While criteria or principles for conducting positivist and interpretive research have been widely discussed in the IS research literature, criteria or principles for critical research are lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose a set of principles for the conduct of critical research in information systems. We examine the nature of the critical research perspective, clarify its significance, and review its major discourses, recognizing that its mission and methods cannot be captured by a fixed set of criteria once and for all, particularly as multiple approaches are still in the process of defining their identity. However, we suggest it is possible to formulate a set of principles capturing some of the commonalities of those approaches that have so far become most visible in the IS research literature. The usefulness of the principles is illustrated by analyzing three critical field studies in information systems. We hope that this paper will further reflection and debate on the important subject of grounding critical research methodology
In this paper, we propose a partial solution to the problem of the relevance of information systems research by adjusting doctoral programs to the specific needs and talents of doctoral students that have significant prior professional life experience. The purpose of this paper is first to recognize that the "professionally qualified doctoral student" (PQDS) has a different type of knowledge that may give her/him some advantages over other students, including greater symbolic capital. We examine the epistemic evidence for the claim that part of their practical experience constitutes a specific type of "applicative" knowledge that should be considered as different from but of equal value to theory, which has been the mainstay of academic education. Three independent lines of academic research contribute such evidence: the communities of practice literature, philosophical perspectives on applicative knowledge, and cognitive sciences. We argue that PQDSs may benefit from doctoral programs with specific features designed to leverage their practical knowledge. In turn, they may be able to "boundary span" and publish research results in forms that are appreciated by their professional communities. Finally we discuss some practical institutional issues that could be addressed if we are to sustain this profile of researchers.
This paper proposes a four-tiered framework for classifying and understanding the myriad of information systems development methodologies that have been proposed in the literature. The framework is divided into four levels: paradigms, approaches, methodologies, and techniques. This paper primarily focuses on the two intermediate levels: approaches and methodologies. The principal contribution of the framework is in providing a new kind of "deep structure" for better understanding the intellectual core of methodologies and approaches and their interrelationships. It achieves this goal by articulating a parsimonious set of foundational features that are shared by subsets of methodologies and approaches. To illustrate how the framework's deep structure provides a better understanding of methodologies' intellectual core, it is applied to eleven examples. The paper also introduces and illustrates a procedure for "accommodating" and "assimilating" new information systems development methodologies in addition to the eleven already discussed. This procedure provides the framework with the necessary flexibility for handling the continuing proliferation of new methodologies.
This article discusses the conduct and evaluation of interpretive research in information systems. While the conventions for evaluating information systems case studies conducted according to the natural science model of social science are now widely accepted, this is not the case for interpretive field studies. A set of principles for the conduct and evaluation of interpretive field research in information systems is proposed, along with their philosophical rationale. The usefulness of the principles is illustrated by evaluating three published interpretive field studies drawn from the IS research literature. The intention of the paper is to further reflection and debate on the important subject of grounding interpretive research methodology.
This paper analyses the fundamental philosophical assumptions of five "contrasting" information systems development (ISD) approaches: the interactionist approach, the speech act-based approach, the soft systems methodology approach, the trade unionist approach, and the professional work practice approach. These five approaches are selected for analysis because they illustrate alternative philosophical assumptions from the dominant "orthodoxy" identified in the research literature. The paper also proposes a distinction between "approach" and "methodology." The analysis of the five approaches is organized around four basic questions: What is the assumed nature of an information system (ontology)? What is human knowledge and how can it be obtained (epistemology)? What are the preferred research methods for continuing the improvement of each approach (research methodology)? and what are the implied values of information system research (ethics)? Each of these questions is explored from the internal perspective of the particular ISD approach. The paper addresses these questions through a conceptual structure which is based on a paradigmatic framework for analyzing ISD approaches.