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The mainstream research methods in social, business and organization studies are hypothesis testing based on questionnaire surveys and interviews. Such approach appears to be objective to make generalizations and predictions on human behaviour. However, the effectiveness of these generalizations (often called grand theories) are limited in organization development studies such as business reengineering, team building, leadership training, job enrichment etc. to inform good professional practices in individual business settings. Knowledge and input from various stakeholders of an organization are required in the formulation of new initiatives for each case under investigation.

There have been few researches that explore the knowledge elicitation issue in the organizational context, as well as on the role of the researcher in eliciting different kinds of knowledge. A deep rooted assumption in both physical and social sciences is that there exists an objective reality for us to explore. This is a well accepted belief in our Newtonian worldview that is now being challenged. The limitations of traditional research methods are addressed and alternative research paradigms such as design based research, participatory or collaborative research, storytelling, pre-hypothesis research are introduced and illustrated with examples and real cases.