Critical realism: a way forward in IS research

Although different strands of “post-approaches” and “post-theories”, for example, grounded theory and structuration theory, have gained popularity in Information Systems (IS) research they are not without problems. We present critical realism as an alternative philosophical underpinning for IS research. Critical realism starts from an ontology that identifies structures and mechanisms through which they are generated as being fundamental to the constitution of our natural and social reality. The paper presents critical realism and Derek Layder’s adaptive theory—this is based on the principles of critical realism—and exemplifies how they can be used in IS-research, for example, in theory development and evaluation research.

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