ABSTRACT
This chapter classifies replications into six types along two dimensions, namely checking of analysis, reanalysis of data, exact replication, conceptual extension, empirical generalization, generalization and extension, and highlights its epistemic significance, and discusses its role in theory development. During the initial stage of theory development, empirical studies are concentrated in only a few focal areas with regular replications. Hermeneuticists are philosophers who contend that the principle of replicability should not be imposed on the social sciences because they consider social science observations to be unique in nature. In the case of organizational learning, Argyris, who bases his theory on his years of research and consulting experience with Western companies, claims that the organizational defensive pattern identified by him is generic to all human organizations. The chapter propounds a way out of objective testing predicament through a critical realist treatment, which can help researchers steer a course between the Scylla of crude empiricism and the Charybdis of relativism.
