By contrast, the behaviorists’ argument takes the positivist position that collective
human behavior exhibits enough order to justify a rigorous search, measurement,
classification, and depiction of that order. This can be done either by
separating facts from values—logical positivism—and theorizing about the facts
or by explicitly dealing with the value implications of factually derived theory.
The behaviorists’ position claims that simplifying models based on explicit assumptions
furthers the development of experimentation and reliable findings. Besides,
if there is disagreement regarding the theorists’ assumptions, theory in the
long run will be the better for it. As for issues of ethics, morality, wisdom, and
other fuzzy concepts, the behaviorist position is that such variables are not beyond
the reach of empirically derived theory.
Weber () was a social scientist in the positivist tradition who argued that
human behavior, particularly bureaucratic behavior, exhibits observable and describable
patterns that can be scientifically verified. But he also argued that social
reality is composed of the ideas and beliefs of social actors. The task of social science
must therefore be the interpretation of action in terms of subjective meaning.
Today, a fully developed theory of interpretive social science (Weber ;
Winch ) argues that in the social context humans act intentionally according
to shared ideas and beliefs and shared meanings associated with those ideas andbeliefs. This argument has evolved to the widely supported view that reality is socially
constructed; indeed, it is further suggested that it is useful to think of organizations
as shared meanings or understandings (Weick ). Interpretative
social science can include interpretations of the past (history), interpretations of
events (case studies), and interpretations of decisions and actions by participant
observations.