A concepção de epistemologia da organização do conhecimento

Objective: Study about the epistemic stances that influence the knowledge organization domain by analyzing its scholarly literature. It aims to describe the conception of epistemology in the journal Knowledge Organization through metatheory. Methods: It is an exploratory and descriptive research that develops a metatheoretical study based on Ritzer’s metatheory. In the analysis stage, two grounded theory tools were used, coding and memoing. Results: Three attribute families arose from the coding and memoing processes: the concept of epistemology in knowledge organization, the purpose of epistemology of knowledge organization and, epistemic stances influencing the knowledge organization domain. The third attribute family is analyzed in this paper. Empiricism, rationalism, historicism and pragmatism are described as the mains epistemic stances influencing the domain. The pragmatist stance is prominent in the analysis, followed by critical theories and historicism. Conclusions: The study concludes that the conception of epistemology on the knowledge organization domain is the critical study of principles, hypothesis and knowledge production in the domain. Epistemology is concerned with the scientific knowledge produced by the knowledge organization domain, as well as with the application of that knowledge to design the Knowledge Organization Systems and to support the knowledge organization process as a whole.