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Gurpreet Mahajan surveys each of the major forms of inquiry - hermeneutic understanding, narrative, reason-action, and causal explanation - to examine how each method changes our perceptions of social reality. This edition includes a new Preface that discusses the evolution in social sciences over the last twenty years.

Theory production has been a central focus of management research for decades, mostly because theory legitimizes both management research and, through its application, management practice as professional endeavors. However, such an emphasis on theory glosses over one of its constraining and particularized roles in scientific explanation, namely that theory codifies predictive knowledge. Committing to a 'traditional' or 'critical' understanding of theory thus amounts to embracing the view that prediction is achievable within a circumscribed field of study. Such an embrace is non-controversial in natural science. However, within the realm of management studies, it necessitates and smuggles in a strawman view of human existence, one which does not accommodate freedom and responsibility. This limitation of management theory explains its inadequate utility. This article argues that alternative avenues for management research exist. JEL CLASSIFICATION: M10

The problem of linking 'explanation' & 'understanding' remains unresolved -- as Weber left it. This paper challenges the view that their reconciliation is impossible, as some theorists have maintained. Their case is that the entities involved -- subjective meanings & objective relationships -- are too ontologically different to be combined. From the stratified ontology of Social Realism, which acknowledges that different properties & powers pertain to different components & levels of social reality, this is no barrier in principle to their combination. However, in practice Realists have not given an adequate account of how 'subjectivity' & 'objectivity' are linked, which also weakens Realism's solution to the 'problem of structure & agency.' This paper offers a refinement: the human power of reflexivity is viewed as mediating between our subjective concerns & our objective social contexts. Reflexive deliberations account for what agents actually do -- and they do not all do the same thing -- under very similar social circumstances. The introduction of reflexivity enables the (socially) objective & the (personally) subjective to be combined into a single account of socially structured & structuring action.

Explanation and understanding -- Theory, experiment and the metaphysics of Laplace -- Explanation and understanding in the social sciences -- Agents and generative social mechanisms -- Social science and history -- Markets as social mechanisms -- Appendix A: The limits of multiple regression -- Appendix B: Comparison, Mill's methods and narrative -- Appendix C: Rational choice theory and historical sociology -- Appendix D: The neo-classical model.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- Theoretical Framework -- The Legacy of the Iranian and Soviet Ethno-Political Systems and Policies -- Methods -- Ethno-Territorial Conflicts in the Caucasus and Central Asia -- Analysis: Searching for Explanations -- Conclusions -- References -- Index.

Conflict and Peace in Central Eurasia explains ethnoterritorial conflicts not only by focussing on these conflicts but also by comparing all cases of conflict and coexistence with each other. Aiming at formulating new theories, this study makes use of qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as well as case studies and statistical analyses