The Philosopher's Corner: Questioning the Third Way Rhetoric of Critical Realism

Roy Bhaskar's critical realism (CR) has become a popular metatheoretical foundation in information systems (IS) research. CR is often framed as a "third way" or a "middle ground" between positivism and interpretivism. In this essay, I deconstruct this third way rhetoric of the CR discourse into four argumentative steps: 1) IS research must be based on a metatheoretical foundation; 2) positivism and interpretivism are the only two choices for such foundation, but both are unsatisfactory; 3) critical realism solves this tension as a middle ground between the two alternatives; and 4) critical realism is superior to its alternatives and thus the only sensible choice. I problematize each of these steps. The contribution of this essay is to illuminate the seductiveness of the "third way" framing: it hides more than it reveals.