Statistics and Probability Have Always Been Value-Laden: An Historical Ontology of Quantitative Research Methods

Abstract

and Dan Woodman. For help with historical insights, the authors thank James March, Steven Schlossman, William Starbuck, and the many independent presses that have made it possible to investigate the roots of our quantitative practices.

Critical positions: Situating critical perspectives in work and organizational psychology

“…One result of scientism in W-O psychology is the near-ubiquity of quantitative methodologies in research (Baritz, 1960;Gerard, 2016;Hollway, 1991;Islam & Zyphur, 2006;. The quantitative/qualitative methodological border does not map directly onto the positivist/non-positivist epistemological landscape: "qualitative positivism" is commonplace in organizational research (Prasad & Prasad, 2002) and quantitative research may be forthright about its value-laden aspects (Zyphur & Pierides, 2019). However, qualitative research within W-O psychology has often taken the role of "academic resistance" to scientism (Symon et al, 2008), despite often being used as a precursor to quantitative analysis where it does appear .…”

Business Ethics and Quantification: Towards an Ethics of Numbers

“…Organizational research has shown increasing interest in the social implications of numbers. These have ranged from concerns around “audit society” and the encroachment of metrics across organizational life (Mingers and Wilmott 2013 ; Powers 1997 ) to the datafication of everyday worklife in organizations (Stein et al 2019 ; Mazmanian and Beckman 2018 ), to considerations of the social foundations of quantitative data and relation to power (e.g., Perides and Zyphur 2019 ; Gephart 2006 ). Despite their breadth, these perspectives have in common a recognition that numeric values are born out of social process and have social impact.…”

“…Among these diverse areas are the history and philosophy of science (Desrosières 1993 ; Hacking 1990 ), sociology (Mau 2019 ; Espeland and Stevens 2008 ), accounting (Power 1997 ), and more recently digital and data studies communities (Pink and Lanzeni 2018 ; Dourish and Cruz 2018 ). From these diverse areas, some dialogue with the areas of business ethics and organization studies has been present (e.g., Baud et al 2019 ; Zyphur and Perides 2019 ; Beverungen et al 2015 ), although the diverse provenance of these ideas from different core literatures has rendered a coherent dialogue difficult. Running across the organizational adoptions, however, has been a concern with the ethics of quantitative representations (Zyphur and Perides 2017 ), with the datafication of workplace interactions (Stein et al 2019 ; Mazmanian and Beckman 2018 ), with the social uses of numbers by organizations (Wilson et al 2020 ; Boje, Gardner and Smith 2006 ), and with the exploitation possibilities of data-driven technologies (Beverungen et al 2015 ).…”

“…In organizational contexts, some have argued that the ability to quantify value is fundamental for socially responsible goals such as social and environmental goals (Kroeger and Weber 2020 ). On the other hand, quantifying value, by establishing commensurability though reducing diversity to a common metric (Espeland and Stevens 2019), undermines the singularity and diversity of social life (Zyphur and Perides 2019 ). Particularly when applied to areas of human life such as well-being (Singh and Alexandrova 2020 ; Karjalainen et al 2019 ) or social relationships (Gill and Pratt 2008 ), quantification has been seen as compromising the integrity of that which it measures by linking it to commodification.…”

Exploring Leave Management Practices and Relationship with Performance of Administrative Staff: Evidence from a Tertiary Institution in Ghana

“…Again, a quantitative approach was adopted, which involved the gathering and analysis of numerical data. This approach may be used to identify patterns and averages, make predictions, test causal relationships and generalize results, to a broader population [49,50]. A self-administered questionnaire was adopted as the primary instrument for data collection.…”