A Critical Assessment of Truth in Business and Management Research

This report provides a critical assessment of how 'truth' is established in business and management research. It emphasizes the importance of a single source of truth within a company, highlighting the need for reliable data and transparency. The report discusses the significance of truth in building trust, fostering a customer-centric culture, and making ethical decisions. It explores the roles of epistemology, ontology, and axiology in establishing truth, examining how these philosophical theories influence knowledge, reality, and values in business contexts. The report delves into the application of these theories, including the use of the Web Ontology Language (OWL) to manage information and ensure a common understanding of data, ultimately enhancing data quality and decision-making processes. It stresses the importance of being truthful to customers, employees, and investors to ensure the long-term success of a business.

Business research methods

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Critically assessment of how “truth” is established in business and management
research
The truth is required to run a company. The truth is described as one source which
everyone in the company agrees is real and reliable for operating data. The information
required is stored and a source of truth and is necessitated to run a company. The information
is made available on one platform and this platform is used as the ultimate source of
information for the operations to be conducted by the business. This information is sustained
and restructured regularly. Everyone in the organization can be get inspired through instant
access to the data. When a company creates an official source to encompass this data, it is the
single source of truth. The data systems have become progressively fragmented which has
caused the ultimate need for one singular platform to embrace all the pertinent company data
from every segment of the business (Bernstein, 2017). Till now, creating data silos have been
used to enable processing easier, but in reality, it is becoming intricate and tough to find the
real data required. The truth has to do with the tools and services accessible to the customers
on the platform. The users are familiar with making use of several solutions to lodge their
needs so they require to recreate the same information silos gratuitously.
The truth is an essential element in business and management research.it even leads to
transparency. In business, trust is established through a corporate culture that inspires sharing
information and responsibility at all levels. The truth is the business and management
research should be concretely backed by company strategies and decisions than just being
imprecise. The truth is needed to be established in the organizations to build a culture
required by the managers and leaders. Therefore, the companies share information
concerning strategies, direction, and financial outlook. To create an open business
environment, employees should be inspired to look out the company’s best interest and act in
a way that stimulates even more trust (Qu & Zhu, 2019). The reason behind establishing truth
is to assist the goodness of the business by enhancing manager and employee relations. It
creates a culture of value where employees know what they are working for and they even
become more capable of delivering continual support and sustainable business growth. It has
been realized that sometimes, lack of truth in the business comes from the fact that businesses
normally keep on doing things they have always done without no thought of the
effectiveness. Conducting business in the truthful manner states to going beyond basics to
adopt an open, honest and customer-centric culture (Vallejo, Vallvey & Rivero, 2019). A
thorough standard of conducting business truthfully is not hard work but an incredible asset

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for the company. Being truthful it is required to be on the words as it establishes a solid
reputation in the business and management research. Moreover, an organization should be
committed to following the truth. It is significant to stay focused on what is true (Shum, et al.
2019). There are some situations when mistakes occur, but accepting them on time creates
trust.
It is first required to be truthful to the customers as it is the priority of business to
generate value for the customers as the top priority. Although if the companies honestly
assess their practices than they will get to realize the definition of the value equates to
maximizing the return to be extracted from the customers. Other than the customers, an
entrepreneur needs to be truthful to himself about the business (Anker, 2016). Generally, the
biggest blunders of entrepreneurs are led by ignoring clear indicators that were headed down
by them on the wrong path. The success necessitates a lot of courage and inclination to push
doubts but a warning leads to honestly assessing before an entrepreneur push on. It has been
observed that entrepreneurs generally take sidestep in tackling real problems as addressing
the forefront is harder than avoiding them. Entrepreneurs with integrity are not afraid to face
the truth. The truth should be told even if it is ugly. Other than this, the business is required to
be truthful to co-workers and advisors. Building a team requires to bring people with talents
to the organization. When it comes to the investors, a company should make sure that they
are a source of smart counsel (Bezzina, et al. 2017). Being truthful to the employees can
bring company and management research on the right track.
The theories like epistemology, ontology, and axiology have a great role in proving trust
in business and management research. The epistemology deals with concerns like what is
knowledge, and how knowledge can be attained. It is the study of origin, nature, and confines
of human knowledge (Brunner & Ostermaier, 2019). The epistemology philosophy is the
traditional debate and undertakes the study of knowledge (episteme) as opposed to the belief.
Moreover, it deals with the bases of knowledge and is the opposite of ontology. Diverse
sources of knowledge can be categorised into four categories.
 Intuitive knowledge has relied on instinct, faith, and belief. Human feelings have a
superior role to play in intuitive knowledge as likened to the dependence on the facts.
 The authoritarian knowledge is depended on the information which has been attained
from the experts, research papers, books, ultimate powers and more.

