College and Research Libraries AMUSIODI Creative Research and Theory Building in Library and Information Sciences This paper is a critique of the prevalent conceptual methodologies in research in library administration. It examines the current research methodologies found mostly in Dissertation Abstracts International (University Microfilms International) , relates them to the positivistic orientation of some social scien- tists, indicates why they are inappropriate, and suggests how res~arch in li- brary administration can be made more meaningful and relevant. A SEMINAL EVENT took place in May 1968 and speculation is reduced to a minimum. when sociology students at the University of How, then, do we arrive at proven knowl- Nantes, France, violently demonstrated edge? A school of thought, generally identi- against the government of their country. The fied by the name "positivism," contends that students presented the French government nothing that is not practically demonstrable with a document entitled, "Why Sociolo- can be regarded as truth. As Richard Sonnet gists?" in which they demanded radical aptly expressed it, "To touch, to measure, changes in sociology studies in France. 1 The and then to talk about the meaning of what focus of the protest was the type of sociology one had touched: This process was the guid- taught in French universities: the students ing principle of positivism. "2 viewed it as patently oriented to the defense Positivism insists that the methods of the of the status quo. natural sciences are appropriate in the study This protest was not new except that it of social phenomena. Why? Because the pur- took a different pattern from earlier ones. suit of truth and the discovery of reality both Also, it was for a slightly different reason. demand that the investigator hold his per- The development of approaches to the study sonal feelings, biases, preconceptions, and of social phenomena has, since antiquity, the like, in abeyance; they must never be al- deeply troubled many critical minds. Since lowed to interfere with the discovery of real- the period of the Greek scholars, members of ity. Even his sympathetic disposition toward the academic community have insisted on the human condition must not be permitted truth and honesty in all matters of scholar- to interfere with empirical evidence. Alfred ship. They have insisted that knowledge Schultz put it this way: "While the theorist must mean "proven knowledge"; proven ei- may be passionately interested in the fate and ther by practical, empirical demonstration quality of social and political life, he must or by the logic of reason. It was felt that bracket this practical interest in his pursuit of scholars have a responsibility to ensure that, theory. "3 It is this insistence that the methods even in thought, the gap between knowledge of the natural sciences are applicable to the Amusi Odi is program director at the Institute of Training and Organizational Development, Grad- uate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh. 312 I study of social phenomena that Richard Son- nett calls "human empiricism. "4 But "human empiricism" has not been left unchallenged. This challenge was spear- headed by German and Italian students of society. The German historian Wilhelm Dilthey observed that we notice, touch, and measure only those things we already have the conviction are real; and the great Italian philosopher Beneditto Groce was puzzled by the insistence of empiricists that a science of man start with an inhuman premise, namely, that the scientist could set aside his or her own beliefs, feelings, and sense of real- ity.5 Other aspects of the challenge have been added in recent years. For instance, the American social theorist J. 0. House con- tends that positivism is grossly inapplicable to the study of human society on at least two grounds. In the first place, the investigator himself is part of the subject matter that he is investigating and cannot, therefore, be ob- jective and value free in the way that a natu- ral scientist is presumed to be. Secondly, man is a different kind of phenomenon from the rest of nature in that his behavior is mediated by subjectively ascribed meanings that can- not be observed by the investigator. 6 William McBride even goes so far as to ar- gue that "the whole idea of social science, given the meanings of the word science in contemporary English, is a mistake. "7 This may be something of an overstatement, but it has relevance in the context of current ap- proaches to social science research. The whole notion of social science as a "science of society" leads, in the opinion of this writer, to unacceptable methodological trends in the study of human activities. PuRPOSE OF RESEARCH Let us go back to the fundamental ques- tion: What is the purpose of research? It seems to me that, briefly stated, the sole pur- pose of research is the development of theory. But what is theory? The French philosopher Francois Marie Arouet, known to history as Voltaire, once told his listeners, "If you wish to converse with me, define your terms. "8 We would thus define theory here as an in- ternally connected and logically consistent proposition about relationship(s) between phenomena. In essentially all circumstances, a theory is an explanation of an observed re- lationship between phenomena. A theory al- ways seeks to account for an observed event given specified circumstances. A theory is different from law, which Creative Research I 3!3 House defines as "an empirical generaliza- tion that is held to be INVARIANT given specified conditions."9 Both theory and law are explanations of observed events; but, un- like law, a theory is never held to be invari- ant, however stringent its specified condi- tions. A theory can easily be falsified by a new discovery or by a reinterpretation of its crucial propositions. 