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This study aims to correct errors in, and comment on the claims made in the comment papers of Rigdon (2022) and Henseler and Schuberth (2022), and to tidy up any substantive oversights made in Cadogan and Lee (2022).

The study discusses and clarifies the gap between Rigdon’s notion of scientific realism and the metaphysical, semantic and epistemological commitments that are broadly agreed to be key principles of scientific realism. The study also examines the ontological status of the variables that Henseler and Schuberth claim are emergent using emergence logic grounded in the notion that variables are only truly emergent if they demonstrate a failure of generative atomism.

In scientific realism, hypothetical causal contact between the unobserved and the observed is a key foundational stance, and as such, Rigdon’s concept proxy framework (CPF) is inherently anti-realist in nature. Furthermore, Henseler and Schuberth’s suggestion that composite-creating statistical packages [such as partial least squares (PLS)] can model emergent variables should be treated with skepticism by realists.

Claims made by Rigdon regarding the realism of CPF are unfounded, and claims by Henseler and Schuberth regarding the universal suitability of partial least squares (PLS) as a tool for use by researchers of all ontological stripes (see their Table 5) do not appear to be well-grounded.

Those aspiring to do science according to the precepts of scientific realism need to be careful in assessing claims in the literature. For instance, despite Rigdon’s assertion that CPF is a realist framework, we show that it is not. Consequently, some of Rigdon’s core criticisms of the common factor logic make no sense for the realist. Likewise, if the variables resulting from composite creating statistical packages (like PLS) are not really emergent (contrary to Henseler and Schuberth) and so are not real, their utility as tools for scientific realist inquiry are called into question.

This study assesses PLS using the Eleatic Principle and examines H&S’s version of emergent variables from an ontological perspective.

This paper aims to clarify some of the representations regarding philosophy of science and statistical methods, which are contained in Cadogan and Lee (this issue).

This paper uses logical argument and a review of literature.

Rigdon’s (2012) approach to construct validation is entirely consistent with scientific realism, while the “realist variable framework” revives the empiricist reification of common factors found in Bagozzi’s (1984) Holistic Construal and throughout the early literature of structural equation modeling. Factor indeterminacy is a phenomenon that makes it impossible to equate common factors with conceptual variables. The future of marketing measurement is not in the historical error-centric framework but in a measurement framework centered around uncertainty.

Researchers should avoid reification of common factors and recognize the validity gap between conceptual variables and empirical proxies, consistent with Rigdon (2012) and should move toward an uncertainty-centric approach to measurement.

Decision-makers need to acknowledge the difference between data and the underlying reality. Success or failure will be shaped by the reality, not by the data.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first paper seeking to clarify representations in Cadogan and Lee (this issue). This paper aims to save journal readers from being misled.

The purpose of this article is to chronicle the publication events in the 1980s and 1990s that framed the development of the series of controversies in marketing that are known as the “philosophy debates”.

The article uses a participant’s retrospective approach.

The article finds that seven publication events are key to understanding marketing’s philosophy debates. The seven are the publication of the “little green book” by Grid, Inc. in 1976; the philosophy of science panel discussion held at the Winter American Marketing Association Educators’ Conference in 1982; the special issue of the Journal of Marketing on marketing theory in 1983; three articles on the “critical relativist perspective” by the Journal of Consumer Research in 1986 and 1988; the “blue book” by South-Western in 1991; a trilogy of articles on truth, positivism and objectivity in the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Consumer Research in 1990-1993; and an article on “rethinking marketing” in the European Journal of Marketing in 1994.

Chronicling the key publication events enables readers to understand what the debates were about and provides readers a starting point for further investigating the issues in the debates.

To discuss systemic thinking in relation to the naturalistic and anti‐naturalistic position in the philosophy of social science. To develop the theme in two parts: I and II.

A cybernetic approach is taken and a discussion on what is the foundation for the philosophy of social science for systemic thinking is developed.

The findings for Part I are that the rationalistic view of knowledge is based on reflection and reason. The empirical viewpoint on knowledge based on observations. The realistic view of knowledge is based on the link between the rationalistic and the empirical point of view. The systemic viewpoint is based on the realistic view of knowledge.

Provided assistance to social scientists who study social systems from the systemic or cybernetic point of view. Gives researchers studying problems/phenomena in social systems a systemic viewpoint.

It positioned systemic thinking in relation to the philosophy of social science.

This article presents a theoretical investigation of the concept of ‘subject’ or ‘subject matter’ in library and information science. Most conceptions of ‘subject’ in the literature are not explicit but implicit. Various indexing and classification theories, including automatic indexing and citation indexing, have their own more or less implicit concepts of subject. This fact puts the emphasis on making the implicit theories of ‘subject matter’ explicit as the first step. A very close connection exists between what subjects are, and how we are to know them. Those researchers who place the subjects in the minds of the users have a conception of ‘subject’ different to that possessed by those who regard the subject as a fixed property of the documents. The key to the definition of the concept of ‘subject’ lies in the epistemological investigation of how we are going to know what we need to know about documents in order to describe them in a way which facilitates information retrieval. The second step therefore is an analysis of the implicit epistemological conceptions in the major existing conceptions of ‘subject’. The different conceptions of ‘subject’ can therefore be classified into epistemological positions, e.g. ‘subjective idealism’ (or the empiric/positivistic viewpoint), ‘objective idealism’ (the rationalistic viewpoint), ‘pragmatism’ and ‘materialism/ realism’. The third and final step is to propose a new theory of subject matter based on an explicit theory of knowledge. In this article this is done from the point of view of a realistic/materialistic epistemology. From this standpoint the subject of a document is defined as the epistemological potentials of that document.

