ABSTRACT
The past twenty years have seen a fundamental questioning and critique of traditional positions in the philosophy of science and the emergence and elaboration of a perspective known as transcendental realism, which is sustainable in the face of this increased questioning and critique. The specific version of transcendental realism that has been developed for the social realm, usually gathered under the heading critical realism, has in the last ten years increasingly been adopted in social and psychological research. However, there are two areas, surprisingly, where there has been rather little recognition of the importance of critical realism. These are: the area of organisation and management studies known as labour process theory and orthodox economics. Recently, critical realism has begun to gain ground in economics,2 but there is as yet little recognition of it in many areas of organisation and management studies.
