The Philosopher's Corner: Beyond Epistemology and Methodology - A Plea for a Disciplined Metatheoretical Pluralism

The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems has sponsored a series of articles on the thought of Paul Feyerabend (Treiblmaier, 2018, 2019; Gregor, 2018; Burton-Jones, 2018; Myers, 2018). Treiblmaier and the respondents discuss the actual meaning and implication of Feyerabend's ideas for information systems. In the series, the authors argue we already employ diverse methodologies. However, it is also apparent that a truncated view of philosophy as only concerned with epistemology and all methods as commensurable is employed. This paper argues we do not have a real diversity in the IS field and we should commit to the practice of a disciplined metatheoretic pluralism. Our methodology must not only be rigorously executed but also correctly interpreted in accord with our metatheoretic assumptions. We need to be open to all types of metatheory as well as methods and research topics. The paper provides four suggestions for how to implement disciplined metatheoretic pluralism: 1) Educate doctoral students into the various philosophical paradigms; 2) Require authors to state their metatheoretic assumptions and review for conformance to them; 3) Open publication venues to all authors, methodologies, metatheoretic commitments, and ideas; 4) Change the evaluation mechanism to reduce the pressure to conform to normal science.