10 One is easily re- minded of various theories that at one time provided plausible explanations of various phenomena in nature but were later super- seded as more sophisticated and reliable in- struments and techniquebwere discovered or invented. For illustrative purposes, let us confine ourselves to one area: library and in- formation science research. EMERGING TRENDS IN LIBRARY AND INFORMATION SCIENCE A disturbing trend pervades library and information science and, in fact, most studies in the social sciences today. This trend is quantification of human behavior. This quantification arises from the mistaken be- lief that reality can only be discovered through hard data; worse still is the prevail- ing tendency to assume that mathematical or s a IS 1c va ues exp am rea 1 y and that so- ~ nescan e enve from them. Space does not permit a comprehensive survey of the whole spectrum of library and informa- tion science research nor will such a compre- hensive survey serve the intended purpose of this paper. We will, therefore, concentrate on one area of library and information sci- ence research: library administration. A careful look at Dissertation Abstracts In- ternational published during the last ten years on library administration reveals three areas of concentration. These three areas cor- respond roughly with three leadership theo- ries. Briefly, they are: (1) Personality- Character Trait Theory, which emphasizes personality and character traits as the key el- ements in leadership; (2) Institutional The- ory, which contends that the library system, over time, infuses its leaders with specific values. The individual administrator usually concerns himself with human interaction and communication, with persons, and with his own contribution to the efficiency of the library system. In the course of time, the ad- ministrator must conform to institutional ex- 314 I College & Research Libraries.· july 1982· pectations. Library administrators. who view the library as a system thus differ from other administrators who do not; and (3) the Situa~ tional Theory, which holds that both the character of the individual administrator and the situation in which he finds himself determine, or should determine, his adminis- trative practice. The prevailing research practice is to elicit data on a given administrative style of indi- vidual administrators. Such data are usually derived by means of a questionnaire from such instruments as Rensis Likert's "Linking Pin," which tries to determine how "partici- pative" an administrator is or Tannenbaum and Schmidt's "Continuum of Leadership Styles," which, like the "Linking Pin," mea- sures leadership style. The resulting data on the administrative practice of a given administrator are then correlated with one or other administrative styles; if the correlation is significant, the conclusion generally drawn is that the ad- ministrator's leadership style is either author- itarian, democratic, or .laissez-faire. Cer- tainly this apparently whimsical illustration may seem trite, but it contains the substance of most of what one encounters in most re- . searches in library administra.tion. Even on the analytic ground alone, corre- lation would still be inappropriate in com- parison with multivariate regression analy- sis; in fact, regression analysis provides more information than correlation in that it an- swers correlation questions, is a stronger method of inference, and demands less stiff assumptions. As Choucri and North skillfully observed, "Correlation is useful primarily as an aid to understanding regression and as an auxiliary tool; correlation gives no indica- timlS concerning cause and effect; it gives only one number as an aid towards under- standing a complex relationship rather than the estimation of a mathematical function yielded by regression techniques; it demands more restrictive assumptions, concerning the distribution of the data than does regression; and it does not tell us how two variables move together." 