The relevance to decision research of recent advances in the philosophy of social science is considered. The critical realism of Roy Bhaskar argues for the identification of contextually contingent explanatory mechanisms at multiple levels based on concepts grounded in intersubjectively shared reality. Using examples from the author’s and other’s research on the psychology of decisions involving risk and uncertainty, this paper explores the implications of taking a critical realist approach. It is argued that critical realism has the potential to advance (...) and unify disparate experimental and naturalistic lines of research. Furthermore, a diverse range of experimental, process-tracing and observational methods can play important complementary roles in developing fruitful critical realist explanations of decisions involving risk and uncertainty. (shrink)

The discipline of psychology has been poorly represented in critical realist texts to date. This is despite Bhaskar’s use of psychoanalytical concepts to underpin his concept of the dialectic. By comparison, other aspects of social science, such as sociology and economics, have a well-established body of critical realist texts. The original approach to psychoanalysis was analogous to the critical realist ontological-axiological chain. It moved from an ontological problem to an axiological solution. Freud’s eagerness to reframe psychoanalysis within a scientistic, objective (...) framework was perhaps due in part to the difficulties that he faced as European Jew in the fin-de-siècle. The application of the critical realist explanatory critique can contribute to our understanding of how and why the fragmentation of Freud’s legacies emerged. Critical realists should avoid the assumption that psychoanalysis is a unitary body of knowledge; as such, they should consider its various legacies separately. (shrink)

This paper considers what realist social theory can add to existing knowledge about black and minority ethnic entrepreneurs and outlines a methodology for exploring the role of the BME entrepreneur. For this group, embodied signifiers such as skills and abilities, cultural characteristics, social norms, and value systems combine with structural antecedents, such as financial, contractual, professional, and other national and regional institutional arrangements to create impediments on the progression of BME enterprises. Understanding such complex social arrangements presents significant ontological and (...) methodological challenges. We argue that previous research has failed to capture the richness of the forms of agency BME entrepreneurs display and that, as a consequence, RST has much to offer this debate. The paper ends with a discussion of the methodological implications of analysing BME entrepreneurs in terms of their social agency. (shrink)