Ebook: Information Systems Research: Relevant Theory and Informed Practice

Information Systems Research: Relevant Theory and Informed Practice comprises the edited proceedings of the WG8.2 conference, "Relevant Theory and Informed Practice: Looking Forward from a 20-Year Perspective on IS Research," which was sponsored by IFIP and held in Manchester, England, in July 2004. The conference attracted a record number of high-quality manuscripts, all of which were subjected to a rigorous reviewing process in which four to eight track chairs, associate editors, and reviewers thoughtfully scrutinized papers by the highly regarded as well as the newcomers. No person or idea was considered sacrosanct and no paper made it through this process unscathed. All authors were asked to revise the accepted papers, some more than once; thus, good papers got better. With only 29 percent of the papers accepted, these proceedings are significantly more selective than is typical of many conference proceedings.
This volume is organized in 7 sections, with 33 full research papers providing panoramic views and reflections on the Information Systems (IS) discipline followed by papers featuring critical interpretive studies, action research, theoretical perspectives on IS research, and the methods and politics of IS development. Also included are 6 panel descriptions and a new category of "bright idea" position papers, 11 in all, wherein main points are summarized in a pithy and provocative fashion.

---

Information Systems Research: Relevant Theory and Informed Practice comprises the edited proceedings of the WG8.2 conference, "Relevant Theory and Informed Practice: Looking Forward from a 20-Year Perspective on IS Research," which was sponsored by IFIP and held in Manchester, England, in July 2004. The conference attracted a record number of high-quality manuscripts, all of which were subjected to a rigorous reviewing process in which four to eight track chairs, associate editors, and reviewers thoughtfully scrutinized papers by the highly regarded as well as the newcomers. No person or idea was considered sacrosanct and no paper made it through this process unscathed. All authors were asked to revise the accepted papers, some more than once; thus, good papers got better. With only 29 percent of the papers accepted, these proceedings are significantly more selective than is typical of many conference proceedings.
This volume is organized in 7 sections, with 33 full research papers providing panoramic views and reflections on the Information Systems (IS) discipline followed by papers featuring critical interpretive studies, action research, theoretical perspectives on IS research, and the methods and politics of IS development. Also included are 6 panel descriptions and a new category of "bright idea" position papers, 11 in all, wherein main points are summarized in a pithy and provocative fashion.

