Tsang and Williams offer some good and provocative ideas in their critique of our earlier article on generalizing and generalizability. In this essay we will advance some new ideas by building on those collected in both Tsang and Williams and our original article (Lee and Baskerville 2003). Because IS is a pluralist scientific discipline, one in which both qualitative and quantitative (and both interpretive and positivist) research approaches are valued, "generalize" is unlikely to be a viable term or concept if only one IS research paradigm may lay claim to it and excludes others from using it. Both papers agree on this point, but approach the problem differently. Where we originally generalized generalizability by offering new language, Tsang and Williams conceptualize generalizability by framing it more closely to its older, more statistically oriented form. We agree about the importance of induction and about the classification or taxonomy of different types of induction. We build further in this essay, advancing the ethical questions raised by generalization: A formulation of judgment calls that need to be made when generalizing a theory to a new setting. We further demonstrate how the process of generalizing may actually proceed, based on the common ground between Tsang and Williams and our original article.
Qualitative research is just as able as quantitative research to follow certain fundamental principles of logic in general and scientific reasoning in particular. Two such principles are the logic of modus ponens and the logic of modus tollens. In this essay, we frame different research approaches--positivist research, interpretive research, action research, and design research--in the forms of modus ponens and modus tollens. Three issues emerge from this framing and call into question how research is now conducted in the discipline of information systems. They are the issue of a common scientific basis, the issue of the fallacy of affirming the consequent, and the issue of summative validity. Both rigor and relevance in information systems research may be better achieved by attending to the three issues.
In dialogical action research, the scientific researcher does not "speak science" or otherwise attempt to teach scientific theory to the real-world practitioner, but instead attempts to speak the language of the practitioner and accepts him as the expert on his organization and its problems. Recognizing the difficulty that a practitioner and a scientific researcher can have in communicating across the world of science and the world of practice, dialogical action research offers, as its centerpiece, reflective one-on-one dialogues between the practitioner and the scientific researcher, taking place periodically in a setting removed from the practitioner's organization. The dialogue itself serves as the interface between the world of science, marked by theoria and the scientific attitude, and the world of the practitioner, marked by praxis and the natural attitude of everyday life. The dialogue attempts to address knowledge heterogeneity, which refers to the different forms that knowledge takes in the world of science and the world of practice, and knowledge contextuality, which refers to the dependence of the meaning of knowledge, such as a scientific theory or professional expertise, on its context. In successive dialogues, the scientific researcher and the practitioner build a mutual understanding, including an understanding of the organization and its problems. The scientific researcher, based on one or more of the scientific theories in her discipline, formulates and suggests one or more actions for the practitioner to take in order to solve or remedy a problem in his organization. Dialogical action research recognizes that the practitioner's experience, expertise, and tacit knowledge, or praxis, largely shapes how he understands the suggested actions and appropriates them as his own. Upon returning to his organization, he takes one or more of the suggested actions, depending on his reading of the situation at hand. The reactions or responses of the problem...
Generalizability is a major concern to those who do, and use, research. Statistical, sampling-based generalizability is well known, but methodologists have long been aware of conceptions of generalizability beyond the statistical. The purpose of this essay is to clarify the concept of generalizability by critically examining its nature, illustrating its use and misuse, and presenting a framework for classifying its different forms. The framework organizes the different forms into four types, which are defined by the distinction between empirical and theoretical kinds of statements. On the one hand, the framework of firms the bounds within which statistical, sampling-based generalizability is legitimate. On the other hand, the framework indicates ways in which researchers in information systems and other fields may properly lay claim to generalizability, and thereby broader relevance, even when their inquiry falls outside the bounds of sampling-based research.
This article presents a comment to a paper that examined the state of information science research. The author acknowledges that there is problem related to the relevance of information science research and suggests that the authors of the article took a positivist approach in forming their perspective on the issue. The author suggests that research in information science cannot follow that paths of medicine and law because those fields are professions and are therefore inherently different than the field of information science.
Information Richness Theory (IRT) has enjoyed acceptance by information systems researchers throughout the last decade, but recent unfavorable empirical evidence has precipitated a shift away from it and a search for a new theory. Because of this shift, a new definition of communication richness is needed to succeed the IRT definition. Since its inception, IS research on communication richness has been limited to the perspective of positivism and, more recently, interpretivism. In this study, a new perspective to the study of communication richness in computer mediated communication, critical social theory (CST), is introduced. The paper outlines (1) a CST-based definition of communication richness and compares it with positivist and interpretivist definitions of communication richness and (2) a CST-based social action framework for empirical study of organizational communication in any media use situation. The CST definition and framework are used in an intensive investigation of an episode of the managerial use of electronic mail in a company to illustrate how research on communication richness can be conducted from the CST perspective. This illustration also points cut the usefulness of the CST perspective in recognizing instances of communication richness in electronic mail communications that would escape detection in not just the IRT perspective in particular, but also positivist and interpretive perspectives in general. Finally, the paper concludes by outlining the potential for future IS research on organizational communication and information technology from the CST perspective. In addition to the specific contribution to the development of a new theory of communication richness in electronic media, this study also contributes an example of CST research on IS and extends the domain of the CST-IS research program.
This study provides an account of how richness occurs in communication that uses electronic mail. In examining actual e-mail exchanged among managers in a corporation, the study interprets the managerial use of the communication medium of electronic mail as the users themselves understand and experience it. Employing the research approach of interpretivism in general and hermeneutics in particular, the study finds that richness or leanness is not an inherent property of the electronic-mail medium, but an emergent property of the interaction of the electronic-mail medium with its organizational context, where the interaction is described in terms of distanciation, autonomization, social construction, appropriation, and enactment. Conclusions and recommendations are that managers who receive e-mail are not passive recipients of data, but active producers of meaning; that the best or just an appropriate communication medium is not determined through an individual manager's exercise of rational decision making, but emerges as best or appropriate over time, over the course of the medium's interactions with many users; that systems professionals need to treat the managerial user of an e-mail system not merely as a client of in formation services, but also as a processor or co-processor to be integrated into the system design; and that in formation systems researchers need to dedicate attention to the actual processes by which the users of a communication medium come to understand themselves, their own use of the medium, and their organizational context.
A methodology for conducting the case study of a management information system (MIS) is presented. Suitable for the study of a single case, the methodology also satisfies the standards of the natural science model of scientific research. This article provides an overview of the methodological problems involved in the study of a single case, describes scientific method, presents an elucidation of how a previously published MIS case study captures the major features of scientific method, responds to the problems involved in the study of a single case, and summarizes what a scientific methodology for MIS case studies does, and does not, involve. The article also has ramifications that go beyond matters of MIS case studies alone. For MIS researchers, the article might prove interesting for addressing such fundamental issues as whether MIS research must be mathematical, statistical, or quantitative in order to be called "scientific." For MIS practitioners, the article's view of scientific method might prove interesting for empowering them to identify, for themselves, the point at which scientific rigor is achieved in an MIS research effort, and beyond which further rigor can be called into question, especially if pursued at the expense of professional relevance.