I have taken the opportunity of the Christmas/New Year break to start to look at critical realism, as part of a review of systems thinking and approaches. This may brand me a somewhat sad individual, but the concepts and thinking involved really require a time of reflection and quiet rather than the daily urge to earn a crust.
In doing my doctorate in Operational Research and management methods, I used and discussed the scientific method. This was the process to formulate an hypothesis, collect data and test it to determine if the hypothesis can be accepted or rejected, perhaps an odd feedback loop to tweak things a bit, and then once proved or not, write up and ideally use the resulting theory.
My research was undertaken in the late 80s and was academically driven so I was not aware of the newer concepts being discussed particularly around social sciences and geography that were appearing in less formal arena. It wasn't until I was external supervisor for a geography postgraduate at Coventry University that the concepts of critical realism started to encroach on my thinking.
John Mingers has done a lot of work to see if critical realism is a valid alternative for OR to the scientific method. Not all studies in OR are now really easy for the scientific method, particularly as the manufacturing and engineering base reduces, and messes to be looked at are far more likely to be people and services driven.
Two processes are proposed for critical realism that can be applied to an OR issue - DREI and RRREI. DREI being Description, Retroduction, Elimination and Identification, while RRREI is Resolution, Redescription, Retroduction, Elimination and Identification. Personally I prefer the RRREI version, but it is important to note what the phases mean. Resolution here is not resolving the problem that you are looking at (part of the old scientific method, but a last stage), rather it is resolving the event or phenomena into its component parts and how they are related. Retroduction is where you postulate hypotheses for mechanisms or structures that if they existed would give rise to the phenomena you are looking at.
Much of the work that I do in skills research cannot be simply explained or modelled, and it is here that often the scientific method doesn't quite help. The critical realism approach could provide a better framework within which to work.
My main caveat to all this is that the client never really needs to see the philosophical constructs that one uses to work on their project and certainly never needs to hear phrases and words like critical realism, retroduction or transitive dimensions. As even concepts like employer engagement can trigger long reports trying to define their meaning, the KISS principle has to be paramount outside of academia!
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