On the Organization of Inquiry: A Comparison of Some Radically Different Approaches to Policy Analysis

Abstract

W e live in a society where the production and handling of information has become increasingly important. For this reason alone it behooves us to ask what the relation if any is between the structure of an organization and the kinds of information or policy analysis activities it typically is able to support (9). If we go a bit further and conceive of information in its broadest and most generic sense as the product of some basic process of inquiry (5), then the most general question we can ask is what the philosophy of science can contribute to the study of organizations, i.e., to the development of organization theory. The purpose of this article is to raise precisely this question. More specifically, the authors feel that the current state of organization theory, particularly its relation to policy analysis, is in great need of some fundamentally kinds of questions and challenges. Put slightly differently, the authors believe that the future course of policy analysis is in need of some radical directions. Almost by definition, these new directions can only be gotten by stepping outside of the usual modes of thinking by going to fields of inquiry, like the philosophy of science, which traditionally have been conceived to be far removed from the concerns of both organization theory and policy analysis. If the success of any field is ultimately tied to the radical ideas and paradigms that it is willing to entertain, then the concern of this article is with the most speculative and wideranging hypotheses that can be formulated by looking at organization theory and policy analysis from some radically different perspectives. * This article argues for some directions in policy analysis and organization theory. It notes that a fundamental aspect of all organizations are the kinds of inquiring or information activities in which they typically engage and support. Very different kinds of organizations and theories of organization are needed to support some fundamentally different kinds of inquiring or policy analysis activities. Above all, the article argues for an integrated whole systems perspective of organization theory, and particularly, a whole systems perspective with respect to a program of research on organization theory and its relation to policy analysis.