Business research decisions perspectives : which view should be chosen - 'objectivism' or 'subjectivism'?

A paradigm or worldview is "a basic set of beliefs that guide action" (Guba, 1990: 17). These beliefs have been called paradigms (Lincoln and Guba, 2000; Mertens, 1998); philosophical assumptions, epistemologies, and ontologies (Crotty, 1998); broadly conceived research methodologies (Neuman, 2000); and alternative knowledge claims (Creswell, 2003). A paradigm encompasses three elements: ontology, epistemology and methodology. Ontology raises basic questions about the nature of reality whereas epistemology asks, how do we know the world and what is the relationship between the inquirer and the known? Methodology focuses on how we gain knowledge about the world. From epistemological stances, "two somewhat diverse and potentially irreconcilable paradigms currently exist in the organizational literature, the objectivist and the subjectivist" (McMurray et al., 2004: 9) and holds different philosophies which have shaped over time.