It is the turn of each of the following students to write a paper for this class meeting: Zhongzhi HE, Dominique DORION, Catherine LEROY-BELTRAN, Marcelo DOS SANTOS, and Raoul GRAF. The topic is critical theory (which is also sometimes called critical social theory).

Remember that you must write your paper as if you were presenting your responses to an audience of other researchers (for instance, other doctoral students, professors, journal readers) who are completely unfamiliar with the topic and who have not read the papers that you have read.

When writing your paper, be sure to state the question at the beginning of the paper.

The paper must be submitted no later than Tuesday, June 17, at 10am. Follow the instructions in the syllabus for submitting the paper to AllenLee@Management.McGill.ca. By noon, all of the papers will be forwarded to the entire class via the electronic discussion list, Lee-PhD@Management.McGill.ca. All students must read these papers in preparation for class.

I am asking ALL the students for this assignment (Zhongzhi HE, Dominique DORION, Catherine LEROY-BELTRAN, Marcelo DOS SANTOS, and Raoul GRAF) to answer ALL of the following:

(a) Make up your own explanation of what "critical theory" is, where you may base your answer on the assigned readings. In your explanation, you may limit yourself to just five key elements or characteristics of critical theory. A professor of administration or a doctoral student of administration should be able, upon reading your explanation, to understand what critical theory is.

(b) Devote no more than a few sentences or a single brief paragraph to each of the following: What can critical theory tell us that laboratory experiments or statistical experiments cannot? ...that positivist case studies cannot? ...that multivariate analysis and statistical hypothesis testing cannot? ...that explanatory surveys cannot? ...that secondary data analysis cannot? ...that interpretive case studies cannot? ...that hermeneutics cannot? ...that ethnography cannot? ...that action research cannot?

(c) Critical theorists say that critical theory is not a research method. Speculate on what they mean by this.

(d) Describe just two or three ways in which you believe the research in the article by Ojelanki K. Ngwenyama & Allen S. Lee could be improved. Note: if you print out this paper from the World Wide Web, also remember to print out the tables!