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This chapter highlights the personal side of research methods. We begin with an overview of Hans-Georg Gadamer's insights into the general problem of method in the social sciences and hermeneutics. This is followed by an overview of Michael Polanyi's explanation of the practice of scientific investigation. The second half of the chapter considers implications of the personal side of methods for how we conduct management research. This section discusses critical realism as a philosophy of science consistent with the assumptions of our field, the reasons for methodological pluralism and possible responses, and management research as a social practice.

The purpose of this paper is to see to what extent Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutic philosophy could be used to unveil how corporate discourse about financial crimes (in codes of ethics) is closely linked to the process of understanding.

Corporate ethical discourse of 20 business corporations will be analyzed, as it is conveyed within their codes of ethics. The companies came from five countries (USA, Canada, France, Switzerland and Brazil). In the explanatory study, the following industries were represented (two companies by industry): aircrafts/trains, military, airlines, recreational vehicles, soft drinks, cigarettes, pharmaceuticals, beauty products, telecommunications and banks.

Historically-based prejudices in three basic narrative strategies (silence, chosen items and detailed discussion) about financial crimes are related to the mindset, to the basic outlook on corporate self-interest or to an absolutizing attitude.

The historically-based prejudices that have been identified in this explanatory study should be analyzed in longitudinal studies.

The historically-based prejudices that have been identified in this explanatory study should be analyzed in longitudinal studies. Historically-based prejudices could be strengthened by the way corporate codes of ethics deal with financial crimes. They could, thus, have a deep impact on the organizational culture in the long-run.

The paper analyzes the way corporate codes of ethics use given narrative strategies to address financial crimes issues. It also unveils historically-based prejudices that follow from the choice of one or the other narrative strategy.

In this paper I argue that the liberal problem of religion, which defines religion in terms of dogmatism or opaque justifications based on ‘revealed truth’, needs to be rethought as part of a broader problem of dialogue, which does not define religion as uniquely problematic.

Habermas argues for religious positions to be translated into ‘generally accessible language’ to incorporate religious citizens into democratic dialogue and resist the domination of instrumental rationality by enhancing ‘solidarity’. I contrast this with Rowan Williams’ and Gadamer’s work.

Williams conceptualises religion in terms of recognising the finitude of our being, rather than dogmatism or opacity. This recognition, he argues, allows people to transcend the ‘imaginative bereavement’ of seeing others as means. Using Williams, I argue that Habermas misdefines religion, and reinforces the domination of instrumental rationality by treating religion as a means. I then use Gadamer to argue that the points Williams makes about religion can apply to secular positions too by recognising them as traditions subject to finitude.

This is original because it argues that the liberal problem of religion misdefines both religion and secular positions, by not recognising that both are traditions defined by finitude. To reach, dialogically, a ‘fusion of horizons’, where religious and secular people are understood non-instrumentally in their own terms of reference, will take time and not trade on immediately manifest – ‘generally accessible’ – meanings.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the experiential nature of knowledge creating interaction and to introduce a framework to explore it theoretically coherently with hermeneutic phenomenology and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s concept of play.

This paper presents a literature-based conceptual analysis of the concept of play. Gadamerian conception is related with the descriptions of knowledge creating interaction in the research of knowledge management and with the uses of the concept of play in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS). Theoretical analysis is applied in this study to structure the argumentation.

This study illustrates how the preconceptions of experiences and different modes of being in interaction are implicitly present in the research of knowledge creation (KC) in the descriptions of interaction and human factors enhancing KC. A framework for examining KC in organizational circumstances is developed based on the hermeneutic phenomenology and Gadamer’s concept of play, which provide a basis for understanding KC as being together in interaction.

This theoretical study develops a framework for examining the process of KC also empirically. In this study the examination of hermeneutic phenomenology is limited to the conceptions of play, authenticity and everydayness; phenomenology offers means for further explication of human being and experience.

This study provides a new view on KC based on hermeneutic phenomenology and play, and contributes to the examination of interactive knowledge processes in the field of LIS.

The purpose of this paper is to present a framework for empirically studying knowledge creation (KC) with phenomenological approach and propose that understanding interaction as play conceptualized by Hans-Georg Gadamer allows examining KC starting from the idea of a human being interacting in the events of co-creation. The presented framework is used to examine KC in a community of librarians and teachers collaborating to promote children’s joy of reading.

An ethnographic approach is applied to investigate knowledge-creating interaction in a working community. The triangulated data consist of ethnographic observations and video recordings of the community’s gatherings, its members’ interviews and produced documents.

The phenomenological conceptions of temporality of a human being and play are suitable for understanding being in the knowledge-creating interaction, as they give means to understand the meaningfulness of the past experiences, but promote an open attitude toward the future possibilities in a way which promotes KC. Studying interactive events allows understanding how KC can be examined as a collective accomplishment. The playful mode of being in the event was seen as a way to use the limited time available for interaction effectively.

The empirical study was conducted in one community, and further research is needed to test the developed approach in other contexts.

The results may be utilized to develop organizational circumstances, which promote KC by acknowledging the meaningfulness of interaction.

The study presents a novel way to conceptualize and examine KC as an experience and an event with phenomenological approach.

Argues preliminarily that quantitative‐mathematical social science, including economics, is not possible because it applies a method useful in other areas to a field to which it cannot be applied and because the truth claim of science so conceived is self‐referential to begin with. The argument is primarily based on the classic Gadamerian hermeneutic critique of the natural sciences and on the conception of the social sciences as related to phronésis.

In a postmodern context this paper proposes that analogical scholarship in which one conceptual schema is used to view another in order to generate new perspectives, be used to view play. Hermeneutic philosophy specifically is used in a process modelling hermeneutic inquiry. Included are a review of play, hermeneutic philosophy, and the outcomes of the juxtaposition of hermeneutic concepts against play. Resultant perspectives on key issues in play, such as the meaning of play, play in meaning making, the binaries of play, play and practice, and play in the reconceptualizing movement in early childhood education, follow.

Hayek favored both classical hermeneutics and science. His scientific reasoning shows the logical necessity of methodological dualism. Bruce Caldwell and Viktor Vanberg oppose hermeneutics and methodological dualism in favor of science. Their arguments depend on inappropriate interpretations of the doctrine of methodological dualism and an impoverished understanding of hermeneutics that fails to distinguish classical hermeneutics from universal hermeneutics. Hayek showed that “scientific” and “humanistic” approaches to social science can and should be compatible and complementary. Opposing (classical) hermeneutics in favor of science may cause a loss of knowledge by tending to deprive “scientific” social science of insights arising from more “humanistic” traditions.