11 But empirically oriented res.earchers would not permit the consideration of ana- lytic propriety to stand in their way. The im- portant thing, they seem to contend, is to, ac- cumulate data on administrative behavior, correlate these data, and show relationships among them. This practice, regrettably, has led to what the structural anthropologist Levi Strauss terms "the inductive illusion": the belief that reality can be discovered by t.he· accumula- tion of more and more data and the examina- tion of more and more cases. Empiricists per- suade themselves to believe that if they gather more and more data and establish more and more associations, they can de- velop theories of administration. This, to say the least, is a fallacy. A theory is not built by a mere accumulation of data. As Kenneth Waltz observed: If we gather rnore and more data and establish more and more a,ssociatious ... we will not finally find that we know somethiog. We will simply end up having more and more data and larger sets of correlations. Data never speak for themselves; ob- servation and experience ~lever lead directly to knowledge of causes. i 2 The so1,1rce of this fallacy is a failure by re- searchers to distinguish between description and explanation. Statistics are descriptions in numerical form: if we find a strong statistical association between a library administrator's management style and a given administra- tive instrument, it would be wrong for us to conclude that we have accounted for the management style in the sense of explaining it. Numbers, as Waltz notes, "may describe what goes on in the world"; they do not ex- plain it. Statistical associations alone can never lead to the development of a theory. Waltz is right when he· contends that "a theory is not the occurrences seen and the associations re- corded, but is instead the explanation of them."13 Even if Galileo's claim that nature writes its secrets in numbers is true, it is still necessary for men to unravel these numbers in the form of words. THEORY BUILDING How, then, is a theory built? How , specifi- cally, can a theory of library administration be built? In a broader perspective, the ques- tion might be put this way: How can a theory of administration be built? Earlier, we defined theory as an internally connected ami logically consistent proposi- tion about the relation(s) between phenom- ena. A theory is a product of an abstraction from empirical data, not a generalization from the data. A theory is born at the mo- ment when a researcher abstracts from ob- served data and tries to discern general pat- terns that connect them. The act of abstracting is an active process; it involves a deliberate attempt to invoke flashes of new perception. This is not easy. Ideas do not ma- terialize on demand; worse still, ideas often begin in vague, undefined forms. As Fred Hoyle remarks: It is not only difficult to come by our flashes of new perception, but no two of us have flashes exactly in the same direction. Even if you should sudden} y see a point in some particular problem or other . . . you've still got the job of convincing the rest of us. 14 What Hoyle refers to as "the job of con- vincing" others is the organization of the new flashes of ideas into a logically consistent form: re-creating reality from the abstrac- tions of sense impressions. It is this organiza- tion of ideas that Berdyaev calls "marriage" or a "meeting between different elements." The researcher brings together his personal, creative conception with his empirical obser- vation to create a third thing, the offspring of this union: a theory. Theory creates unity from diversity; it imposes simplicity, order, and regularity on complex, disorderly, and apparently anomalous phenomena. In all circumstances, even if implicitly, theory, as Robin Horton reminds us, "places things in a causal context wider than that provided by common sense. " 15 An illustrative example is Max Weber's "Protestant Ethic." Weber's starting point was a statistical sur- vey, carried out in 1900 by German sociolo- gist Max Offenbacher, into "the economic condition of Catholics and Protestants" in the religiously mixed (60 percent Catholic) grand duchy of Baden. Offenbacher estab- lished that the Protestant citizens of the grand duchy owned a disproportionately large percentage of capital assets and had more than their fair share of leading posi- tions , educational qualifications, academic positions, and skilled labor jobs.l6 Weber went beyond a mere description of Offen- bacher's data and abstracted from it by ask- ing himself to what combination of circum- stances the following fact should be attrib- uted: "Business leaders and owners of capital, as well as the higher grades of skilled Creative Research I 315 labor, and even more the higher technically and commercially trained personnel of mod- ern enterprises, are overwhelmingly Protes- tant."17 He postulated that the answer to his rhetorical question must be located in the doctrinal foundation of Calvinistic Protes- tantism (Protestant Ethic). Formal logic is based on this process. Prin- ciples of logic presume that putting together known truths in specially formulated ways yields new truths. This is the basis of Aristo- telian syllogism, which, in its simplest form, is generally stated thus: Every man dies Socrates is a man Therefore Socrates will die. In this way, a person may move reasonably from the known to the unknown by organiz- ing empirical data in a certain manner and then, on the basis of these data, deducing a generalization. The major distinction between formal logic and creative abstracting lies in how the combination process goes. Formal logic vir- tually predetermines its conclusions by dis- tinctive patterns of movement. Creative ab- stracting, on the other hand, is much less rigid and, therefore, much less certain in its conclusion- but generally more open to dis- covery. A person takes a certain amount of risk in combining ideas. He will be