... of their production or reception, or without paying sufficient attention to the social and historical context of their production or reception. Originality/value Drawing on Thompson's theory of mass communication and his explication of the hermeneutical conditions of social‐historical enquiry, the paper outlines...

... assumptions and methodological characteristics, discussed in relation to Laughlin’s (1995) classification schema. Pays particular attention to grounded theory assumptions and methods in relation to other interpretive paradigms such as symbolic interactionism, ethnomethodology and hermeneutics. Describes...

..., using the “depth hermeneutical” approach advocated by Thompson (1990). Concludes that cost benefit studies are about not only the co‐ordination of interests but also the obscuring and exclusion of other interests. In addition, early advocates of Diagnosis Related Groupings (DRGs)argued...