'Paradigm Wars': A Response to Hugh Willmott

Pippa Carter Department of Management Systems and Sciences, University of Hull, England Willmott’s paper (in this volume) seeks, by reference to developments in Labour-Process Theory (LPT), to dissolve the incommensurability of the subjective-objective dimension of Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) paradigm model. The main concern of this brief response is with the concept of incommensurability, not with LPT. It is not uncommon to describe the debate on paradigm incommensurability as ’paradigm wars’, and this seems a particularly appropriate term: in war, one objective is for one side to subordinate the other. Burrell