The aim of this paper is to develop an integrative model that explains how incorporating the two epistemological positions of critical realism and attribution theory can help qualitative organisational researchers better understand the reality of social actors through different lenses. In addition, the paper aims to demonstrate the application of the model through a study of organisational justice perceptions of elite Muslim professionals undergoing performance appraisal in the UK banking sector.

The approach adopted used semi-structured in-depth interviews with Muslim professionals in elite positions in UK Western and Islamic banks. Access to participants was secured through a process of purposive and snowball sampling, a tool often used to recruit hard-to-reach populations. The data were analysed through the integrative model developed in this paper.

The integration of critical realism and attribution theory provided different dimensionalities of social reality. Attribution theory enabled a systematic identification of social phenomena and their causal mechanisms, defined the characteristics of those mechanisms and highlighted who/what is responsible for and affected by them. Critical realism distinguished between causal mechanisms and the generative forces that help those mechanisms to be actualised and have effect.

The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, to the best of my knowledge, it is the first paper to build a novel integrative model of these two epistemologies. Second, it presents a detailed application of the model in a contemporary study of the perceptions of justice of Muslims in the UK banking sector.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the functionality of the particular epistemological schools with regard to the issues of users with visual impairment, to offer a theoretical answer to the question why these issues are not in the center of the interest of information science, and to try to find an epistemological approach that has ambitions to create the theoretical basis for the analysis of the relationship between information and visually impaired users.

The methodological basis of the paper is determined by the selection of the epistemological approach. In order to think about the concept of information and to put it in relation to issues associated with users with visual impairment, a conceptual analysis is applied.

Most of information science theories are based on empiricism and rationalism; this is the reason for their low interest in the questions of visually impaired users. Users with visual disabilities are out of the interest of rationalistic epistemology because it underestimates sensory perception; empiricism is not interested in them paradoxically because it overestimates sensory perception. Realism which fairly reflects such issues is an approach which allows the providing of information to persons with visual disabilities to be dealt with properly.

The paper has a speculative character. Its findings should be supported by empirical research in the future.

Theoretical questions solved in the paper come from the practice of providing information to visually impaired users. Because practice has an influence on theory and vice versa, the author hopes that the findings included in the paper can serve to improve practice in the field.

The paper provides theoretical anchoring of the issues which are related to the inclusion of people with disabilities into society and its findings have a potential to support such efforts.

This is first study linking questions of users with visual disabilities to highly abstract issues connected to the concept of information.

This paper aims to demonstrating that the former new institutional theory of isomorphism and decoupling cannot be extended, modified or refuted as it is a closed theory. By analyzing the structure of this former version of institutional theory and its numerous modern competitors (institutional entrepreneurship, institutional work and institutional logics theories) it is argued that these alternative theories demonstrate even less explanatory and predictive power and do not refute or extend their predecessor. The rise of new organizational theories can have no other effect on classic institutional theory than to limit the domain of its applicability. In turn, there are a number of principles and conditions that future theories should meet to be accepted as progressive advancements.

The paper provides a review of relevant organizational and philosophical literature on theory construction and scientific progress in organizational research and offers a set of principles and demands for those new theories that seek to challenge new institutionalism.

The authors show that the former institutional theory satisfies two main criteria that any scientific theory should conform with following it is useful and falsifiable in term of giving explanations and predictions while, at the same time, clearly specifying what can be observed and what cannot; what can happen and what is not likely to occur. Modern institutional theories cannot demonstrate this quality and they do not satisfy these criteria. Moreover, institutional isomorphism theory is a closed theory, which means it cannot be intervened with changes and modifications and all future theories should develop their theoretical propositions for other domains of applications while they should account for all empirical phenomena that institutional theory successfully explains.

Adopting instrumental view on organizational theories allowed reconstructing the logic and trajectory of organizational research evolution and defends its rationality and progressive nature. It is also outlined how existing dominant theory should be treated and how new theories should challenge its limitations and blind spots and which philosophical and methodological criteria should be met.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for including historical perspectives in doctoral seminars in marketing theory.

The paper describes how marketing history is currently incorporated into the author's doctoral seminar in marketing theory.

The author's doctoral seminar in marketing theory incorporates history in three ways: the assignment of specific historical articles, the use of historically oriented, supplementary readings, and the use of history to examine specific controversies.

Rather than marketing history and marketing theory being competitors, they complement each other well in doctoral seminars.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the scientific nature of work-based learning (WBL) and research as operationalized in Professional Studies by examining first principles of scientific inquiry.

This paper introduces a Professional Studies program as it has been implemented at University of Southern Queensland in Australia and examines it from the perspective of five first principles of scientific inquiry: systematic exploration and reporting, use of models, objectivity, testability and applicability. The authors do so not to privilege the meritorious qualities of science or to legitimise WBL or its example in Professional Studies by conferring on them the status of science, but to highlight their systematised approach to learning and research.

If the authors define Professional Studies to mean the systematic inquiry of work-based people, processes and phenomena, evidence affirmatively suggests that it is scientific “in nature”.

WBL has been well documented, but its orientation to research, particularly mixed methods (MM) research through Professional Studies, and its adherence to first principles of science have never been explored; this paper begins to uncover the value of work-based pedagogical approaches to learning and research.