---

Information Systems Research: Relevant Theory and Informed Practice comprises the edited proceedings of the WG8.2 conference, "Relevant Theory and Informed Practice: Looking Forward from a 20-Year Perspective on IS Research," which was sponsored by IFIP and held in Manchester, England, in July 2004. The conference attracted a record number of high-quality manuscripts, all of which were subjected to a rigorous reviewing process in which four to eight track chairs, associate editors, and reviewers thoughtfully scrutinized papers by the highly regarded as well as the newcomers. No person or idea was considered sacrosanct and no paper made it through this process unscathed. All authors were asked to revise the accepted papers, some more than once; thus, good papers got better. With only 29 percent of the papers accepted, these proceedings are significantly more selective than is typical of many conference proceedings.
This volume is organized in 7 sections, with 33 full research papers providing panoramic views and reflections on the Information Systems (IS) discipline followed by papers featuring critical interpretive studies, action research, theoretical perspectives on IS research, and the methods and politics of IS development. Also included are 6 panel descriptions and a new category of "bright idea" position papers, 11 in all, wherein main points are summarized in a pithy and provocative fashion.
Content:
Front Matter....Pages i-xxiii
Young Turks, Old Guardsmen, and the Conundrum of the Broken Mold: A Progress Report on Twenty Years of Information Systems Research....Pages 1-18
Front Matter....Pages 19-19
Doctor of Philosophy, Heal Thyself....Pages 21-34
Information Systems in Organizations and Society: Speculating on the Next 25 Years of Research....Pages 35-52
Information Systems Research as Design: Identity, Process, and Narrative....Pages 53-68
Front Matter....Pages 69-69
Information Systems— a Cyborg Discipline....Pages 71-81
Cores and Definitions: Building the Cognitive Legitimacy of the Information Systems Discipline Across the Atlantic....Pages 83-101
Debatable Advice and Inconsistent Evidence: Methodology in Information Systems Research....Pages 103-120
The Crisis of Relevance and the Relevance of Crisis: Renegotiating Critique in Information Systems Scholarship....Pages 121-142
Whatever Happened to Information Systems Ethics?....Pages 143-158
Supporting Engineering of Information Systems in Emergent Organizations....Pages 159-174
Front Matter....Pages 175-192
The Choice of Critical Information Systems Research....Pages 193-193
The Research Approach and Methodology Used in an Interpretive Study of a Web Information System: Contextualizing Practice....Pages 195-211
Applying Habermas’ Validity Claims as a Standard for Critical Discourse Analysis....Pages 213-231
Conducting Critical Research in Information Systems: Can Actor-Network Theory Help?....Pages 233-258
Conducting and Evaluating Critical Interpretive Research: Examining Criteria as a Key Component in Building a Research Tradition....Pages 259-274
Making Contributions From Interpretive Case Studies: Examining Processes of Construction and Use....Pages 275-292
Front Matter....Pages 293-312
Action Research: Time to Take a Turn?....Pages 313-313
The Role of Conventional Research Methods in Information Systems Action Research....Pages 315-333
Themes, Iteration, and Recoverability in Action Research....Pages 335-352
Front Matter....Pages 353-362
The Use of Social Theories in 20 Years of WG 8.2 Empirical Research....Pages 363-363
Structurantion in Research and Practice: Representing Actor Networks Their Structurated Orders and Translations....Pages 365-388
Socio-Technical Structure: An Experiment in Integrative Theory Building....Pages 389-409
Exposing Best Practices Through Narrative: The ERP Example....Pages 411-432
Information Systems Research and Development by Activity Analysis and Development: Dead Horse or the Next Wave?....Pages 433-451
Making Sense of Technological Frames: Promise, Progress, and Potential....Pages 453-471
Reflection on Development Techniques Using the Psychology Literature: Over Two Decades of Bias and Conceptual Blocks....Pages 473-491
Front Matter....Pages 493-510
Enterprise System as an Orchestrator of Dynamic Capability Development: A Case Study of the IRAS and TechCo....Pages 513-513
On Transferring a Method into a Usage Situation....Pages 515-534
From Critical Theory into Information Systems Practice: A Case Study of a Payroll-Personnel System....Pages 535-553
Resistance or Deviance? A High-Tech Workplace During the Bursting of the Dot-Com Bubble....Pages 555-575
The Politics of Knowledge in Using GIS for Land Management in India....Pages 577-596
Systems Development in the Wild: User-Led Exploration and Transformation of Organizing Visions....Pages 597-614
Improvisation in Information Systems Development....Pages 615-630
Front Matter....Pages 631-646
Twenty Years of Applying Grounded Theory in Information Systems: A Coding Method, Useful Theory Generation Method, or an Orthodox Positivist Method of Data Analysis ?....Pages 647-647
Building Capacity for E-Government: Contradictions and Synergies in the Dialectics of Action Research....Pages 649-650
New Insights into Studying Agency and Information Technology....Pages 651-652
Researching and Developing Work Activities in Information Systems: Experiences and the Way Forward....Pages 653-654
Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: Reflections on Information Systems Research in Health Care and the State of Information Systems....Pages 655-657
The Great Quantitative/Qualitative Debate: The Past, Present, and Future of Positivism and Post-Positivism in Information Systems....Pages 657-658
Front Matter....Pages 659-660
Challenges for Participatory Action Research in Industry-Funded Information Systems Projects....Pages 647-647
Theory and Action for Emancipation: Elements of a Critical Realist Approach....Pages 661-666
Non-Dualism and Information Systems Research....Pages 667-674
Contextual Dependencies and Gender Strategy....Pages 675-680
Information Technology and the Good Life....Pages 681-686
Embracing Information as Concept and Practice....Pages 687-692
Truth to Tell?....Pages 693-697
How Stakeholder Analysis can be Mobilized with Actor-Network Theory to Identify Actors....Pages 699-704
Symbolic Processes in ERP Versus Legacy System Usage....Pages 705-711
Dynamics of Use and Supply: An Analytic Lens for Information Systems Research....Pages 713-722
Applying Adaptive Structuration Theory to the Study of Context-Aware Applications....Pages 723-734
Back Matter....Pages 735-741
....Pages 743-744