Philosophical Foundations: Critical Realism

2.6 Conclusions

This chapter has made a case for the contribution of critical realism as an underlying philosophy for management science as a practical discipline. It has approached this by showing that critical realism addresses the unresolved problems within the philosophy of science, whether it be natural or social. In particular: the impoverished view of explanatory theory within empiricism; the major critiques of observer- and theory-independence that empiricism assumes; the logical problems of induction and falsificationism; the dislocation between natural and social science; and the radical anti-realist positions adopted by constructivists and postmodernists.

The main points to be taken from this chapter are:

• Ontologically, the strongly held claim that there does exist a world independent, to differing degrees, of human beings and that the underlying mechanisms generate the events we observe and experience.

• Epistemologically, the fact that we do not have pure, unmediated access to this world but that our knowledge must always be locally and historically relative. But in accepting epistemic relativism we do not thereby accept judgemental relativism—there are grounds for chosing between competing views.

• Methodologically, the retroductive approach of hypothesising generative mechanisms that would explain our experiences and then trying to confirm or deny their existence. This underwrites a pluralist view of research and intervention methods which will be explored more fully in Chapters 9 and 10.