Most economists would, if questioned, agree that our subject matter is real in some sense, although we shall see that there is some doubt as to how we pin down reality. Indeed, once we start studying any real subject matter, collecting evidence and constructing theories, we are putting a distance between ourselves as economists and reality. This is inevitable. It is the purpose of gathering evi...

Theory testing within small-N research designs is problematic. Developments in the philosophy of social science have opened up new methodological possibilities through, among other things, a novel notion of contingent causality that allows for contextualized hypothesis generation, hypothesis testing and refinement, and generalization. This article contributes to the literature by providing an e...

Nursing is a distinct scientific professional discipline, with a specific body of knowledge obtained through research and clinical practice. Today, a PhD nursing scholar is entrusted with shaping and preserving the quality and vitality of professional nursing. Evidences that are assembled from diverse paradigms of inquiry, nursing theories and philosophies are more fitted to address the basic q...

In this essay I set and explore Buch-Hansen Nielsen’s Critical Realism: Basics Beyond. then move on to discuss arising issues relevant contemporary critical realism, including time, ca...

This paper is a study of the response of two heterodox schools of economic thought to ‘new’ philosophical ideas. Specifically, it considers the response within Post Keynesian and Feminist economics to Tony Lawson’s recent call for economists to pay greater attention to ontology and for economists to adopt research methods consistent with critical realism. Lawson’s arguments were formally introd...

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Case study research Critical realism MIS Causality Case study research is the most popular research method for researchers in industrial marketing. However despite a number of attempts the problem of satisfactorily justifying the use of case research remains. This paper proposes critical realism as a coherent, rigorous and novel philosophical position that not on...

This paper explores the mutual implication of critical realism and semiosis. Three key questions can be posed in this regard. 1 The first (discussed in Section II) concerns how far critical realism needs to include semiosis, provisionally defined as the intersubjective production of meaning, 2 in its more general approach to social relations, their reproduction and transformation. In exploring ...

The aim of the paper is to consider a variety of approaches to understanding the relationship between management agency within MNEs and national institutional systems, and to suggest how theoretical reasoning in this area might be advanced by drawing upon critical realism. The paper is structured as follows. It firstly briefly surveys a selection of the most prominent concepts relating to the a...

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 to...