Agenda for today

1. Department of Information SystemsINF 799Research Methodologies and ProposalMr N. MaveteraAdapted From Prof Dewald Roode

2. Agenda for today • A closer look at the field of Information Systems • Epistemology and Ontology of the field of Information Systems • The four paradigms of Burrell and Morgan • Research paradigms • Positivist • Interpretivist • Critical • The theoretical underpinnings of interpretivist and critical research • Research Methodologies

3. The field of Information Systems • Is it a scientific discipline? • What is a ‘discipline’? The term ‘discipline’ is often loosely applied to indicate the organized ‘body of knowledge’ or ‘domains of discourse’ within which (mainly) academic activities concerning a specific topic or a number of related topics, are conducted

4. The field of Information Systems • Banville and Landry’s* classification of scientific disciplines according to three dimensions • Degree of strategic dependence • Degree of strategic task uncertainty • Degree of functional dependence *Communications of the ACM, Vol 32, No. 1 (1989) pp 48-60

5. The field of Information Systems • Strategic dependence Refers to the extent to which researchers have to persuade colleagues of the significance and importance of their problem and approach in order to obtain a high reputation from them (high, low)

6. The field of Information Systems • Strategic task uncertainty Defined in relation to the fact that the stability of problem formulation and the hierarchy of problems according their importance and significance vary across fields. It is low when members of a field agree on a hierarchy of research problems and high in the presence of loosely coupled ‘schools of thought’

7. The field of Information Systems • Functional dependence Denotes the extent to which researchers have to use the specific ideas of fellow specialists in order to construct knowledge claims which are regarded as useful contributions (high, low)

8. Degree of functional dependence The field of Information Systems Low High Fragmented adhocracy Professional adhocracy High Degree of strategic task uncertainty Technologically integrated bureaucracy Low Low Degree of strategic dependence Polycentric oligarchy Polycentric profession High High Degree of strategic task uncertainty Conceptually integrated bureaucracy Partitioned bureaucracy Low

9. The field of Information Systems • Research in IS is rather personal and weakly co-ordinated in the field as a whole • A researcher can gain a reputation by contributing in a way that is largely specific to a group of colleagues or a research site • The field is largely open to an educated public and amateurs can effect the field’s standards • Barriers to entry in the field are weak and going from one fragment to another is quite easy • Reputations are fairly fluid, control of resources is unstable, coalitions are likely to be ephemeral and leadership is often of a charismatic nature • Common-sense languages dominate the communication system

10. Epistemology and Ontology of the field of IS • Epistemology Refers to the type of (valid) knowledge that can be obtained about a phenomenon under study • Ontology Refers to the underlying assumptions made about phenomena under study

11. Epistemological assumptions • Objectivist position • Models and methods from the natural sciences can be applied to the study of human affairs, treating the social world as if it were the natural world • Institutional aspects of social systems are seen to be independent of human action, hence portraying social reality as objective

12. Epistemological assumptions • Subjectivist position • Denies the appropriateness of the natural science paradigm for studying the social world, stating that the social researcher cannot separate him/herself from the phenomena being studied, and therefore can at best be relative and never completely objective • Subjectivists attempt to understand social phenomena by explaining how individuals create and recreate their social world through deliberate action

13. Ontological assumptions • Order view: an orderly society, functionally stable and co-ordinated • Conflict view: society is in a state of change, conflict and disintegration

14. The four paradigms Order Interpretivism Functionalism Objectivism Subjectivism Radical structuralism Neo-humanism Conflict Burrell and Morgan: Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis, Heinemann, London, 1979

15. The four paradigms • The functionalist paradigm It is assumed that the social world is ordered and composed of relatively concrete empirical artefacts and relationships that can be identified, studied and measured through approaches derived from the natural sciences.

16. The four paradigms • The interpretive paradigm Is characterized by a need to understand the world as it is, to understand the fundamental nature of the social world at the level of subjective experience. It seeks explanation within the frame of reference of participant in, rather than objective observer of, the action. It assumes an orderly world.

17. The four paradigms • The radical structuralist paradigm Shares an objective departure point with the functionalist paradigm, but assumes that radical change is built into the very nature and structure of contemporary society. It focuses primarily on the structure and analysis of economic power relationships

18. The four paradigms • The neo-humanist paradigm Differs from the interpretivist paradigm only in the sense that it is committed to overthrowing or transcending the limitations of the existing social world. It assumes a social world that is in flux and conflict.

19. The four paradigms • Burrell and Morgan view these paradigms as mutually exclusive • In practice, problems rarely allow us to study them within a single paradigm, and a multi-paradigmatic approach is often indicated or even required

20. Use of the four paradigms • Four paradigms of IS development* • Helps to identify an appropriate research paradigm • Helps to generate research questions (more about this later when we discuss the structure of the Project Proposal) *Hirschheim and Klein: CACM, Vol 32, (1989) pp1199 - 1216

21. Research paradigms • Positivist • Interpretivist • Critical

22. Research paradigms Positivist • Positivist research falls within the functionalist paradigm • It assumes a physical and social world, independent of humans, which can be characterized and measured • The researcher is assumed to be objective and impartial, and aims at uncovering reality through defining constructs and precise quantitative measures • It is the preferred research approach in the natural sciences, and its use in the social sciences is based on the belief that social sciences can be investigated in the same way • Fundamentally, the positivist approach involves the manipulation of theoretical propositions using the rules of formal logic and the rules of ‘hypothetico-deductive’ logic • Rationality underlies the major claims of positivists, and strongly developed formalized method (mathematical, statistical) are used for checking the validity of their findings, thus displaying the rigour of the approach

