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Purpose – First, to look closely and critically at Hayek's treatment of science in The Sensory Order. This provides hints as to the difficulties in maintaining a theory of scientific knowledge as a selective sum of the identifiable contributions of individual scientists. Second, to generalize from Hayek's theory of how the brain generates an individual's knowledge to a theory of how science generates scientific knowledge, knowledge that is not a simple sum of individual contributions. Third, to apply this picture of science to understanding developments in postpositivist philosophy and post-Mertonian sociology of science.

Approach – We provide a short survey of the conventional understanding of science and scientific knowledge, including that of Hayek in The Sensory Order. We examine in more depth the ways in which developments in postpositivist philosophy and sociology have transformed our understanding of science. We describe how, by analogy with Hayek's theory of the brain, science can be seen as an adaptive system that adjusts to its environment by classifying the phenomena in that environment to which it is sensitive, and we apply this systemic picture of science with a view to integrating much of the more moderate content of recent philosophy and sociology of science.

George Herbert Mead is an exemplary figure in sociology, and is central to sociological conceptions of the self and social action. However, other important aspects of Mead's thought have been largely neglected, including his remarkably sophisticated and sociological theory of scientific knowledge. Traditional accounts of the sociology of science identify Thomas Kuhn, and his predecessor, Ludwig Fleck, as pioneers in the social analysis of scientific knowledge, allowing the modern constructionist school of science studies to emerge. This article challenges this history by showing Mead's awareness of the sociological aspects of scientific knowledge in papers that predate both Kuhn and Fleck. Finally, Mead's position attempts to avoid sociological relativism, and offers instead a pragmatist foundation to approach the study of science.

This paper aims to demonstrating that the former new institutional theory of isomorphism and decoupling cannot be extended, modified or refuted as it is a closed theory. By analyzing the structure of this former version of institutional theory and its numerous modern competitors (institutional entrepreneurship, institutional work and institutional logics theories) it is argued that these alternative theories demonstrate even less explanatory and predictive power and do not refute or extend their predecessor. The rise of new organizational theories can have no other effect on classic institutional theory than to limit the domain of its applicability. In turn, there are a number of principles and conditions that future theories should meet to be accepted as progressive advancements.

The paper provides a review of relevant organizational and philosophical literature on theory construction and scientific progress in organizational research and offers a set of principles and demands for those new theories that seek to challenge new institutionalism.

The authors show that the former institutional theory satisfies two main criteria that any scientific theory should conform with following it is useful and falsifiable in term of giving explanations and predictions while, at the same time, clearly specifying what can be observed and what cannot; what can happen and what is not likely to occur. Modern institutional theories cannot demonstrate this quality and they do not satisfy these criteria. Moreover, institutional isomorphism theory is a closed theory, which means it cannot be intervened with changes and modifications and all future theories should develop their theoretical propositions for other domains of applications while they should account for all empirical phenomena that institutional theory successfully explains.

Adopting instrumental view on organizational theories allowed reconstructing the logic and trajectory of organizational research evolution and defends its rationality and progressive nature. It is also outlined how existing dominant theory should be treated and how new theories should challenge its limitations and blind spots and which philosophical and methodological criteria should be met.

This paper aims at interpreting the epistemology of marketing. The paper investigates several research questions, proposing some initial reflections concerning their impact on marketing.

The paper addresses the research questions by conducting an analysis of the marketing literature. An analysis of philosophical postmodern literature is also carried out. The paper's attempt constantly to create links between the level of philosophical elaboration and that of marketing research leads to a proposal of new approach to marketing research: experiential research.

In the paper's review of the marketing literature the traditional pragmatic approach of marketing as a discipline is highlighted. Its strong managerial perspective has partly diverted researchers’ attention from the theory, and focused it mainly on the method. This has created an increasingly marked distinction between the marketing literature aimed at management, and that aimed at the academic community. The postmodern perspective on marketing calls for a rethinking of the “scientific nature” of marketing as an investigative field.

The main point is that marketing cannot be a scientific discipline only by adopting a scientific method. Marketing research is by definition different in nature: it cannot generate better but only different knowledge. This perspective shift has an impact on all research components. First, the field of research widens enormously, because researchers can deal with everything arousing their interest and to which their accumulated knowledge can be applied. Since the discipline does not become scientific, the researcher can use any method. All methods can originate scientific theories, and therefore incremental knowledge. Hence science is neither objective nor absolute.

This paper analyses the philosophical roots of postmodernism, in order to understand its impact on postmodern marketing better. It also focuses on the impact of postmodernism on marketing research, and proposes a new approach. This paper then explores the features of the experiential research in marketing, and its effect on the processes of generating knowledge.