uncertain how fruitful the synthesis will be, yet the chances are high that some fruitful abstract- ing will ensue. It is this critical abstracting that students of Marxism refer to as dialec- tics. Dialectical analysis, in the context of ad- ministration, begins with a given adminis- trative style as it is observed (thesis), examines its opposite or negation (antithesis) , and postulates, by a logical examination of all available information, the development of a new approach that will overcome the de- fects of the existing administrative style (syn- thesis). Most researchers in library administration do not go beyond the stage of antithesis orne- gation. Negation itself is viewed by students of dialectical orientation merely as a step to- wards a radical rejection of the status quo. It is not the analytic conclusion, for it yields nothing other than the rejection of an exist- ing system. Negation, considered as an ana- lytic end, is a fruitless effort, for actions do not lie in the act of negation, but in proposi- 316 I College & Research Libraries· July 1982 tions that lead to overcoming an observed de- fect. A social change activist who rejects (or negates) all existing systems is not contribut- ing to social progress unless and until he, by a conscious act of will, proposes an alternative path to change that is born out of a careful analysis of both the existing order and its al- ternatives. It is this critical, analytic synthe- sis that gives birth to fruitful abstracting. Creative abstraction is not easy nor is it very common. As Carl Rogers observes: In the sciences, there is an ample supply of techni- cians, but the number who can creatively formu- late fruitful hypotheses and theories is small indeed. 18 Creative abstracting takes a considerable amount of personal conviction and commit- ment. This, contrary to what human empiri- cists would like us to believe, applies to both the natural and the social sciences. In his book, Personal Knowledge, Michael Polanyi makes it clear that even scientific knowledge is personal knowledge, committed knowl- edge. It is erroneous to believe that scientific knowledge is impersonal and "out there," that it has nothing to do with the belief of the individual who has discovered it. Instead, every aspect of science is pervaded by disci- plined personal commitment, and Polanyi makes the case very persuasively that the whole attempt to divorce science from the person is a completely unrealistic one. Per- haps a brief quotation will provide the flavor of his thinking: So we see that both Kepler and Einstein ap- proached nature with intellectual passions and with beliefs inherent in these passions, which led them to their triumphs and misguided them to their errors. These passions and beliefs were theirs, personally, even though they held them in the con- viction that they were valid, universally .19 It is evident that reality cannot be discov- ered by merely accumulating empirical data on human behavior. In the particular case of library administration, aggregation of em- pirical cases of administrative styles and practices cannot advance the understanding of library administration, nor can it lead to the development of a viable theory of admin- istration. To develop a viable theory of ad- ministration, the researcher must go beyond the empirical data before him: he must com- bine what is already known in the field with his perception of the problem before him to develop a new and unique way of viewing the problem. A descriptive account of ob- servable administrative behavior is only a beginning- an explanation must be sought as to why the individual chooses that specific style of administration, what environmental and other conditions facilitate or hinder the choice, and how that choice relates to the in- dividual's social, economic, political, and cultural predispositions. The objective is the development of a theory or theories of ad- nJinistration that furnish us with what type of person tends to practice what style of ad- ministration under what type of social, eco- nomic, political, and cultural circumstances. It would then be possible to realize how so- cial, economic, trait, political, and cultural factors influence or determine administra- tive practices. The goal would be to arrive at a nomologi- cal universal generalization about adminis- trative styles and practices and factors that influence them. We would then be in a posi- tion to say: "Given the following factors, put this person in this institution, organization, or agency." It is important here to elaborate a bit on the nature of nomological generalizations. Generalizations may be conveniently grouped into three major categories: nomo- logical universal, prevalence, and probabi- listic.20 We will use, for example, the state- ment, "Experienced librarians ·who also worked as social workers make good library administrators at the village level." The three types can be expressed as follows: a nomological universal generalization (all ex- perienced librarians who also worked as so- cial workers make good library administra- tors at the village level); a prevalence generalization (generally or normally experi- enced librarians who also worked as social workers make good library administrators at the village level); and