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This paper seeks to introduce the concept of abduction to strategists and show how abduction is an important influence on the effective design of strategies.

The paper defines what is meant by abduction, and describes why abduction is a pre-condition for intelligent designing. It reviews different characteristics of abduction, and suggests several situations in which abduction is used in strategic thinking. It describes a framework managers can use to get better at abductive thinking.

The paper finds that strategists can gain a lot from knowing how to use abduction well. Abduction is making inferences to the best explanation from information that is surprising or anomalous – both very typical in strategic decision making. Abduction is frequently integral to problem defining. Problem defining, in turn, sets the stage for possibility thinking, and choice of the best alternative. Therefore, good abductive thinking is a pre-condition for intelligent designing in strategy.

The paper shows that abduction is of practical relevance to business strategists, just as much as it is for the practice of law and medicine – two professions that have traditionally put it to effective use.

Reports from 2016 to 2017 suggest that approximately 870 cases of non-familial child abduction (NFA) are recorded in England and Wales per year. Yet, empirical knowledge of the victims, offenders and offence characteristics is limited in comparison to other forms of child victimisation. Furthermore, much of the available knowledge is constrained by a lack of clarity around the differences between acquaintance and stranger abductors. This systematic literature review aims to develop a comprehensive overview of acquaintance and stranger child abductions, focussing on the similarities and differences in offending behaviours.

Research databases (PsycArticles, Google Scholar, Science Direct, PsycINFO, Criminal Justice Abstracts, MEDLINE and ERIC) and the Grey Literature (ETHOS and EBSCO) were screened for peer-reviewed research published between 1995 and 2021. Sixteen articles met the inclusion criteria and were critically appraised using a modified version of the Joanna Briggs Institute Checklist for Case Reports.

Six key areas within NFA offences and their characteristics were identified as offering potential for differentiating acquaintance and stranger abductors: victim–offender relationship, number of victims and offenders, motives, modus operandi, victim injury, sexual assault and mechanism of death (in fatal cases). The results of this review are discussed with consideration given to investigative implications, limitations and directions for future study.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to systematically review the current NFA literature, from which pragmatic recommendations for practice and future academic enquiry are drawn.

While there is considerable public concern over stranger‐perpetrated child sexual abuse (CSA) and abduction, much of the professional debate over this subject is characterised by quite polarised views and a dearth of reliable research‐based knowledge. In order to start addressing this situation, a major questionnaire survey was carried out among almost 2,500 children aged 9‐16 years in 26 primary and secondary schools in four types of area in north‐west England. Approximately seven per cent of children reported an attempted or completed incident. In terms of its broader messages, the research suggests that we should adopt a more balanced approach in our assessments of the seriousness of stranger CSA and abduction. The research highlights practice issues for child safety educators, the police and therapists and counsellors, relating to prevention, disclosure, reporting and re‐victimisation.

The purpose of this article is to describe the similarities between abductive reasoning and entrepreneurial learning processes in order to contribute to the conceptual understanding of learning as an entrepreneurial process in itself.

The research is theoretically rooted in a conceptual development of the understanding of entrepreneurial learning processes as abductive reasoning inspired by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. The theoretical explication of the connection between entrepreneurial learning processes and abductive reasoning is additionally illustrated by a hypotheses-based didactic model, developed by the authors to scaffold abducting reasoning into learning processes.

The authors found in the theoretical investigation of abductive reasoning a conceptualisation of entrepreneurial learning processes that connects entrepreneurial learning processes to basic cognitive human competences, and the authors found that key concepts in entrepreneurship, such as hunches and experiments, can be understood in a broader philosophical framework as basic cognitive competences.

The authors exemplify how abductive reasoning can be used in practice through a hypothesis-based didactic approach designed as a loop model.

The authors have discovered that abduction is closely related to entrepreneurship and can be a central conceptual link in understanding the relationship between entrepreneurship and learning. The athors also believe that Peirce's concept of abduction can contribute to the philosophical understanding of entrepreneurship as another name for a constant rethinking of the world.

The aim of the paper is to address the widening theory-praxis gap in marketing. The authors propose that one viable solution to this challenge is involving practitioners in research processes as active, reflective and empowered participants. Most extant discussions addressing the inclusion of managers as partners in theorizing restrain themselves to an “if” question, arguing whether or not it is possible to create sufficiently rigorous knowledge in collaboration with practitioners. This leaves the “how” question unanswered, i.e. how should such gap-bridging research be conducted in practice.

Based on a literature review of collaborative theorizing processes, the authors develop a conceptual framework highlighting the main research design decisions when theorizing with managers. The use of the framework is illustrated with four research program examples.

Most accounts of theorizing with managers use – explicitly or implicitly – abduction as the main mode of inference. In addition to this philosophical commonality, our literature review identified 12 themes that should be considered when designing collaborative research processes. The four illustrative examples indicate that theorizing with managers is an effective way of producing and socializing both academically sound and managerially relevant knowledge. On the other hand, collaborative theorizing processes are time-consuming and studies using abductive reasoning may be more challenging to publish in top-tier journals.

This paper makes two contributions. First, the authors go beyond the extensive academic literature which provides a plethora of explanations and ideas for potential remedies for bridging the theory-praxis gap by offering a detailed description how one particular solution, theorizing with managers, unfolds in practice. Second, the authors ground collaborative theorizing processes in the philosophy of science and put abduction forward as a common nominator for such studies.

The purpose of this study is to convey lessons learned from a long-term research project and present a coherent approach for researching relevant areas, ranging from ontology to quality.

A PhD process is used as a case to present conceptual ideas on performing research in logistics/supply chain management (SCM).

