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This chapter addresses current trends regarding how the meta-theory of critical realism (CR) frames comparative and international education research and practice. It introduces the key tenets of CR and explores how these ideas have been and can be applied in educational research. It demonstrates how CR provides a valuable alternative to the positivist, interpretivist and constructivist paradigms, and leverages elements of all three to provide new approaches to develop knowledge that is free from the dualisms embedded in their ontological assumptions. I argue that by offering a dialectical understanding of structure and agency, as well as the material and ideational dimension of social reality, CR provides an ontological framework that does not do conceptual violence to the reality we seek to research. This ontological basis is particularly valuable to the social justice agenda of educational research in general because it allows researchers to work beneath the surface of empirical research to disclose the field of possibilities for social action.

This chapter suggests that moving beyond positivism entails a recognition that the social world is made up of complex phenomena that are heterogeneous, and events are caused by contingent conjunctures of causal mechanisms. To theorize the social world as heterogeneous is to recognize that social causes, categories, and groups combine different kinds of phenomena and processes at various levels and scales across time. To speak of conjunctural causation implies not only that events are caused by concatenations of multiple, intersecting forces but also that these combinations are historically unique and nonrepeatable. Both the historical materialist conception of the “conjuncture” and the poststructuralist theory of “assemblages” take heterogeneity and multicausality seriously. I compare and contrast these formulations across three dimensions: the structure of the apparatus, causation, and temporality. I argue that these theories offer useful tools to social scientists seeking to engage in complex, multicausal explanations. I end the article with an example of how to use these concepts in analyzing a complex historical case.

The relationship between ontology, realism, and normativity is complex and contentious. While naturalist and realist stances have tended to ground questions of normativity in ontology and accounts of human nature, critical theories have been critical of the relationship between ontological and normative projects. Queer theory in particular has been critical of ontological endeavors. Exploring the problem of normativity and ontology, this paper will make the case that the critical realist ontology of open systems and complex, contingent, conjunctural causation deeply resonates with queer theory, generating a queer ontology that both allows for and undermines ontological and normative projects.

The aim of this paper is to apply principles of the realism paradigm within qualitative research projects.

The paper starts by establishing the usefulness of realism research for investigating marketing management phenomena, and then considers the implications of the realism paradigm for research design.

Issues such as the level of prior theory required, the use of replication logic and triangulation are discussed. In addition, guidelines for realism data analysis and reporting are developed.

This paper provides an explicit set of principles for realism research design and data analysis that is different from those in other types of research.

In marketing and consumer research, the application of subjective personal introspection, or SPI, to the understanding of one’s own consumption experiences benefits from the representation of such self‐reflective insights in the most vivid and compelling manner possible. Toward the latter end, stereographic three‐dimensional images may deepen the marketing or consumer researcher’s ability to communicate with managers and other readers in a suitably forceful, engaging, and transparent way. Thus, three‐dimensional photographs in the form of stereo pairs may provide corroborative evidence for the interpretations suggested by SPI or other research approaches. In this, literally, stereo 3D displays enhance the vividness, clarity, realism, and depth of communication between marketing researchers and their audience. But beyond that, figuratively, three‐dimensional stereography also serves as a metaphor to capture the essence of operating on the edge, of attaining profound insights, or of pursuing creativity in the postmodern world of consumption‐oriented hyperreality.

The philosophical position known as critical realism is briefly introduced, and some of its central features are used to connect the philosophy and the realist social theory to some current library and information science (LIS) models of information behaviour.

The paper uses a literature‐based analysis of the critical realism concepts of a stratified social reality, the importance of contextualisation, and the relation between structure and agency. These features are discussed in relation to various models of information‐seeking behaviour, but also to the “interpretative” approach to information as meaning which can only be achieved through discourses in a human community.

The critical realism perspective could lay a fruitful foundation for an interdisciplinary research field like LIS, and its user studies in particular, concerned with many levels of information creation, seeking, use and processing. It is the task of the LIS researcher to explain the mechanisms that influence the information seeking, not only on an empirical level, by observing the user and his/her discourse community, but also by revealing possible underlying causes and relations.

An awareness of the fact that social and cultural structures exist independent of one's knowledge of them has implications on how many central problems in the LIS field are regarded and studied.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the implications of adopting a critical realist position for the study of performance measurement and management (PMM) systems.

This paper discusses recent challenges to knowledge creation in PMM, arguing that overcoming these will require revisiting often implicit philosophical assumptions related to how the world is and how we learn about it. A critical realist perspective is explored and illustrated with the case of a software company attempting to empower and motivate its team.

Critical realism provides a means of building interdisciplinary knowledge in PMM. In addition to a generative view of causality, critical realism could augment a systems view of PMM by adopting a stratified view of reality and through its applied approach to knowledge building. The case illustrates the RRREIC approach and highlights the interplay of mechanisms of different scales and how this requires interdisciplinarity.

Approaching the study of PMM with critical realism requires going beyond a particular tool or practice to understand the theory behind it. Such an approach can facilitate a layered, nuanced analysis of the issues facing organizations in a changing context.

This paper adds to discussion of philosophical topics in management and PMM and could help resolve ongoing challenges to knowledge building in the field, especially around barriers to conducting interdisciplinary research. In combination with rigorous methods, a strong philosophical base can facilitate relevant, lasting theories that can respond to a changing organizational context.