P. Koslowski (ed).

Elements of A Philosophy of Management and Organization

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Critical Realism, Organizational Theory, Methodology and
the Emerging Science of Reconfiguration
STEPHEN AKROYED
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In recent years, the field of management studies in Britain in elsewhere is following academic
agenda followed by realist philosophical ideas, which made the realist philosophers to
investigate configuration and reconfiguration of public/private organization, structuring and
restructuring of capitalist institutions. This arises a question that “How Critical Criticism Has
Impacted in Sociology? To answer this, it is important to understand the phenomenon of critical
realism (may be naïve or reasoned), which provide the most persuasive account to better
understand the causality and interpretation and the role of generalization in the social science.
It’s of equal importance to know how critical realism has impacted the work of researchers to
understand its essential to know varying concepts of realism starting from ‘Implicit Social
realism’ widely shared in social sciences but not explicitly formulated in realist philosophical
doctrine. To study this, the need to research particular institutions was primary depicting a
sustained philosophical reflection by considering philosophy first, then theory and then
methods associating logic of scientific discovery with social science inquiry and explanation.
However, realist ontological principle is dualistic and is of the view that ‘social reality is
external to individuals/groups as are subjectively conceived by people around them and shape
social behavior basic to social scientific relations’. it’s the underlying structures that point to the
universal social laws or social acts and the role of the researcher is supposed to be ‘neutral’ we
stand outside of the object we study and we look in.

As I began to read critical realism people such as Bhasker and Archer I began to see
a different picture of social science and what I found extremely appealing about
critical realism is that it talks about ‘How we think about reality’ or Ontology and
critical realism distinguishes What really exist in the world from what it is we’re able
to observe empirically right. We could say that critical realism helps avoid call the
Epistemic Fallacy that we mistake what we can observe with what really exists,
Why? i.e based on our mental constructions i.e perceptions and conceptual
understanding and attempt to think about Ontology to piece about realty it helped me
think about why in fact it’s important for sociology to be a methodological pluralism
not because there are hierarchy of methods one that gets us closer to really knowing
the truth but precisely because the world is complex, diverse and changing thus we
look same object from a variety of different perspective we get a fuller
picture( causal mechanism may shaped by particular context i.e Regularity ( r )=
mechanism ( m) and context ( c ) or r=f(m,c)
P. Koslowski (ed). Elements of A Philosophy of Management and Organization

How We Can Incorporate Critical Realism into How We Teach Research Methods In
Sociology? As one of the strength of sociology is that it is a multi-method discipline and has a lot
of variety methods of data collection. I am going to show you its not typically covered in
sociological research methods that I think critical realism can offer allowing me to say that
critical realism provides the philosophical grounding for the best methodological practices and
the empirical work that we already do in social science. Helped in explaining the role of
methodology in research to assist the search for evidence that establishes, confirms or calls into
question the existence of postulated generative mechanisms. The contribution of techniques of
data collection and evaluation to the development of knowledge has been, to date, regarded as
relatively unimportant. Features of the approach outlined above help explain why often
methodology is not taken to be a legitimate technical competence for realists. Much social
science methodology has been developed under the support of positivism – or, more recently,
radical constructionism. Critical realism sets out designs used in selected realist-informed
research projects it preserves the distinction between intensive and extensive research and it
recognizes other research designs as well. Intensively focused case studies examine a single
research site and Description of populations using surveys, are extensive in scope. There are
other research designs standing between the intensive and extensive extremes called
‘comparative case study research’ and ‘generative institutional analysis’. Through comparative
studies research seek to establish the typical intersection of context and mechanism which
produces recurrent outcomes. The notion of intersection is meant to imply that the mechanism
and context work together without undue influence on each other. Alternatively, it is possible to
consider the interaction of context and mechanism over a range of places and time, and to
examine the ways in which context and mechanisms have interacted to produce unique and
historical outcomes. Here the interest is in establishing how a mechanism and its context have
actually interacted. Critical realism features a distinction between research where the researcher
is ‘passive’ or detached that is, interested in explaining things and events as they are in relation
to the subject matter, and that where there is ‘active’ or engaged intervention is undertaken and
researcher is or interested in trying to induce change through particular kinds of intervention in
the research process. Research methods suggest that there is a fundamental distinction between
inter- ventionist and non-interventionist research. Although observing a distinction between
active and passive research, realist researchers do not necessarily favor the one and deny the
importance of the other. Two logics of discovery, abduction and retroduction are difficult to
differentiate in practice. Critical realism distinguishes between four idealized types of realist-
informed research strategy and these approaches are defined by reference to the combination of
the attention paid to (a) the substantive focus and whether attention is primarily paid to
generative mechanisms or their context and (b) the logic of discovery employed in the research
and whether it is primarily abduction (being the process whereby we weaken conceptualize a
P. Koslowski (ed). Elements of A Philosophy of Management and Organization

phenomenon from a different angel in widening multiple method setting ) or retroduction ( asks
what must be the underlying structures of the world that have produced this event (single,
uncommon or regularly occurring repeated event ) in terms of the underlying logic.

