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"Critical realism."
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A fresh look at Islam in a multi-faith world : a philosophy for success through education
\"A Fresh Look at Islam in a Multi-Faith World provides a comprehensively theorised and practical approach to thinking systematically and deeply about Islam and Muslims in a multi-faith world. It makes the case for a contemporary educational philosophy to help young Muslims surmount the challenges of post-modernity and to transcend the hiatuses and obstacles that they face in their interaction and relationships with non-Muslims and visa-versa.It argues that the philosophy of critical realism in its original, dialectical and metaReal moments so fittingly 'underlabours' (Bhaskar, 1975) for the contemporary interpretation, clarification and conceptual deepening of Islamic doctrine, practice and education as to suggest a distinctive branch of critical realist philosophy, specifically suited for this purpose. This approach is called Islamic Critical Realism.The book proceeds to explain how this Islamic Critical Realist approach can serve the interpretation of the consensual elements of Islamic doctrine, such as the six elements of Islamic belief and the five 'pillars' of Islamic practice, so that these essential features of the Muslim way of life can help Muslim young people to contribute positively to life in multi-faith liberal democracies in a globalising world.Finally, the book shows how this Islamic Critical Realist approach can be brought to bear in humanities classrooms by history, religious education and citizenship teachers to help Muslim young people engage informatively and transformatively with themselves and others in multi-faith contexts.\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Critical Realism and Affordances: Theorizing It-Associated Organizational Change Processes
Convincing arguments for using critical realism as an underpinning for theories of IT-associated organizational change have appeared in the Information Systems literature. A central task in developing such theories is to uncover the generative mechanisms by which IT is implicated in organizational change processes, but to do so, we must explain how critical realism's concept of generative mechanisms applies in an IS context. Similarly, convincing arguments have been made for using Gibson's (1986) affordance theory from ecological psychology for developing theories of IT-associated organizational change, but this effort has been hampered due to insufficient attention to the ontological status of affordances. In this paper, we argue that affordances are the generative mechanisms we need to specify and explain how affordances are a specific type of generative mechanism. We use the core principles of critical realism to argue how affordances arise in the real domain from the relation between the complex assemblages of organizations and of IT artifacts, how affordances are actualized over time by organizational actors, and how these actualizations lead to the various effects we observe in the empirical domain. After presenting these arguments, we reanalyze two published cases in the literature, those of ACRO and Autoworks, to illustrate how affordance-based theories informed by critical realism enhance our ability to explain IT-associated organizational change. These examples show how researchers using this approach should proceed, and how managers can use these ideas to diagnose and address IT implementation problems.
Journal Article
Realist criminology
\"Criminology has expanded significantly as an academic discipline, but it has been argued that it is becoming increasingly socially and politically irrelevant. This books aims to address this problem by rethinking the theoretical underpinnings and research methods we use, to form a criminology that is critical, engaged and useful. The left realist approach to criminology has changed considerably over the past twenty years and continues to make an important contribution to the theoretical study of crime, as well as issues such as crime prevention, policing, prisons, and community safety. As one of the pioneers of realist criminology, Roger Matthews presents a coherent overview of its development and continued relevance. By providing a critique of some of the dominant approaches in criminology, this book sets a new agenda for theoretical and practical engagement and will appeal to all those interested in making sense of contemporary forms of social control and developing types of analysis and intervention which are designed to produce a more effective and just criminal justice system. \"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The Generative Mechanisms of Digital Infrastructure Evolution
The current literature on digital infrastructure offers powerful lenses for conceptualizing the increasingly interconnected information system collectives found in contemporary organizations. However, little attention has been paid to the generative mechanisms of digital infrastructure, that is, the causal powers that explain how and why such infrastructure evolves over time. This is unfortunate, since more knowledge about what drives digital infrastructures would be highly valuable for managers and IT professionals confronted by the complexity of managing them. To this end, this paper adopts a critical realist view for developing a configurational perspective of infrastructure evolution. Our theorizing draws on a multimethod research design comprising an in-depth case study and a case survey. The in-depth case study, conducted at a Scandinavian airline, distinguishes three key mechanisms of digital infrastructure evolution: adoption, innovation, and scaling. The case survey research of 41 cases of digital infrastructure then identifies and analyzes causal paths through which configurations of these mechanisms lead to successful evolution outcomes. The study reported in this paper contributes to the infrastructure literature in two ways. First, we identify three generative mechanisms of digital infrastructure and how they contingently lead to evolution outcomes. Second, we use these mechanisms as a basis for developing a configurational perspective that advances current knowledge about why some digital infrastructures evolve successfully while others do not. In addition, the paper demonstrates and discusses the efficacy of critical realism as a philosophical tradition for developing substantive contributions in the field of information systems.
Journal Article
Methodological Implications of Critical Realism for Mixed-Methods Research
Building on recent developments in mixed methods, we discuss the methodological implications of critical realism and explore how these can guide dynamic mixed-methods research design in information systems. Specifically, we examine the core ontological assumptions of CR in order to gain some perspective on key epistemological issues such as causation and validity, and illustrate how these shape our logic of inference in the research process through what is known as retroduction. We demonstrate the value of a CR-led mixedmethods research approach by drawing on a study that examines the impact of ICT adoption in the financial services sector. In doing so, we provide insight into the interplay between qualitative and quantitative methods and the particular value of applying mixed methods guided by CR methodological principles. Our positioning of demi-regularities within the process of retroduction contributes a distinctive development in this regard. We argue that such a research design enables us to better address issues of validity and the development of more robust meta-infer enees.