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 The logical knowledge is the formation of new knowledge by the execution of logical
reasoning.
 The empirical knowledge is grounded on the impartial facts which have been formed
and can be verified.
The epistemology has various branches comprising essentialism, historical perspective,
progressivism, perennialism, idealism, rationalism and more. The epistemological study
comprises empiricism and rationalism as constructing debates. The empiricism approves
personal experiences linked with feelings, observation, and sense as a valid source of
knowledge. On the other side, rationalism depends on empirical findings attained by effective
and consistent measures as a source of knowledge. In the view of businesses, epistemology
theory needs to be reliabilist, consistency, correspondence, evidentialist, and foundationalist.
The theory is having an outcome in the form of truth and knowledge. It leads to an increase in
relativistic and postmodern deconstructions of truth which assorts truth and knowledge. The
epistemology in the organizations manages the ethical issues which have been increased
dramatically in the last decade. Business ethics are examined by classical variables like
idealism and relativism (Nunkoo, et al. 2018).
The epistemology theory does not concentrate on the acquittance knowledge but
focuses on propositional knowledge. The proposition can be articulated by declarative
sentences and senses to define a statement of affairs. Propositional knowledge can be called
truth. It comprises the truth about an extensive range of concerns like geographical
knowledge, scientific knowledge, self-knowledge, and associated segment. Principally, truth
is knowable, although there can be unknown truths (Aguinis, Ramani & Alabduljader, 2018).
The epistemology is having a goal in business to govern standards for information so that
individuals can know what can or can not be known. Moreover, the philosophy of
epistemology comprises the study of meta-epistemology. Through epistemology, the
individuals about an organization can know rational truths like the law of non-contradiction
and knowledge of intellectual claims. A person can even differentiate between individual
knowledge and cooperative knowledge. Social epistemology is part of epistemology
addressing the way teams and groups come to attain knowledge. On the other hand,
knowledge necessitates belief. But all the beliefs do not constitute knowledge. The belief is
not necessarily considered sufficient for knowledge. The belief is sometimes mistaken means
some beliefs are true whereas others are false. When a person tries to attain knowledge, it
reflects increasing stocks of truth. The toughest purpose of beliefs is to seize the way things

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are (Christensen, Bartman & Van Bever, 2016). When a person forms a belief, that person
seeks a match between one’s mind and the globe. Occasionally, it happens that a person fails
to attain a match and organizations also fail to describe the way things are. Although the truth
is a state of knowledge if a belief is not true then it cannot establish knowledge. Moreover,
there is no sense of truth if there is no knowledge. In a condition, if there is a thing like truth,
if there is a province in which there are no truths, then there is no chance of being knowledge
within that province (Muntz, Dormann & Kronenwett, 2019).
The ontology philosophy includes the assumptions about reality. The philosophy
focuses on the outlook towards reality. The ontology is also one of the oldest forms of
philosophy. When a business uses any type of database system and already have a
rudimentary ontology comprised within the structure of database tables. The problem is faced
when an organization has various database systems, one for distribution, one for accounting.
For instance, such systems are do not agree with how they comprehend key terms in the
business-like product (George, et al. 2016). Due to such reasons, meta-data management
systems have been advanced to assist coordinate information like a business between these
several systems. Although, meta-data management systems for many organizations seems
like a cumbersome to the business procedure and even do not attain a precise business
benefit. The businesses can also face another issue such as knowledge management
comprising key information about the business operations in such a way that has not relied
upon individual employees who may resign or retire. Although many organizations identify
this problem significantly, it can seem like an extravagance to form an entirely new system
only for knowledge management. The formal ontology assists in both of these problems. The
formal ontology offers a method to clear and retain key knowledge through the formalisation
of business rules and procedures (Cornelissen, 2017). The semantic web technology has a
great role in making business rules to be incorporated directly into the business systems. It
even assists to make sure that all the systems agree to the key terms of the business. The
business rules can be sustained outside of the staunch of business systems, it can be possible
to change the business rules quickly without any lengthy computer programming and testing
delays (Maclean, Harvey & Clegg, 2017).
The ontology philosophy assists in maintaining truth through training in the ontology
advancement and technologies for ontology execution. The training made possible through
ontology leads to the effective development of the projects of the businesses and management
research. The technologies made possible through ontology enhances the value of the

