Symbolic-Interpretive Perspectives

Understanding Organizations through the Modern and Symbolic-Interpretive Lenses

Events and phenomena that occur in people's everyday lives can be looked at and interpreted through different lenses. In the field of sociology, these 'lenses' are termed as "perspectives," which defines and describes a specific "worldview" through which people might interpret a specific event or phenomenon. These perspectives can be applied in different areas or domains of a person's life; perspectives being sociological in their nature, they are almost always reflective of realities experienced by people, even if they differ in cultural and social backgrounds. Among the well-known perspectives in understanding social events and phenomena are the modernist and symbolic-interpretive perspectives. The modernist perspective is, by extension, known to be the anti-thesis of critical theory, another well-known perspective in the field of sociology.

In the sections that follow, these perspectives will be discussed in-depth and in more detail, particularly when...
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