Lecture note on critical thinking with regard to postmodernism and critical realism: for MBA students

Lecture note on critical thinking with regard to postmodernism and critical realism: for MBA students

 

Suggest 3 main ideas from postmodernism and another 3 main ideas from critical realism that enable part-time MBA students to employ some relatively straightforward way to practice critical thinking in their dissertation project works. For illustrating your ideas, consider using the research theme of "an evaluation of employer branding practices on human resource management performance in the Hong Kong Insurance sector".

Here is a practical way to use 3 postmodern ideas and 3 critical realist ideas to sharpen critical thinking in a part-time MBA dissertation, using your theme on employer branding and HRM performance in the Hong Kong insurance sector. Postmodernism helps you question taken-for-granted assumptions, while critical realism helps you move from surface observations to deeper causal explanation.

Postmodern ideas

1.    Distrust of grand narratives. Postmodernism challenges universal stories and “one best way” explanations, so you can question claims such as “strong employer branding always improves HRM performance”. In your topic, this means asking whether employer branding works the same way for all insurers, all employees, and all job levels, or whether the effect varies by context.

2.    Polyvocality. Postmodernism values multiple legitimate perspectives rather than one authoritative voice. For your dissertation, this supports comparing views from HR managers, frontline staff, and job applicants, instead of treating management claims as the full truth.

3.    Self-reflexivity. Postmodernism encourages the researcher to examine how their own assumptions shape interpretation. A simple dissertation practice is to write a short reflexive memo after each interview or data-reading session, noting how your MBA background or expectations about branding may be influencing your reading of the evidence.

4.    Critical realist ideas

1.    Reality exists beyond perception. Critical realism holds that real structures and mechanisms operate independently of what people think about them. In your topic, employee perceptions of employer branding matter, but you would also ask whether underlying HR policies, pay structures, workload, and promotion systems are actually supporting performance. 

2.    Stratified explanation. Critical realism distinguishes between what is observed and the deeper causes behind it. So if a Hong Kong insurer reports improved retention after branding campaigns, you would test whether the improvement came from branding itself or from better compensation, leadership, or career development hidden underneath.

3.    Judgmental rationality. Critical realism accepts that knowledge is fallible, but still allows you to judge some explanations as better than others. In a dissertation, this becomes a straightforward discipline: compare rival explanations, look for the one with the strongest support from interviews, documents, and performance indicators, and explain why it is more plausible.

4.    Applying to your theme

A simple dissertation structure would be: use postmodernism to question assumptions about employer branding, then use critical realism to explain what really drives HRM performance in the Hong Kong insurance sector. For example, if staff say the company has a strong employer brand, a postmodern lens asks whose version of the brand this is; a critical realist lens then asks what mechanisms, such as trust, career visibility, or managerial consistency, actually produce performance outcomes.

You could turn this into three manageable critical-thinking habits:

• Ask what dominant story is being told, and who benefits from it.
• Check whose voice is missing from the evidence.
• Separate visible outcomes from the deeper causes behind them.

Suggest 4 academic references on the topic discussed here, in Harvard reference format.

Here are 4 strong academic references you can use for that topic in Harvard format.

·        Hesketh, A. and Fleetwood, S. (2006) ‘Beyond measuring the human resources management-organizational performance link: applying critical realist meta-theory’, Organization, 13(5), pp. 677–699.

·        Parker, M. (1992) ‘Post-modern organizations or postmodern organization theory?’, Organization Studies, 13(1), pp. 1–17.

·        Hassard, J., Kelemen, M. and Wolfram Cox, J. (2008) ‘Disorganization theory: Explorations in alternative organizational analysis’, Academy of Management Review, 33(4), pp. 1055–1069.

·        Han, H., Kuchinke, K.P. and Boulay, D.A. (2009) ‘Postmodernism and HRD theory: current status and prospects’, Human Resource Development Review, 8(1), pp. 59–77.

A useful extra one for your dissertation framing is:

·        Fleetwood, S. (2014) Bhaskar and critical realism. In: M. Edwards (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Critical Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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