Can Critical Realism 'inform' Information Systems?

Being an essentially multi-disciplinary field, Information Systems does not appear to be informed by a single dominant underlying philosophy. Since IT is an integral part of IS, its philosophical roots are associated with logical positivism. While logical positivism has several merits, its proponents have been unable to respond to criticisms leveled by the Humean Skeptics. Logical empiricism took an asymptotic view with the concept of ‘gradually increasing confirmation’ through ‘intersubjective certification’. It was challenged and relativism was touted as the epistemologically superior philosophy. However, relativism could not sustain its prominence in IS because of its inherent reliance on tautological arguments. In the last decade, Scientific Realism seems to have emerged as a viable philosophy. In this paper, we argue that Critical Realism, a variant of Scientific Realism, has considerable potential to become the dominant philosophical tradition in the field of Information Systems.