Sport for development and transformative social change: The potential of Margaret Archer’s Morphogenetic Approach to reconceptualise a longstanding problem

Frequent calls for sport-for-development (SfD) to be re-oriented towards transformative social change reflect the extent that policies and programmes have instead focused on individualised forms of personal development. However, SfD research has yet to substantially address fundamental ontological assumptions and underlying conceptualisations of transformative social change. To addresses this gap, we consider how Margaret Archer’s Morphogenetic Approach can help explain how transformative social change might occur through SfD activities. Three conceptual contributions are brought into focus: (1) assuming a realist social ontology, (2) making distinctions between structure, culture and agency, and (3) identifying social change as happening across three temporal phases. We conclude by identifying potential benefits and implications of applying the Morphogenetic Approach to consider the potential for SfD to contribute to social change

How to phrase critical realist interview questions in applied social science research

The tenets of critical and social realism are well supported in the literature. However, researchers following a realist paradigm have concerns about the lack of methodical guidance for qualitative interviewing, despite their affirmation about the importance of in-depth interviews. A conducted review of empirical realist literature provides evidence of an absence of guidance and commonality regarding interview planning practices. To overcome this absence, this paper composes a guiding framework to assist researchers to phrase more appropriate interview questions in realist research. The steps are founded on critical and social realist concepts while guided by methodological realist principles. Its contribution aims to not only improve the practice of realist inquiry methods but also to introduce more research transparency. A more transparent method for interview questions can lead to increased validity and afford replicability of mechanism-based theories resulting from empirical realist research

Recent Advances and Opportunities for Improving Critical Realism-Based Case Study Research in IS

Critical realism (CR) has been proposed as an alternative to positivist and interpretivist research in information systems. In recent years, there have been several articles that describe methodological guidelines for conducting CR-based empirical studies. These guidelines have been used by numerous researchers as the methodological underpinnings for empirical research articles in IS, particularly for case studies. As a result, CR-based research has evolved as these researchers address many of the challenges and issues associated with this approach. In this article, we present a review and synthesis of methodological and recent empirical CR literature. We identify the methodological advances and important gaps in the empirical research and present a set of state-of-the-art recommendations for conducting and evaluating critical realist research studies in IS

Why things happen – Developing the critical realist view of causal mechanisms

Events happen within the organizational world not by chance but for reasons. It is surely the task of management research to try to explain why these events occur. This requires us to understand the nature of causality but, in general, this is seldom discussed in the management or IS literature. The standard, positivist view underlying statistical analysis is the Humean one of constant conjunctions of events leading to universal laws. Against this, many constructivists find the whole idea of external causality implausible. In this paper we explore a third alternative that is developing strongly within the philosophy of science, social theory and critical realism – the mechanisms view. This proposes that events are generated through the interaction of specific mechanisms endowed with causal powers that may or may not be triggered, and may or may not be countervailed. In particular, the paper develops some of the fundamental concepts such as the nature of events, emergent properties, the difference between properties and powers, casual interactions between levels, absences as causes, event causality and generative causality, and abstracting causal regularities. The paper concludes by illustrating these ideas with a series of empirical case studies

Effective Strategies for Managing the Outsourcing of Information Technology

More than half of information technology (IT) outsourced projects fail, primarily due to a lack of effective management practices surrounding the outsourcing end-to-end process. Ineffective management of the IT outsourcing (ITO) process affects organizations in the form of higher than expected project costs, including greater vendor switching or reintegration costs, poor quality, and loss of profits. These effects indicate that some business leaders lack the strategies to effectively manage the ITO process. The purpose of this single-case study was to apply the transaction cost economics (TCE) theory to explore strategies 5 business professionals use to manage an ITO project in a financial services organization located in the Midwestern region of the United States. Participant selection was purposeful and was based on the integral role the participants play on the ITO project. Data collection occurred via face-to-face semistructured interviews with the participants and the review of company documents. Data were analyzed using inductive coding of phrases, word frequency searches, and theme interpretation. Three themes emerged: vendor governance and oversight, collaborative strategic partnership, and risk management strategies enabled effective management of ITO. Identifying and executing appropriate outsourcing strategies may contribute to social change by improving outsourcing infrastructure, which might support job creation; increasing standards of living, especially within emerging markets; and heightening awareness of different cultures, norms, and languages among people living in different regions around the world to establish commonalities and gain alignment with business practices

A Framework for Assessing Interventions to Promote the Implementation of Material Innovations on Construction Projects

Recent research has highlighted that the UK construction industry must accelerate the implementation of novel material solutions (NMS) with low embodied greenhouse gases (GHG) onto projects to decouple growth in construction activity from embodied GHG emissions. To reduce the risks in this process of transition, there is a need to examine the unsystematic promotion of interventions to encourage NMS implementation. Autoethnography was used with constructivist grounded theory in an abductive exploration of construction NMS (non-)implementation, synthesising qualitative data from interviews, surveys, participatory and non-participatory observations with the existing literature. Adopting the specification decision as the appropriate unit of analysis, the research applied a novel morphogenetic perspective of structure and agency to develop a new framework in which the NMS specification decision could be located and assessed. The framework contributes to both theory and practice by allowing a systematic exploration of the specification decision and its elaborating impacts enabling the selection of case-appropriate interventions to influence project actors’ capability, opportunity and motivations to implement NMS on projects. The research provides insights for policy makers, practitioners and researchers wishing to promote NMS. The model highlights the critical influence of the timing of sanctionable project decisions, the availability of sufficient project resources, and the client’s project performance objectives on successful NMS implementation on projects