23. Research paradigms Interpretivist • Differs from positivist research approach in that the epistemological stance is that our knowledge of reality is a social construction by human actors • Value-free data cannot be obtained, since the researcher uses his/her preconceptions to guide the research process • During the research process, the researcher interacts with human subjects, thereby changing the perceptions of both parties • The main aim of interpretive research is to understand, rather than to predict

24. Research paradigms Critical realism • Ontologically,CR assumes the existence of a domain of structures and mechanisms, events, and experiences (the Real). These structures have causal powers or tendencies the interplay of which leads to the occurrence (or absence) of particular events (the Actual). These structures may be physical, social, or conceptual, and may well be unobservable except through their effects. Some, but not all, of the events will be observed or experienced by people and thus become Empirical. • Epistemologically, CR recognizes that our knowledge is always provisional and historically and culturally relative – we do not have observer-independent access to the world – but this does not make all theories or beliefs equally valid. • Methodologically, the CR view is that science is not essentially about discovering universal laws, purely predictive ability, or the simple description of meanings and beliefs. Rather, it is centrally concerned with explanation, understanding, and interpretation. It moves from some phenomenon (or its absence) that has been observed or experienced, to the postulation of some underlying mechanism(s) or structure(s) which, if they existed, would causally generate the phenomenon. Efforts are then made to confirm or refute the proposed mechanisms. (Mingers, paper 10)

25. The theoretical underpinnings of interpretivist and critical research (an incomplete list) • Hermeneutics • Structuration Theory (Giddens) • Giddens’ “Consequences of Modernity” • Actor-Network Theory • Theories about the social context of Information Systems (e.g., the Human Environment Model) • Critical Social Theory (Habermas)

26. The theoretical underpinnings of interpretivist and critical research • How is it used in research? • As a way of thinking and speaking about the phenomena being studied • As a “lens” through which the data is viewed and interpreted • We will come back to the theoretical bases after acquiring a “feel” for research methodology

27. Research Methodologies • Field studies (survey research) • Case study research • Ethnography • Action research • Discourse analysis • Grounded theory research

28. Field Studies (survey research) • Common in the positivist tradition • Collecting data through questionnaires or interviews • Analyzing the collected data to draw conclusions about relationships between particular sets of data • Could also be exploratory and in the interpretivist tradition, as long as the data they yield are not regarded as ‘objective facts’ but rather as products of the respondents’ interpretation of their situation

29. Case Study Research • Can involve only quantitative data, only qualitative data, or both • Within the idiographic* rather than the nomothetic† research style, trying to understand a phenomenon in its contexts rather than seeking general laws about the phenomenon • Uses multiple methods of data collection • After data collection, the researcher deductively or inductively arrives at explanations or causal links continued …

30. Case Study Research (continued) • Lee has developed a scientific methodology (MISQ 13(1): 33-50) with which to conduct case study research in the IS field • Walsham: ‘the validity of an extrapolation from an individual case or cases depends not on the representativeness of such cases in the statistical sense, but on the plausibility and cogency of the logical reasoning used in describing the results from the cases, and in drawing conclusions from them’ (Interpreting Information Systems in Organizations, Wiley 1993)

31. Ethnography • A form of research in which the researcher (the ethnographer) participates overtly or covertly in people’s daily lives for an extended time • Data are collected by questioning, observing, listening, etc

32. Action Research • Requires experimentation, in which participants in real-life situations collaborate with the action researcher to identify and solve problems of social practice • Usually continues over an extended period of time • Usually has as its objective the testing of some theory or hypothesis • The action researcher is not an independent observer but an active participant, and the process of change becomes the subject of research

33. Discourse analysis • Discourse • Linguists understand discourse as language use; psychologists as cognition, and sociologists as social interaction • An interrelated set of texts, and the practices of their production, dissemination, and reception, that brings an object into being • Critical discourse analysis • Focuses on discursive activity in constituting and sustaining traditional power relations • Sensitive to wider issues, but does not consider the individual as an active agent and therefore does not treat text as a human action and a mediator of context • Social constructivist discourse analysis • Discursive patterns in language are viewed as regularities in text through which phenomena are constructed, reconstructed and ignored • Example: analysis of email exchanges between members of a virtual team to analyse the phenomenon of “presence” within a virtual team (Panteli, paper 7)

34. Grounded Theory Research • Theory that is systematically and inductively arrived at through ongoing collection and analysis of data • Does not begin with preconceived ideas or theory and then force the data to fit them for the purpose of verification or testing – it is grounded systematically in the data • The researcher would then typically have no research problem, merely an interest in a particular area • The research problem emerges during data collection • The yield of grounded theory research is conceptual hypotheses, not verified theory • A grounded theory is modifiable as new data or properties emerge

35. Useful references • Choosing Information Systems Research Approaches, Chapter 8 in Galliers, RD (ed) (1992) Information Systems Research: Issues, Methods and Practical Guidelines. Oxford: Blackwell • The Use and Misuse of Statistical Methods in Information Systems Research, Chapter 11 in Galliers • Qualitative research in Information Systems http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/index.html