Studying Organizations Using Critical Realism A Practical Guide

Paul K. Edwards, Professor of Employment Relations, University of Birmingham,Joe O'Mahoney, Senior Lecturer, Cardiff University,Steve Vincent, Professor of Human Resource Management, University of Newcastle

Paul Edwards has been Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Birmingham since 2011; he was previously at Warwick University, where he was Director of the Industrial Relations Research Unit. He has published widely on work and employment, including The Politics of Working Life (with Judy Wajcman; OUP, 2005). He is a Fellow of the British Academy and is editor-in-chief of Human Relations.


Joe O'Mahoney is a Senior Lecturer at Cardiff University and was previously Head of Business Analysis at Three, a senior strategy consultant and the founder of StayMobile Technology LLP. He has published widely on the consulting industry, and more recently on critical realism, in Work, Employment and Society, Organisation Studies, Organisation, the Journal of Management Studies, and the Journal of Business Ethics.


Steve Vincent is Professor of Human Resource Management at Newcastle University since 2012. He was previously Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management at the University of Leeds. He has published widely in books and journals, including articles in Human Relations; Journal of Management Studies; Work, Employment and Society; Public Administration, and New Technology, Work and Employment. He has also been a member of the editorial board of Work, Employment and Society journal.

Foreword, Roy Bhaskar
1. Critical Realism as an Empirical Project: A Beginner s Guide, Joe O Mahoney and Steve Vincent
2. Critical Realism, Research Techniques, and Research Designs, Stephen Ackroyd and Jan Ch. Karlsson
3. Employing a Form of Critical Realist Discourse Analysis for Identity Research: An Example from Women s Talk of Motherhood, Childcare and Employment, Wendy Sims-Schouten and Sarah Riley
4. Researching Identity: a Critical Realist Approach, Abigail Marks and Joe O Mahoney
5. Critical Realism and Grounded Theory, Steve Kempster and Ken Parry
6. Critical Realism and Interviewing Subjects, Chris Smith and Tony Elger
7. Critical Realism and Ethnography, Chris Rees and Mark Gatenby
8. Critical Realism and the Organizational Case Study: A Guide to Discovering Institutional Mechanisms, Steve Vincent and Robert Wapshott
9. Comparing Cases, Ian Kessler and Stephen Bach
10. Critical Realism and International Comparative Research, AyseSaka-Helmhout
11. Pulling the Levers of Agency: Implementing Critical Realist Action Research, Monder Ram, Paul Edwards Trevor Jones, Alex Kiselinchev and LovemoreMuchenje
12. History and Documents in Critical Realism, Alistair Mutch
13. Critical Realism and Mixed Methods Research: Combining the Extensive and Intensive at Multiple Levels, Scott A. Hurrell
14. Realist Synthesis, Joanne Greenhalgh
15. Probability and Models, Malcolm Williams
16. An Appraisal of the Contribution of Critical Realism to Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methodology: Is Dialectics the Way Forward?, Andrew Brown and John Michael Roberts
17. Concluding Comments, Paul K. Edwards, Steve Vincent and Joe O Mahoney