The course should function in relation to the second year project, as a further and extended initiation to philosophy of social science - emphasizing social constructionist approaches and related research methodologies and strategies – and through that qualify the students to reason, evaluate and reflect on their own research.
 
The aim of the course is thus to enable students (a) to critically assess the methodological perspectives of knowledge, concepts and theoretical understandings they acquire from their other courses and (b) to critically reflect on their own ways of collecting and analysing data and producing knowledge. All together this should help to develop students’ skills in making sound, informed, and reasoned methodological choices in their own analytical work.
 
The course goes more deeply (compared to the first year course) into central themes of philosophy of science in order to challenge and support the students in their efforts of reasoning their methodological choices and improving validity of data, analysis, results etc.

•  What is philosophy of science and what is it good for?
• Words: Ontology, epistemology, theories, validity, representativity, reliability, induction, deduction, abduction, hypothesis, coherence and methodology. What can we talk about with this vocabulary?
• The social construction of reality.
• Social Constructionism: A science philosophy and its approach to validity, research strategies, theories and analysis.
• What is phenomenology and what is hermeneutics? And in what ways may these methodological approaches help investigate problems around the role of knowledge / information in organizations?
• What is critical realism and how may this position help and inspire your formulation of research questions, methodological choices and validation of data and analysis?
• What is positivism and what are the principles of good research formulated by this position?
• Empirical fields: Problems of data collection in various kinds of organizations.