analyzed for purposes of generalizing to overall encompassing laws (Burrell & Morgan,
1979). Epistemology deals with how one comes to know and understand their own
world. The assumption regarding epistemology from an interpretivist’s perspective
would be that knowledge is highly individualized. One’s knowledge about job design
then cannot simply be packaged, shipped and transferred to another. The participant has
come to know his or her job through their own unique experiences. The uniqueness
makes chances for replication by another individual unlikely so that the no two people
will know the job in the same way. The functionalist would assume that the job design
stands on its own as a phenomenon without being enacted upon by a participant.
Functionalist regard job design as predictable, measurable and can be analyzed through
positivism. The functionalist assumes that job design can be known and understood
removed from the individual. For example, the knowledge can be transferred in complete
form from one person to another person through the use of written procedures.
Human Nature
Human nature portrays the way in which individuals behave in their world. The
extreme views are voluntaristic and deterministic from a subjective and objectivist
viewpoint respectively (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). The voluntaristic view suggests that
individuals are free to act in whatever way they wish in any situation. The deterministic
view holds that people are constrained by the social situations of every day life and thus
are not free to act. The totally voluntaristic or deterministic view of job design is
somewhat difficult to imagine. Job design as phenomena from the organization’s
perspective draws a picture of how the individuals should go about accomplishing their
tasks which implies the worker is constrained by the job design. The voluntaristic
extreme perspective, however, would emphasize that the person has chosen to accept the
job and chooses each day to either do or not do the tasks of the job.
Methodology
As briefly stated before in this paper, when a researcher adopts a particular
paradigm, he or she also adopts a research method that carries with it assumptions about
the phenomena being investigated. The functionalist paradigm relies heavily on the
scientific method or nomothetic approach and its “recipe” for establishing reliability and
validity so that the laws generated may be used to predict and control the phenomena.
The interpretivist paradigm reflects the scientific method that emphasizes
predicting and controlling phenomena. The interpretivist’s perspective focuses on
understanding the “how” of the individual’s understanding. Thus the researcher attempts
to gather information through the perspective of the participant. The ideographic method
relies on information that is obtained from the participants that give detail on their
background and their history (Burrell & Morgan, 1979). A research approach is provided
through ethnomethodology. Ethnomethodology is the study of everyday actions of an
individual and offers a way researcher can study how the person comes to understand
their world through routine events. Ethnomethodology gives to “the most commonplace
activities of daily life the attention usually accorded extraordinary events” (Burrell &
Morgan, 1979: 247). The information gathered through an interpretivist’s perspective