‘It made me say that methodology is concluded on the point that realist research
is comparably complicated, moving between abduction and retroduction in
comparison to positivism, research which is cumulative, with different kinds of
designs potentially contributing to growing body of knowledge’
Basically there are three research designs in this chapter. The first one is single case study
research. Secondly is the comparative research design and last but not the least is generative
institutional mechanisms. Case studies are the most frequently adopted research design used by
realist in organization studies. These studies may entail observation of a limited number of
people. Willis’ case study of an English secondary school is a well-known study. Willis noticed
that some of the students more or less covertly rejected the education offered by the school, and
the students were not aware of the consequences which they can face in their later life. Central to
this account was the recognition of the powers and tendencies of the group. Critical realists
criticize on case study design and consider this design weak because they investigate only one
situation. In comparative research, it is accepted that where similar organizations and same
workgroups are studied, almost everything is different between the cases. Here the focus of
research work is mechanisms. Here Burawoy’s comparative analysis of factory regimes in the
USA, Britain and Hungary is relevant, because it shows him building on his early study of a
single US machine shop. He found that although there were same factory regimes in these three
countries but the behaviors of the workgroups were not same. Burawoy’s also argues that
institutional differences, particularly political and economic circumstances are the most
important differences. Critical realists are also of the same view when they compare case study
design with comparative research design. Hence comparative case research begins from the
assumptions that there will be observed variations in generative mechanisms. Ultimately I
learned in reading critical realism that disagreements about empirical observations that cannot
be resolved only by collecting more data there need to be discussion about reality of ontology
and for the goal of social science and critical realism certainly encompasses strong empirical
observations but critical realism spends also more time reflecting on the process of abstraction ,
the form of logic and certainly uses deductive and inductive logic but it also talks about
abductors logic and retroductions. Giving light to obtain insights on generative institutional
mechanisms the work of Edwards, Much and Peter Clark is illustrative. This type of research
involves identifying and characterizing generative mechanisms. When we compare this design
with other research design, e.g, comparative case studies which mostly combine with studies of
the development of socio-economic systems and comparisons of their characteristics. However,
generative institutional mechanisms not only develop the theoretical ideas about conflict, but
P. Koslowski (ed). Elements of A Philosophy of Management and Organization

also covers a large range of other analytical work including a sustained comparison of the
institutional characteristics of industrial relations in Britain, USA and Australia, as well as
outlines the comparisons of non-capitalist socio-economic system. So here critical realist
observed that this research covers the broader aspects. In contrast in single case study the scope
of the research is limited; therefore critical realists criticize on single case study research design.
However in generative institutional mechanisms to some extent, re-conceptualization is the part
of the contribution of this research. This type of design is therefore involved in enquiring into
the conditions of the existence of current outcomes. After identifying the generative mechanisms
the next step is how to move from general contexts to mechanisms. In this moving process of
quantitative approach, realist informed researcher mainly faced two main problems one is how to
collect quantitative data and the other one how to handle and analyzing quantitative data for
generating mechanisms. Byrne gives his arguments about these problems he argued that these
problems can be minimized when we used selected descriptive statistics and study the population
features at the level of individualism (study of individuals). General contexts may be in the form
of professionalism and managed professional business (MPB). But according to the findings in
the English legal firms, professionalism is actually the key of generative mechanisms rather than
MPB.

The findings of Ackryod and Muzio, Edward and scullion and other writers suggest that for
understanding realist (Abductive) is central the generative mechanisms and only re-
conceptualizing is not enough. In the last author conclude that philosophical doctrine and an
approach to research have close and specific relationship. In the organization and management
studies, whatever method we used to raise the influence of both ethno methodological and
phenomenal approach, both mainly leads to ways of subjectivity and relativistic thinking in the
shape of postmodernisms and post structuralism. In the Britain, humanism and relativism to be
found in the intimidation the restricted societal restructurings attained in post battle in Britain as
well as the well-being state. At the end Kieslowski illustrate that “A philosophically based
challenge has to be met by a philosophical counter argument.
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Based on the above philosophical grounding ‘I infer that the critical realist
discussion of the interplay between persons and structures and cultures helped
me to understand the type of work critical realists was doing which was looking
at the same question from multiple levels at the level of (individual), the
socialism in organization without losing sight of human freedom. Made me think
that agency not only as a strategic or interment or instrumental capacity of
human persons but also a moral capacity understanding critical realism as a
concept of person’
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P. Koslowski (ed). Elements of A Philosophy of Management and Organization