Beneath the Radar? A Critical Realist Analysis of ‘The Knowledge Economy’ and ‘Shareholder Value’ as Competing Discourses

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (10) ◽  
pp. 1363-1381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Thompson ◽  
Bill Harley
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Economy ◽  
Shareholder Value ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Realist Analysis

Revising the Socio-Technical Perspective for the 21st Century

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 69-87
Author(s):  
Louise Harder Fischer ◽  
Richard Baskerville
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Complex Dynamics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Technical System ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Systems Research ◽  
Information Systems Research ◽  
Parallel Structures ◽  
Realist Analysis ◽  
Collaboration Platforms

A predominant understanding in information systems research (ISR) is that technology has institutionalizing, routinizing, and socializing effects in its interaction with users in the human enterprise. Subscribing to these effects from an organizational point of view no longer provides a full understanding of the more complex dynamics in the 21st century workplace inhabited by a vast amount of different technologies with different purposes. Through a critical realist analysis, focusing on patterns in socio-technical structures and more specific actions and outcomes afforded by the recent and forceful adoption of unified communication and collaboration platforms (UCC), the authors see a new, powerful socio-technical mechanism of individualization that is profoundly changing these socio-technical dynamics. Through 18 interviews with knowledge professionals, the study finds that the mechanisms of individualization reduce the influence of the organization as an institutionalizing and socializing socio-technical system. As an example, the power of individualization creates new parallel structures of small networks of close colleagues. Thus, this research sees new structural patterns and dynamics emerging, forming a much more complex, yet self-organizing socio-technical system. The authors suggest expanding the socio-technical understanding of the present techno-organizational reality by taking into account the socio-technical mechanisms that produce certain outcomes. By understanding the fundamental mechanisms at work, they provide those with a fuller understanding of how these mechanisms can enable, while simultaneously crippling, each other. This fuller understanding also aids the pursuit of providing workplaces that achieve both humanistic and economic objectives.

Intimate Pleasures and the Madness of Love

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Tulloch ◽  
Belinda Middleweek
Keyword(s):  
Narrative Theory ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
The Real ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Social Aesthetics ◽  
Sexually Explicit ◽  
Realist Analysis ◽  
Sociological History ◽  
Current Risk

Chapter 7 analyzes the real sex films Ken Park and Irréversible in the context of different sexual/social aesthetics in sexually explicit films by drawing on “old” and “new” forms of narrative theory as a “bridging synthesis” of disciplinary approaches. The different generations of narrative theory alluded to in this chapter concern Will Wright’s old critical realist analysis of the Western genre and Tanya Krzywinska’s new, postmodernist “narrative formula” approach. This chapter opens with narrative comparison of one European and one US real sex film to point to their similar narrative reversals and contradictions in the context of the “normal chaos of love,” with a major focus on Ken Park’s narrative. Wright’s and Krzywinska’s theoretically and generationally different versions of narrative theory are thus drawn together in terms of current risk sociological history and distinguished from each other epistemologically for further consideration in later chapters.

scholarly journals Towards an Eco-decolonial Museology: A critical realist analysis of the crises of South African museums

2021 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Jeffery
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Cultural Landscape ◽  
Critical Realism ◽  
Management Practice ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Critical Realist ◽  
Quantitative Management ◽  
Realist Analysis ◽  
Relational Capabilities ◽  
Museum Practice

South African museums face multivalent, simultaneous crises. The MELD dialectical framework of critical realist philosophy can be used to explore potential for a deep reimagining of museum theory and practice that may generate a new, relational mode better able than persistent dualist modes to respond to complex, emergent crises. This has been conceived by the author (Jeffery, 2021) as an ecological-decolonial, or eco-decolonial, mode of museology, and is further developed in the present analysis. At 1M, the MELD analysis surfaces the implicit neoliberal ontology of South African museum work and the emergent paradox of ‘emancipatory neoliberalism’. This paradox is generative of a number of constraints on practice and agency, including commodification of heritage, a restrictive form of official memory, and quantitative management practice. These limit potential for museums to respond to complex crises that require relational capabilities.  2E explores the potential negation of these constraints. To disrupt the principle of collection as the grounding ontological activity of museum practice may disrupt the implicit neoliberal ontology. This may contribute to emergent, sophisticated socialecological trends in museum practice, both in South Africa and internationally. At 3L, a dialectical view on the concept of cultural landscape offers a relational frame for an eco-decolonial museum practice that may better respond to the crises faced by museums. The practical implications of the eco-decolonial approach are considered at 4D. Keywords: museum practice, critical realism, ontology, eco-decolonial, collection, cultural landscape

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document