a probabilistic general- ization (the probability that an experienced librarian who also worked as a social worker will make a good library administrator at the village level is 90 percent). From the above examples it is evident that a nomological universal generalization is a proposition that refers to an indefinite num- ber of instances. Such universal generaliza- tions cover every case. A nomological univer- sal generalization is very difficult to attain, but it must constitute the goal of research be- cause, as Phillips has noted, "It is [only] the nomological type [of generalization] which has the necessary validity for prediction and control. "21 Both the prevalence and probabi- listic generalizations contain elements of un- certainty. As an objective (short-term mea- sure), both may be adequate, but, in the long run, the goal of all research must be the at- tainment of nomological universal general- izations. How can nomological universal general- izations be attained? Different people tend to behave differently in identical situations. How can we validly arrive at a universal gen- eralization that refers to an indefinite num- ber of instances? The key lies, in this author's view, in two factors: data gathering and the meanings we assign to terms. DATA GATHERING To validly arrive at nomological universal generalizations, research data must be all- embracing. This means that data must be de- rived from a large variety of sources- sources that have even the remotest theoretical probability of affecting the sub- ject under study. In the specific case of li- brary administration, data must be derived from all possible factors that can affect a given administrator's behavior. Data sources must include, as a minimum, the administra- tor's socioeconomic status, political orienta- tion, health condition, age, educational level, and cultural memory. The approach must, as we have seen, be dialectical- using dialectics in Sherman's sense to denote "an approach to problems that visualizes the world as an intercon- nected totality. "22 It is not enough to have an administrator simply fill in a questionnaire and to draw a conclusion from a descriptive analysis of his responses. Research findings in this case must always be probabilistic at best since the administrator's behavior is merely described, not explained. Here is where positivism may be wrong, since a large part of what influences behavior may be, and generally is, practically unob- servable. Observable behavior is generally a function of two factors: stimulus and atti- tude. Stimulus gives rise to attitude; observ- able behavior is a manifestation of attitude. Creative Research I 317 By relying entirely on observable behavior as the ultimate source of reality, positivists or "human empiricists" tend to approach real- ity from a superficial standpoint. They forget that every behavior has a meaning for the be- haver and that no satisfactory explanation of a behavior can be arrived at unless we take into consideration the motivations and inten- tions of the behaver. Besides, any single be- havior may have been motivated by an im- mense number of unobservable factors. As Lakatos observed, "Any explanation [based on observed behavior] is only approximate, because of the infinite complexity of the fac- tors involved in determining any single event."23 MEANING IN LANGUAGE All words have both assigned meaning, sometimes called connotation, and specific area of application, sometimes called deno- tation. Phillips24 has shown that most state- ments usually labeled "factual" by research- ers are actually characterized by multiple meanings, some factual, some valuative. His illustrative example is a statement such as, "Democracy is a better form of government than communism." Phillips has shown that this deceptively simple statement may mean any of four things: (1) an approval of democ- racy by the speaker; (2) an attempt by the speaker to persuade his listeners to change their attitudes in favor of democracy and against communism; (3) a belief by the speaker in the factual accuracy of his state- ment and his right to persuade others to ac- cept it; and (4) the speaker's willingness to lis- ten to counterarguments with a belief that he can withstand them. It is inconceivable that we can achieve nomological universal generalizations in re- search unless we use words so precisely that the meanings we assign to them are clear and unambiguous. It would be much more help- ful if the maker of the statement "Democracy is a better form of government than commu- nism" defined not only what he meant by "good" government, but also the kind of be- havior he considers democratic, under what circumstances such characteristics should be regarded as good, and under what circum- stances they cease to be termed good. For ex- ample, two individuals may seem to agree on the field of its application (denotation). They 318 I College & Research Libraries • july 1982 may agree that whatever increases the happi- ness of a given social unit is good, but one of them may disagree that a victorious war of conquest qualifies as "good." When research- ers talk about "participative management," the term almost invariably means different things to different people. Does a library ad- ministrator who