Hypothesising in Contemporary Organisational Management Research. What Really Matters?

Management is an economic science and more than ever, temporal, as a direct effect of the level of social development, with many interdependencies with other fields of knowledge. Generically said, studies and research in the field of organisational management involve a high level of difficulty compared to other types of sciences because they primarily investigate aspects related to the soft component of the organisation, the human resource. The results, operationalised through the design and implementation of decisions, are achieved by people, for people, and people are involved in the (micro or macro) organisational universe with different experiences and expertise, different attitudes, different expectations, transforming other types of resources. It is difficult to translate purely qualitative aspects, which can be extracted from an organisational framework often by observation, into quantitative contexts that support the transformation of conclusions into judgements of principle value. In this context, the article examines the role, importance and usability of the hypothesis as a management tool. Starting from the highlighting of topical issues in the field of management science, an attempt is made to answer the following questions: in what situations can hypotheses be used? what are the application peculiarities and, subsequently, the advantages and disadvantages? what established typologies have been highlighted in the investigation of management issues? The theoretical observations are doubled in significance by a case study based on the use of the Competing Hypotheses Model (CHA). To summarize, the quality of the conceptual representations and semantics of the construction of a working hypothesis can bring us closer or further away from the organisational reality of interest, with direct effects on the relevance and effects of the activity undertaken.