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In recent years a body of scholars and researchers working in the field of organization and management studies in Britain and elsewhere have been following academic agendas avowedly supported by realist philosophical ideas. Among other things, realist-informed researchers have investigated the configuration and reconfiguration of public and private organizations and, more broadly, the formation and re-formation of structures describingthe framework of capitalist institutions.2 Significant contributions to social science in these areas have been made, including, it will be argued here, the establishment of cumulative results. With these developments as its focus, this chapter considers systematically what makes this new work distinctive. Although philosophy has made no direct contribution to the accumulation of knowledge in these fields, it is difficult to imagine the research having taken the form it has, or having been so effective had it not been informed by knowledge of realist philosophy. In this chapter, the philosophy is considered first; and only then the theory and methods typically employed by researchers. The type of account of organizational and social change that has been produced – and which is the basis of the social science contribution of these developments – is only broadly outlined. The contribution of the chapter is that it aims to clarify how this approach to social science works, and to point to the character and role of its associated logics of scientific discovery.

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-11140-2_3

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