All students must read the items that the syllabus indicates for the class meeting of Wednesday, May 7.

For this class meeting, it is the turn of each of the following students to write a paper: Mehdi Farashahi, Daniel Tomiuk, Sidi Sbai Chkirid, Samir Elhedhli, Abdullah Dasci, and [one additional student to be named]. The paper is to consist of an answer to the designated question. 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. This is not a group assignment; each paper is to be completed individually.

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, May 6, 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.

1. (Mehdi Farashahi, Daniel Tomiuk, and Sidi Sbai Chkirid.) In your own words, explain, compare, and contrast positivist research and interpretive research (so that a person who has not read Lee's paper could understand what these two forms of research involve and how they are different from each other).

2. (Samir Elhedhli, Abdullah Dasci, and [one additional student to be named].) In his article, Schutz identifies two principles (page 62): (1) "...all scientific explanations of the social world can, and for certain purposes must, refer to the subjective meaning of actions of human beings..." and (2) "...the social sciences, like all empirical sciences, have to be objective in the sense that their propositions are subjected to controlled verification and must not refer to private uncontrollable experience." Of course, it would appear that (1) and (2) are contradictory. However, in the subsequent pages, Schutz proposes an explanation of how it is possible to resolve "these seemingly contradictory principles." In your own words, explain what these two principles are (so that a person who has not read Schutz's article could understand them) and also explain how it is possible to resolve these two seemingly contradictory principles (so that a person who has not read Schutz's article could understand how).