are objective, independent laws of nature to which human life is subjected. It is the purpose of research to discover and describe these objective laws. This view describes society as being made up of structures, concepts, labels and relationships.

The reason why a researcher would prefer to use both phenomenology and positivism is because Positivism believes in static social fact and according to positivists, the world and the universe are operated by laws of cause and effect, the relation between which can be identified through means of the unique approach of the scientific method while phenomenology emphasizes on the subjectivity of the researchers and participants. The positivist and the phenomenological approach imply the study of man and society is considered in terms of one of the major debates in social science research. Therefore, it is the conflict between objectivity and subjectivity and conflict between a static world and the mobile world that separate phenomenology and positivism. For example, many of the founding fathers of sociology such as Marx, Comte and Durkheim believed that it would be possible to create a science of society based on the same principles and procedures as natural sciences.