The research integrates different views on knowledge and the world and how to perform research in logistics/SCM. Models explaining micro and macro abduction, and the relationship between research, the context and researcher subjectivity are suggested.

Knowledge on why and how critical realism can be used in logistics/SCM research is advanced. Abduction is presented as a micro/macro process, which should not have any specific “finish line”, and is supported with both ontological and epistemological arguments.

Research in logistics/SCM can be improved by connecting different aspects of viewing and creating knowledge. Reflecting on how exactly a publication is related to a project, researchers can better describe how they contribute to knowledge creation, and also understand the relationship between micro and macro abduction.

Through presenting an approach to knowledge creation in the context of a PhD thesis, this research distinguishes itself in a field with a growing need to define its own views of the world and of knowledge. The paper advances current understanding of knowledge creation in logistics/SCM, expanding on earlier models and presenting a broader view of the research process and the associated dilemmas. The paper also contains novel considerations of the differences between publication types and how these affect the presentation of the research.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that abductive reasoning is a typical but usually unrecognised process used by HRD scholars and practitioners alike.

This is a conceptual paper that explores recent criticism of traditional views of theory‐building, based on the privileging of scientific theorising, which has led to a relevance gap between scholars and practitioners. The work of Charles Sanders Peirce and the varieties of an abductive reasoning process are considered.

Abductive reasoning, which precedes induction and deduction, provide a potential connection with HRD practitioners who face difficult problems. Two types of abductive reasoning are explored – existential and analogic. Both offer possibilities for theorising with HRD practitioners. A range of methods for allowing abduction to become more evident with practitioners are presented. The authors consider how abduction can be used in engaged and participative research strategies.

While this is a conceptual paper, it does suggest implications for engagement and participation in theorising with HRD practitioners.

Abductive reasoning adds to the repertoire of HRD scholars and practitioners.

The paper elucidates the value of abductive reasoning and points to how it can become an integral element of theory building in HRD.

Operations and supply chain management (OSCM) is a theoretically and philosophically fragmented field. Researchers must consider how they use theory and explain empirical phenomena. This paper aims to use critical realism to introduce more coherence into this fragmented field.

This paper draws on existing critical realism and abduction literature and this study uses a research process from two PhD projects to investigate critical realism’s role in OSCM research. This paper uses a narrative approach to collect data over a long timeframe, capturing data not commonly used in OSCM research.

Research that struggles to bridge the gap between theory and data benefits from critical realism, which provides a philosophy and associated methods to identify a suitable theory and guide researchers when they encounter obstacles. While clear steps often outline established methods, researchers are sometimes unable to identify when their research process has reached an obstacle. This paper argues that such obstacles can be treated as “crossroads” offering new research opportunities when correctly evaluated and addressed.

Importantly, researchers should be able to reflect upon their own research processes, enabling a better understanding of these processes and the discovery of new research directions. Researchers can use critical realism, abduction and systematic combining to bridge the divide between theory and data in OSCM.

This paper contributes to the field’s discussion regarding the roles of critical realism and abduction, synthesizing multiple academic sources, highlighting critical realism’s importance and providing a novel means of addressing difficulties in navigating an eclectic research area. This paper offers a philosophical alternate to the field, which is often instead considered from a positivistic standpoint. The paper is valuable to researchers in the OSCM field, who can use the research to improve their selection of data and theories, as well as their understanding of their own research processes.

Presents the scientific methodology from the enlarged cybernetical perspective that recognizes the anisotropy of time, the probabilistic character of natural laws, and the entry that the incomplete determinism in Nature opens to the occurrence of innovation, growth, organization, teleology communication, control, contest and freedom. The new tier to the methodological edifice that cybernetics provides stands on the earlier tiers, which go back to the Ionians (c. 500 BC). However, the new insights reveal flaws in the earlier tiers, and their removal strengthens the entire edifice. The new concepts of teleological activity and contest allow the clear demarcation of the military sciences as those whose subject matter is teleological activity involving contest. The paramount question “what ought to be done”, outside the empirical realm, is embraced by the scientific methodology. It also embraces the cognitive sciences that ask how the human mind is able to discover, and how the sequence of discoveries might converge to a true description of reality.

The current state of theory-building in the field of operations and supply chain management (OSCM) is in a strong need of rigorous, empirically based theories that enhance understanding of the causal relationships between the structural elements and properties of the business processes. In this research note the authors propose the critical realism (CR) philosophy of science as a particularly suitable philosophical position (not to the exclusion of others) to review the mechanisms of OSCM knowledge generation and to provide philosophical grounding and methodological guidance for both OSCM theory building and testing.

To demonstrate potential benefits of CR-based structured approach to knowledge generation in OSCM research, this conceptual paper uses a case study that illustrates the adoption of one of the OSCM theories – i.e. the theory of swift, even flow.

CR interprets the accumulated empirical information about OSCM phenomena as observable manifestations of the underlying causal mechanisms that cannot be perceived otherwise. CR can provide epistemological support to the choice of performance measures that manifest the underlying causal mechanisms of interest. Extensive accumulation of empirical data from multiple innovative sources will not dramatically add to understanding of the system under investigation, unless and until the underlying causal mechanisms that trigger the observed behaviour are identified and tested. The CR abductive mode of reasoning emphasises the role of uncertainty in complex process behaviours and can facilitate enrichment and refutation of OSCM theories.

CR has a clear potential to contribute to OSCM research by enabling better understanding of causal relationships underlying complex behaviours of different elements of business process by providing robust and relevant mechanisms of generating knowledge about business processes that explicitly link empirical and causal aspects of theory building and testing.