The contradictions inherent in the claim of positive researchers’ philosophy are apparent.
As pointed out by Whittington (1987), positive theory is not free from value judgments or
prescriptive implications. At the most basic level, the question asked (or hypothesis tested)
implies a prior view of “what is an interesting question?” and at the level of empirical testing,
value judgments can influence the choice of maintained hypothesis even if they do not explicitly
introduce an objective function, their work is heavily constrained by prior beliefs, which
determine their assumptions and the hypotheses, which they test. Chambers (1993) also points
out to this inconsistency in the theory. “The cult professes to be averse to prescription; but it
endorses, implicitly and explicitly, traditional cost-based accounting, the doctrines which are
full of unsupportable prescriptions. It lays the ground in the contracting-monitoring hypothesis
for an up-to-date and intelligible accounting, but supports conventional accounting which has
neither of those characteristics”.