Many recent articles from within the information systems (IS) arena present an old-fashioned view of realism. For example, Iivari, Hirschheim, and Klein (1998) saw classical realism as seeing “data as describing objective facts, information systems as consisting of technological structures (‘hardware’), human beings as subject to causal laws (determinism), and organizations as relatively stable...

Rom Harré criticizes critical realism for ascribing causal powers to social structures, arguing that it is human individuals, and not social structures, that possess causal powers, and that a false conception of structural causation undermines the emancipatory potential of critical realism. I argue that an interpretation of the category of process as the spatio-temporalization of the category o...

*** In Press at Journal of Experimental Social Psychology *** Moral realism as moral motivation: The impact of meta-ethics on everyday decision-making Running Head: Moral realism as motivation Liane Young and AJ Durwin Department of Psychology, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Ave., Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Liane Young, Department of ...

Holmes launched the highly successful American school of legal realism with his remark that "law" consists of "prophecies of what the courts will do in fact." [FN1] Later writers amended this proposition to include all officials, since decisions by judges constitute only a fraction of authoritative decisionmaking. [FN2] In its heyday, realism stimulated many proposals for legal reform and socia...

Convincing and compelling virtual environments that are populated with rich characters demand consistent, nuanced, and realistic behavior that is integrated in the surrounding environment. We introduce the concept of Supporting Character Realism (SCR) for virtual avatars by identifying the capabilities of agents which have the ability to work in tandem with traditional “main character realism” ...

"Realism" is one of the enduring theoretical problems of the cinema. This study aims to broaden the parameters of the term by focusing on an often overlooked strain of thought that flows throughout the work of a number of prominent and seemingly incongruous thinkers such as Bazin, Kracauer, Benjamin, Barthes, Buñuel, and others. Realism, I contend, is undergirded by something far more elusive a...

Different strands of postmodern, poststructuralist, postrealist, and nonpositivistic approaches and theories have gained popularity in information systems (IS) research. Since most of these approaches have a flat treatment of the agency/structure dimension, focus almost exclusively on micro phenomena, and reject objectivist elements, it can be argued that they are problematic to use in IS resea...

The poor success rate of policy for curriculum change has been widely noted in the educational change literature. Part of the problem lies in the complexity of schools, as policymakers have proven unable to micromanage the multifarious range of factors that impact upon the implementation of policy. This paper draws upon empirical data from a local authority-led initiative to implement Scotland’...

Marcus Rall, MD Simulation is a complex social endeavor, in which human beings interact with each other, a simulator, and other technical devices. The goal-oriented use for education, training, and research depends on an improved conceptual clarity about simulation realism and related terms. The article introduces concepts into medical simulation that help to clarify potential problems during s...