This paper examines the concepts and processes of scholarly research. Within this examination, different approaches to scientific inquiry are compared and contrasted, and paradigms most useful to this researcher in the investigation of management and law enforcement issues are defended.
Knowledge may be viewed as existing in either a static or a dynamic state (Kuhn, 1970, pp. 10 34; Conant, 1951, pp. 24 25 ). The static view perceives knowledge as a body of systemized information that includes connected principles, theories, and laws (Emory, 1992, p. 22). In this view, knowledge is the cumulative result of past investigations, to which contemporary scholars add blocks of information to an existing base. The dynamic view presents knowledge as a process, and suggests that scientific theories and principles "would soon become a dogma if not subjected to constant investigation and development. In the dynamic view, knowledge is a body of generally accepted rules by which one deals with information; that is, it is the scientific method" (Emory, 1992, p. 23). Through application of the scientific method, scholars treating knowledge as a process the dynamic perception of science create scientific revolutions (Kuhn, 1970, pp. 52 91).
The foundations of the scientific method are concepts, definition, hypotheses, and theory (Kaplan, 1964, pp. 24 36). Concepts are basic to all thought and communication. Hypothesis statements are designed through the use of concepts. The success
of scholarly research "hinges on how clearly we conceptualize and how well others understand the concepts we use" (Emory, 1992, p. 27). A construct is a concept designed specifically for a particular research or theory building purpose.
Three types of definition are relevant to scholarly inquiry through application of the scientific method. First, an ostensive definition is "any process by which a person is taught to understand a word other th...