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organization. The formal ontology can not only be used by humans but also by the machines
to empower computerized interaction with the environment. The formal ontology is having
the aim to intersect with the efforts to offer more useful semantics to internet resources.
Various sematic web technologies can be advanced together which are capable of executing
formal ontology into the information systems. It provides a powerful means of attaining the
entire benefits of the formal ontology (Aguinis, Ramani & Alabduljader, 2018). On the other
hand, ontology philosophy makes sure the common understanding of the information. It
makes explicit domain assumptions. The ontology philosophy has been successful in
enabling businesses and management research to make an improved sense of its data along
with enhancing data quality. Nowadays the language of ontology known as Web Ontology
Language (OWL) has attained significance. It is a semantic web computation logic-based
language representing rich and critical knowledge concerning the things and relations
between them. The language also offers reliable, detailed and meaningful differences
between classes, properties, and associations. On the other side, the role of ontology
philosophy is to work like a brain (Groth, et al. 2019). They function with the concepts and
associations in such a way that is close to the human observe interlinked concepts. The
ontology also offers more comprehensible and easy navigation as users can move from one
concept to another in the structure. More valuable feature defines by the ontologies are to
extend associations and the concept matching are quite easy to add to the existing ontologies.
As a consequence, the growth of the data can be evolved without influencing dependent
procedures and systems if something goes worst or requires to be changed (List, et al. 2018).
The axiology philosophy undertakes judgments about the value. The values comprise
ethics and aesthetics. It has a great role in establishing truth in businesses and management
research. The axiology is engaged with the assessment of the role of the organisation’s value
on all the stages. This philosophy has a mathematical approach identified as formal axiology.
The aesthetics are quite similar to the value theory whereas ethics teach concerning the value
of things. The axiology philosophy includes what people value, how they value it and why
they value it (Jiang & Men, 2017). The people in the business and management research have
different values then encompassed by the group. In the view of axiology, the value can be
perceived as a link between subjects and objects. Through such links, the evaluation of
individuals and groups concerning material, human and natural qualities are articulated in the
hierarchical and polarised forms. Such forms fill requirements, ideals and desires adapted to
the time and space in which they take place. The value created by axiology philosophy in the

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businesses and management research in the form of truth. The value comprises categories like
economic, emotional and social (Lin, Lobo & Leckie, 2017). Other than the values, principles
are also considered by the axiology. It is not all about knowledge but the quality of life.
Further value realized through the axiology generates both intrinsic and extrinsic value. The
intrinsic value is the actual value of something. It has the value of an object in itself. The
extrinsic value is not intrinsic and is not the value of an object has in itself. The extrinsic
value is not good in itself but terms of the function. It is something like the link between
things and categories (Kim & Lee, 2018). It is concerned with the functionality in the specific
context.
Conclusion
Trust in the business and management research is established through a corporate
culture that inspires sharing information and responsibility at all levels. The paper explained
the role of the philosophies such as epistemology, ontology, and axiology in establishing
truth in the business and management research. These philosophies are traditional and have
been proved effective. These philosophies have been effective in creating trust by using
knowledge, reality, and value. The epistemology philosophy states about the nature of
knowledge. the ontology creates assumptions about reality whereas axiology defines
judgment about the value. The epistemology philosophy is having an outcome in the form of
truth and knowledge. It leads to an increase in relativistic and postmodern deconstructions of
truth which assorts truth and knowledge. The epistemology in organizations has been
effective in managing ethical issues. This does not focus on the acquittance knowledge but
emphases on the propositional knowledge. The proposition can be articulated by declarative
sentences and purports to define a statement of affairs. Propositional knowledge can be called
truth.
The ontology is opposite to epistemology philosophy. The ontology philosophy
comprises the assumptions about reality. It focuses on the outlook on reality. The philosophy
supports in sustaining truth by training in the ontology advancement and technologies for
ontology execution. The training made possible through ontology creates to effective
advancement of the projects of the businesses and management research. The technologies
made possible through ontology improves the value of the organization. The philosophy has
been even successful in permitting businesses and management research to make a better
sense of its data along with enhancing data quality. The axiology philosophy commences
judgments about the value. The values comprise ethics and aesthetics. The individuals in the

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business and management research have diverse values then incorporated by the group. In the
sight of axiology, the value can be perceived as the association between subjects and objects.
The value can be created through axiology philosophy in the businesses and management
research in the form of truth. The value includes categories like economic, emotional and
social. The value realized through the axiology identified as intrinsic and extrinsic value. The
truth established in the businesses and management research validates the authenticity of the
business. People without any single thought deal with such companies. These companies
even conduct operations efficiently by offering detailed information.

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