The critical dimension and the one that can unify knowledge through systemic interrelationships, is unification of the purely a priori with the purely a posteriori parts of total reality into a congruous whole. This is a circular cause and effect interrelationship between premises. The emerging kind of world view may also be substantively called the epistemic‐ontic circular causation and continuity model of unified reality. The essence of this order is to ground philosophy of science in both the natural and social sciences, in a perpetually interactive and integrative mould of deriving, evolving and enhancing or revising change. Knowledge is then defined as the output of every such interaction. Interaction arises first from purely epistemological roots to form ontological reality. This is the passage from the a priori to the a posteriori realms in the traditions of Kant and Heidegger. Conversely, the passage from the a posteriori to a priori reality is the approach to knowledge in the natural sciences proferred by Cartesian meditations, David Hume, A.N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, as examples. Yet the continuity and renewal of knowledge by interaction and integration of these two premises are not rooted in the philosophy of western science. Husserl tried for it through his critique of western civilization and philosophical methods in the Crisis of Western Civilization. The unified field theory of Relativity‐Quantum physics is being tried for. A theory of everything has been imagined. Yet after all is done, scientific research program remains in a limbo. Unification of knowledge appears to be methodologically impossible in occidental philosophy of science.

Philosophers and historians of science, along with scientists themselves, have long been interested in the problem of theory succession: “How does one theory supersede another?” Concern with this general topic has led to the development of two major recent theories regarding the issue. These theories of theory succession have emerged principally from reflection on physics. In the eyes of most scientists, this is probably appropriate, since physics seems to offer (at least to most observers) science in its purest form.

This essay raises a concern about the trajectory that new institutionalism has been following during the last decades, namely an emphasis on heterogeneity, change and agentic behavior instead of isomorphism and conformist behavior. This is a crucial issue from the perspective of the philosophy and methodology of science since a theory that admits both change and stability as a norm has less scientific weight then a theory that predicts a prevalence of passivity and isomorphism over change and strategic behavior. The former provides explanations and predictions while the latter does not.

The paper offers an analysis of the nature, characteristics, functions and boundaries of institutional theories in the spirit of philosophy and methodology of science literature.

The power of the former institutional theory developed by Meyer, Rowan, DiMaggio and Powell lies in its generalization, explanation and prediction of observable and unobservable phenomena: as a typical organizational theory that puts forward directional predictions, it explains and predicts the tendency for organizations to become more similar to each other over time and express less strategic and interest-driven behavior, conforming to ever-increasing institutional pressures. A theory of isomorphism makes scientific predictions while its modern advancements do not. Drawing on Popper's idea of the limit of domains of explanation and limited domains of theories we present two propositions that may direct our attention towards the strength or weakness of institutional theories with regard to their explanations of organizational processes and behavior.

The paper draws implications for further theory building in institutional analysis by suggesting the nature of institutional explanations and the place of institutional change in the theoretical apparatus. Once institutional theory explains the tendency of the system towards equilibrium, there is no need to explain the origins and causes of radical change per se. Institutional isomorphism theory explains and predicts how even after radical changes organizational fields will move towards isomorphism, that is, institutional equilibrium. The task is, therefore, not to explain agency and change but to show that it is natural and inevitable processes that organizational field will return to isomorphic dynamics and move towards homogenization no matter how much radical change occurred in this field.

The paper discusses the practical problems with instrumental utility of institutional theories. In order to be useful any theory must clearly delineate its boundaries and offer explanations and predictions and it is only the former 1977/1983 institutional theory that satisfies these requirements while modern advancements merely offer ambiguous theoretical umbrellas that escape empirical tests. For researchers therefore it is important to recognize which theory can be applied in a given limited domain of research and which one has little or no value.

Part I of this chapter applies the principles of the philosophy of science and the derived scientific method to analyze the foundational concepts and core proposition of the Resource-Base View (RBV) as popularized by Barney (1986, 1991, 1997). This analysis identifies seven fundamental conceptual deficiencies and logic problems in Barney's conceptualization of “strategically valuable resources” and in Barney's VRIO framework for identifying strategically valuable resources that can be sources of sustained competitive advantage. Three problems – the Value Conundrum, the Tautology Problem in the Identification of Resources, and the Absence of a Chain of Causality – relate to the RBV's and VRIO's failure to provide an adequate conceptual basis for identifying strategically valuable resources. The Uniqueness Dilemma, the Cognitive Impossibility Dilemma, and an Asymmetry in Assumptions about Resource Factor Markets result in an inability of the VRIO framework to support identification of resources that can be sources of sustained competitive advantage. More fundamentally, the core proposition of the RBV – that resources that are strategically valuable, rare, inimitable, and organizationally embedded are sources of sustainable competitive advantage – is argued to result directly in the Epistemological Impossibility Problem that precludes use of the scientific method in RBV research. This chapter argues that until these conceptual deficiencies and logic problems are recognized and remedied, the RBV – in spite of its current popularity – is and will remain theoretically sterile and incapable of contributing in any systematic way to the development of strategy theory.

Part II of this chapter then suggests how foundational concepts developed within the competence perspective on strategy provide essential remedies for the identified deficiencies and problems in the RBV – and thereby provide a more conceptually adequate basis for representing the nature of firms in the scientific study of their interactions and competitive outcomes.