Companies are increasingly asked to provide innovative solutions to deep-seated problems of human misery, even as economic theory instructs managers to focus on maximizing their shareholders' wealt

Misery Loves Companies: Rethinking Social Initiatives by Business:

Qualitative researchers rely — implicitly or explicitly — on a variety of understandings and corresponding types of validity in the process of describing, interpreting, and explaining phenomena of ...

Understanding and Validity in Qualitative Research

Evidence-based policy is a dominant theme in contemporary public services but the practical realities and challenges involved in using evidence in policy-making are formidable. Part of the problem is one of complexity. In health services and other public services, we are dealing with complex social interventions which act on complex social systems--things like league tables, performance measures, regulation and inspection, or funding reforms. These are not 'magic bullets' which will always hit their target, but programmes whose effects are crucially dependent on context and implementation. Traditional methods of review focus on measuring and reporting on programme effectiveness, often find that the evidence is mixed or conflicting, and provide little or no clue as to why the intervention worked or did not work when applied in different contexts or circumstances, deployed by different stakeholders, or used for different purposes. This paper offers a model of research synthesis which is designed to work with complex social interventions or programmes, and which is based on the emerging 'realist' approach to evaluation. It provides an explanatory analysis aimed at discerning what works for whom, in what circumstances, in what respects and how. The first step is to make explicit the programme theory (or theories)--the underlying assumptions about how an intervention is meant to work and what impacts it is expected to have. We then look for empirical evidence to populate this theoretical framework, supporting, contradicting or modifying the programme theories as it goes. The results of the review combine theoretical understanding and empirical evidence, and focus on explaining the relationship between the context in which the intervention is applied, the mechanisms by which it works and the outcomes which are produced. The aim is to enable decision-makers to reach a deeper understanding of the intervention and how it can be made to work most effectively. Realist review does not provide simple answers to complex questions. It will not tell policy-makers or managers whether something works or not, but will provide the policy and practice community with the kind of rich, detailed and highly practical understanding of complex social interventions which is likely to be of much more use to them when planning and implementing programmes at a national, regional or local level.

Realist review - a new method of systematic review designed for complex policy interventions

Because new product development (NPD) teams are engaged in knowledge creation, NPD management should emphasize cognitive team processes rather than purely social processes. Using the notions of tac...

From Embedded Knowledge to Embodied Knowledge: New Product Development as Knowledge Management:

A National Research Council report, Scientific Research in Education, has elicited considerable criticism from the education research community, but this criticism has not focused on a key assumption of the report—its Humean, regularity conception of causality. It is argued that this conception, which also underlies other arguments for “scientifically-based research,” is narrow and philosophically outdated, and leads to a misrepresentation of the nature and value of qualitative research for causal explanation. An alternative, realist approach to causality is presented that supports the scientific legitimacy of using qualitative research for causal investigation, reframes the arguments for experimental methods in educational research, and can support a more productive collaboration between qualitative and quantitative researchers.

Causal Explanation, Qualitative Research, and Scientific Inquiry in Education

The remarks below were first delivered on the occasion of an event at Harvard University, on October 14th, 2010, celebrating the publication of Stanley Cavell’s autobiographical work, Little Did I Know. Each of the invited speakers was given the following instructions by the organizers of the event: (1) to select a handful of passages from Little Did I Know (perhaps pairing them with related passages from Cavell’s earlier work), (2) to make the handful of selected passages available in advance for distribution to the audience of the event, and (3) to confine their remarks on the occasion of the event itself to a meditation on the significance of the selected passages. This text is the result of my attempt to follow these instructions as faithfully as possible.

The Triumph of the Gift over the Curse in Stanley Cavell's Little Did I Know

Dossier consacre a Wittgenstein, a l'occasion du cinquantieme anniversaire de sa mort. Dans un souci biographique, l'ensemble des contributions mesure l'influence de l'oeuvre du penseur sur les principaux domaines de la philosophie contemporaine.

On wittgenstein: Parts 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13

The Emergence of the Concept of the Analytic Tradition as a Form of Philosophical Self-Consciousness

Lecture in Bergen 2009, Sep. 10. The lecture discusses, with reference to Thomas Kuhn and Ludwig Wittgenstein, the difference between puzzles and problems.

2009) Thomas Kuhn on the Difference Between a Puzzle and a Problem

This is part 2 och an interview with Prof. J. Conant, conducted by Niklas Forsberg.

https://www.nordicwittgensteinreview.com/article/download/3522/4174

James Conant

Papers

The Triumph of the Gift over the Curse in Stanley Cavell's Little Did I Know

On wittgenstein: Parts 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13

The Emergence of the Concept of the Analytic Tradition as a Form of Philosophical Self-Consciousness

2009) Thomas Kuhn on the Difference Between a Puzzle and a Problem

Inheriting Wittgenstein: James Conant in Conversation with Niklas Forsberg, Part 2