Writing-Up

1. Writing-Up Geoff Walsham Lecture 5 of Course on Interpretive Research in IS - Oslo University

2. Contents of Lecture 5 • Writing an academic paper • Structuring the paper • Discussion of various components • The art of persuasion • English language issues • Writing-up a longer piece of work

3. Writing an Academic Paper • Crucial question: what is your key message? • To what audience? • What is new about your contribution?

4. Structuring the Paper • Create an outline including sections and sub-sections • Think about the length of the various sections • Write material on the sections to outline their contents and how they will connect • Discuss the outline with a co-author or colleague

5. Title • Important - should be sharp and focused on your contribution • See some of Orlikowski’s titles: ‘CASE tools as organizational change: investigating incremental and radical changes in systems development’ ‘Technological frames: making sense of information technology in organizations’

6. Abstract • Should summarise the whole paper (it is not an introduction) • Topic; why it is important; what you have done; what are your key conclusions • In less than 150 words • Write the abstract early - it is a good test as to whether you know what you are trying to say and why

7. Introduction • Not too long! • Why is this topic important? • How are you planning to develop your contribution in this paper? • How is the rest of the paper structured?

8. Literature Review • Not just everything you have read on the topic • A structured review of interesting aspects of the literature • But showing why your paper is needed • Can include references that you do not like to make your argument - but be polite!

9. Methodology • Reporting on ‘soft’ human issues is not an excuse for sloppiness (Walsham 1995) • Collection of field data: research sites chosen, why, who was interviewed, their job roles, other data sources, time period of the data collection … • Analysis: how data were recorded; how they were analyzed; iterative process between theory and data ...

10. Methodology - Comment • You won’t get a paper published in a good journal just because you have written a good methodology section • But you might get a paper rejected by a good journal because your methodology section is weak

11. Empirical Data and Analysis • Make it a coherent, interesting story • Sometimes helpful to have an ‘overview’ before giving details • Use plenty of quotes, but make sure that they directly support the point that you are making • Tables can be useful to summarise key points being made in the text

12. Discussion and Conclusions • What is your key contribution? • How does this advance our knowledge? • To what extent will your results generalise to other contexts? • What further work could be done (but not much on this in a paper)? • Pay attention to a good ending

13. The Art of Persuasion(Walsham 1995) ‘Van Maanen (1989) reminds us that establishing validity in the eyes of a reader is part of the art of persuasion, and is as much a matter of rhetorical style and flair as it is of accuracy and care in matters of theory and method’ • Practice/practice/practice … • Develop your own style

14. English Language Issues • Lear how to write grammatically • Get a competent native speaker to check your English • If you write well in your own language, you can learn to write well in English

15. Writing-Up a Longer Piece of Work • Basic ideas remain the same • But structure is even more important • Flow between different sections/chapters needs additional linking material • What have others done? What have I done? So what? (thesis structure)