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This paper presents a rigorous defence of paradigm incommensurability as conceptualized by Burrell and Morgan, arguing that is is a necessary defence against scientistic authoritarianism. Two recent attacks on paradigm incommensurability are examined which, although emerging from different intellectual traditions, are both seen to imply the restoration of the authority of scientism characteristic of the postmodernism of reaction. Both critiques base their attack on the work of Kuhn but this basis is rejected on the grounds, inter alia, of a clear absence of isomorphism between the paradigmatic model of Kuhn and that of Burrell and Morgan. Finally, this paper considers the relevance of paradigm incommensurability in the context of non-reactive postmodernism. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

1996, London: Sage. 246 pages. Here we have another useful looking runner from the Alvesson/Willmott stable which builds upon and deepens their earlier, edited, Critical Management Studies (Alvesson and Willmott [...]