Four Perspectives on Dilemmas in Management Analysis in Greenland

Abstract

In this paper we discuss how dilemmas are related to the study of management in Greenland. Different perspectives on the research situation are discussed, and we identify methodologies used by analysts, when they must deal with possible problems of legitimacy while doing analysis of organizing and management in an international academic perspective. Difference between perspectives implies different ways to identify dilemmas during the research process, due to the perspectives of managers and citizens in a small community like the Greenlandic. Four perspectives on the task and construction of analysis are presented – one we name traditional that is the common background for colonial and centralized modern studies, two realist interpretive methodologies and one temporal idiographic methodology. They organize in different ways the task to know about conflictual situations and the legitimacy of the academic activity and therefor they address different dilemmas in the study of management. We point to the perspectives general attention to internal and external situations of ethical conflicts and what is particular to the Greenlandic situation.