the methodology and strategies of research in social sciences are of great importance and momentum. although very little attention has been paid, in the early scientific literature, to logic and methodology about generating knowledge, certain early muslim scholars such as farabi and ibn-e khaldun have made valuable conscious efforts in methodology, research techniques and scientific standards t...

The potential contribution of Actor-Network Theory (ANT) for representing e-government initiative flows from its ontological assumptions. However, these assumptions have never been critically reviewed using real e-government cases. Using two e-government cases in Indonesia, the paper tries to provide real evidence on how meaningful are all ontological assumptions of ANT for representing e-gover...

the term paradigm has become a central issue in philosophy of science. increasing attention to paradigm in public administration, as a branch of social science, is also highlighted. this paper attempts to analysis seven paradigms in public administration research and to study ontological, epistemological, methodological, rhetorical and axiological assumptions of the each paradigm. finally, we b...

Information modeling is a technique by which a database designer develops a conceptual model of a database depicting the entity classes that will be represented in the database. There are three competing ontological assumptions that guide the modeling process. The broadest characterization of these assumptions is realism vs. conceptualism, with social realism occupying a middle ground. The real...

All interpretation involves some form of induction. Passages and fragments of an author's writings are taken by an investigator, organized, and reassembled into a coherent and meaningful picture of the author's reality with the intent of illustrating some hitherto undiscovered motivation and/or intent. These inductive inferences may make a contribution to the store of human intellectual history...

This paper attempts to discuss how qualitative (intensive) and quantitative (extensive) research strategies differ by contrasting epistemological and ontological aspects and how these beliefs and views fit with their different intellectual goals. Firstly, this paper discusses the importance of understanding philosophy in social science research and its relation to qualitative (intensive) and qu...

This work seeks to explicate the ontological assumptions that underpin the development of Conservative Party welfare policy from 2005 to 2010. The assumptions will be discussed in four themes: structure/agency, social change, human nature and gender. The work shall begin by discussing the ontological assumptions of neoliberalism through the work of Hayek, Friedman, Mead and Murray, using exampl...