Journal Article
How Should Technology-Mediated Organizational Change Be Explained? A Comparison of the Contributions of Critical Realism and Activity Theory
In this paper, critical realism and activity theory are compared within the context of theorizing technologymediated organizational change. An activity theoretic analysis of the implementation of large-scale disruptive information systems in a public sector setting (in particular concerning paramedic treatment of heart attack patients and ambulance dispatch work activity) is used to illustrate how activity theory makes a significant contribution to critical realism, by (1) locating technology within \"activity systems\" and theorizing change through contradictions and congruencies within those systems; (2) developing recent critical realism-inspired theorization of the \"inscription\" of cultural and social relations within technology; and (3) developing recent insights of critical realist researchers regarding the way in which the performance management agenda is mediated through IS.
Journal Article
Causal Explanation in the Coordinating Process: A Critical Realist Case Study of Federated IT Governance Structures
Large, multi-unit organizations are continually challenged to balance demands for centralization of information technology that lead to cost and service efficiencies through standardization while providing flexibility at the local unit level in order to meet unique business, customer, and service needs. This has led many organizations to adopt hybrid federated information technology governance (ITG) structures to find this balance. This approach to ITG establishes demand for various means to coordinate effectively across the organization to achieve the desired benefits. Past research has focused on the efficacy of various coordination mechanisms (e.g., steering committees, task forces) to coordinate activities related to information technology. However, we lack insights as to how and why these various coordination approaches help organizations achieve desired coordinated outcomes. This research specifically identifies coordinating as a process. Adopting the philosophy of critical realism, we conducted a longitudinal, comparative case study of two coordinating efforts in a federated ITG structure. Through a multifaceted approach to scientific logic employing deductive, inductive, and retroductive elements, we explicate two causal mechanisms, consensus making and unit aligning, which help to explain the coordinating process and the coordination outcomes observed in these efforts. We additionally elaborate the operation of the mechanisms through the typology of macro—micro—macro influences. Further, we demonstrate the value of the causal mechanisms to understanding the coordinating process by highlighting the complementarity in insights relative to the theories of power and politics and of rational choice. The study contributes to our understanding of coordinating as a process and of governance in federated IT organizations. Importantly, our study illustrates the value of applying critical realism to develop causal explanations and generate insights about a phenomenon.
Journal Article
Virtual and augmented reality in critical care medicine: the patient’s, clinician’s, and researcher’s perspective
Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are aspiring, new technologies with increasing use in critical care medicine. While VR fully immerses the user into a virtual three-dimensional space, AR adds overlaid virtual elements into a real-world environment. VR and AR offer great potential to improve critical care medicine for patients, relatives and health care providers. VR may help to ameliorate anxiety, stress, fear, and pain for the patient. It may assist patients in mobilisation and rehabilitation and can improve communication between all those involved in the patient’s care. AR can be an effective tool to support continuous education of intensive care medicine providers, and may complement traditional learning methods to acquire key practical competences such as central venous line placement, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, extracorporeal membrane oxygenation device management or endotracheal intubation. Currently, technical, human, and ethical challenges remain. The adaptation and integration of VR/AR modalities into useful clinical applications that can be used routinely on the ICU is challenging. Users may experience unwanted side effects (so-called “cybersickness”) during VR/AR sessions, which may limit its applicability. Furthermore, critically ill patients are one of the most vulnerable patient groups and warrant special ethical considerations if new technologies are to be introduced into their daily care. To date, most studies involving AR/VR in critical care medicine provide only a low level of evidence due to their research design. Here we summarise background information, current developments, and key considerations that should be taken into account for future scientific investigations in this field.
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Journal Article
The Broader Context for ICT4D Projects: A Morphogenetic Analysis
This paper demonstrates the value of Archer's morphogenetic approach (MA) in understanding and explaining the complexity of the broader context within which many developing country information and communication technology (ICT) projects are implemented. It does this by using MA's analytical and explanatory apparatus to examine the evolution of the context of public sector ICT provision in Kenya over the period 1963-2006. In addition to demonstrating the practical value of MA, the paper contributes to the Information Systems literature on ICT for development (ICT4D). The analysis identifies (1) global normative pressures, polity, the national socio-economic base, disruptive technology, and the emergence ofmultistakeholder networks as key forces in shaping the evolutionary trajectory, (2) the explicit treatment of time and temporality as key for understanding mechanisms underpinning the evolutionary process, and (3) the difficulty of cleanly isolating the implementation of individual public sector ICT projects from the broader context and ICT4D agendas. The discussion elaborates on the features of MA found to be particularly valuable in this study. The paper concludes that explicitly attending to time and temporality, and to the broader context for ICT4D projects, would contribute to the development of more nuanced accounts of such projects and a more emancipatory outlook for ICT4D research.
Journal Article