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.