Realism

Conceptual Overview

Realism has different meanings, only some of which are shared by realists in social science and organizational analysis. In art criticism and in arts studies, for example, realism tends to mean representational accuracy. Social science realism has little in common with this because it would mean simply representing events as they are commonly perceived. By contrast, in international relations and policy studies, realism means [Page 1357]not only whether events are represented accurately in fact, but also whether the account given is realistic in terms of the probable motivations of implicated parties. Realism in this sense means to be free of sentimentality or other self-deceiving interpretation. This meaning is often part of social science realism, and there are many realists in this sense whose work is of relevance to organization studies. Examples are Niccolo Machiavelli, the Renaissance political theorist, and Robert Michels, the theorist of oligarchy in bureaucracy.

In philosophy, there have been a number of different schools of realism. Minimally, realism in this field is the doctrine that there is a world that exists independently of an observer. To insist on this may seem otiose to the ordinary person, but, since the philosophical work of David Hume in the mid-18th century it has been very difficult indubitably to substantiate anything other than our ability to conceive things. Accordingly, since Immanuel Kant's accommodating response to Hume in the late 18th century the predominant conviction in philosophy has been the opposite of realism, usually described as idealism. Philosophically, then, realism typically stands in distinction to idealism and most forms of relativism, in the first place because idealism asserts that we cannot know about things in the world independently of the concepts people have about them, and in the second place because judgmental relativism holds that there are no independent bases for judging the truth or accuracy of accounts. Such beliefs are perhaps more credible for people with regard to the social world, where there is a good deal of room for doubt that a determinate reality exists and/or that it may be objectively known. However, the social realist contends not only that social phenomena exist but they do so (at least in part) independently of the views of the subjects who participate in them. Indeed, social reality may not be readily apprehended by anyone, including the social scientist, in advance of careful study.

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