consults his staff in all cases of policy, but who nevertheless issues instruc- tions that reflect his private, personal deci- sion, practice participative management? Does a library administrator who does not consult with his staff in a formal way, but whose decisions invariably reflect the inter- est of the staff, fail to practice participative management? What specifically is "partici- pative management?" If we accept, as the fundamental purpose of research in administration, the discovery of basic invariants, structures or laws (given specified conditions) that can serve as a prop- osition that will take a deductive form, and from which we can derive counterfactual claims about the relations of individual traits, unique situation or environment, in- stitutional variables, and administrative style, then the language we use in research reports must be so precise that the probabil- ity of both connotative and denotative ambi- guity, if not completely eliminated, is re- duced to an absolute minimum. CoNCLUSION The insistence by researchers on strict ob- servance of the law of evidence is legitimate and indisputable. What is and has been dis- putable is what constitutes evidence. Human empiricists contend that only the practical and observable can legitimately be entitled to a claim of legitimacy. Others are not so sure. They argue that empiricism tends to lead to quantitative bias as well as reduction- ism, which emphasizes a theoretical frame- work of hypothesis over total experience. Be- sides, quantitative bias tends to mistake description for explanation. The aim of re- search is to provide explanation of the rela- tionship between phenomena in nature. When research is purely descriptive or when it takes the form of a typology of a given phe- nomenon, the description or typology is only an aid to eventual explanation and under- standing of the phenomenon under study. Empirical research in library administra- tion, particularly as it is reported in Disserta- tion Abstracts International, is becoming something of a ritual. It is typified by the use of essentially the same pattern of instrument to determine the administrative style of a va- riety of library administrators. The conclu- sions give the impression of a litany, sound- ing essentially the echo of studies done several years ago and contributing nothing in the way of theory building. This paper is an appeal for creativity in li- brary research. "Not that again," as the writer and cognitive theorist Jerome Bruner observed, "is a sign of dismay." REFERENCES 1. William L. McBride, "Student Power," in his Social Theory at a Crossroads (Pittsburgh: Du- quesne Univ. Pr., 1980), p.17. 2. Richard Sonnet, "The Absolute Truth about Mankind, " New York Times Book Review (9 Sept. 1979),p.9,43. 3. Richard Bernstein, The Structure of Social and Political Theory (New York: Harcourt, 1976), p.173. 4. Sonnet, "TheAbsoluteTruth,"p.9. 5 . Ibid. , p.9, 43. 6. J. 0. House, "A Note on Positivism ," Insurgent Sociologist 6, no.2:94-95 (1976). 7. McBride, Social Theory , p.12. 8. Quoted in Will Durant , The Story of Philoso- phy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1961)., p.48 . 9. House, "A Note,'' p.96. 10. Some scholars contend that experiments or new discoveries cannot falsify a theory. Imre Lakatos, for instance, reminds his readers that "no experimental result can ever kill a theory; any theory can be saved from counter- instances either by some auxiliary hypothesis or by a suitable reinterpretation of its terms." Imre Lakatos, " Falsification and the Method- ology of Scientific Research Programmes," in Lakatos and Allan Musgrave, eds., Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philoso- phy of Science, V.4 [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1970]), p.l16. 11. Nazli Choucri and Robert C. North , Nations in Conflict: National Growth and Interna- tional Violence (San Francisco: W. H. Free- man, 1975) , p.302. 12. Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979), p.9. 13. Ibid. 14. Fred Hoyle, Man in the Universe (New York: Columbia Univ. Pr., 1966), p.24. 15. Robin Horton, "African Traditional Thought and Western Science," Africa 37:51, 53 (1967). 16. Herbert Luthy, "Once Again: Calvinism and Capitalism," in S. N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Protestant Ethic and Modernization: A Com- para.tive View (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p.124-::25. 17. Stanislav Andreski, "Method and Substantive Theory in Max Weber," inS. N. Eisenstadt, ed., The Protestant Ethic and Modernization: A Comparative View (New York: Basic Books, 1968), p.35. Creative Research I 319 18. Carl A. Rogers, "Toward a Theory of Creativ- ity," inS. I. Hayakawa, ed., A Review of Gen- eral Semantics (New York: Harper Bros., 1959), p.178. 19. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge: To- wards a Post-Critical Philosophy (New York: Harper, 1964). 20. I owe this notion to Richard C. Phillips. For more details, see Richard C. Phillips, Teach- ing for Thinking High School Social Studies (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1974), p.129. 21. Ibid. 22. Howard Sherman, "Dialectics as a Method," Insurgent Sociologist 6, no.4:57 (1976). 23. Lakatos, "Falsification," p.125. 24. Phillips, Teaching, p .117.