IS 7021: The Philosophy of
Science & Qualitative Research Methods
Dr. Mary C. Lacity
233 Computer Center Building
(314) 516-6127 (work)
(314) 516-6827 (fax)
http:/www.umsl.edu/~lacity
Wednesday, 10:30 to 1:00, 2nd floor
CCB Conference Room (212)
Fall 2006 CLASS:
Vidya Iyer Vidya.Iyer@umsl.edu
Kyootai Lee mKlee@umsl.edu
Robert
Talbott Robert.Talbott@maritz.com
Jessie Cheng jessie.cheng.js@gmail.com
Shaji
Khan
shaji@techqed.com
Daniel
Hollander DanielHollander@umsl.edu
Prasad
Rudra prasad_rs63@hotmail.com
This seminar presents an
introduction to philosophical concepts and qualitative research methods
underlying scientific inquest in IS research. The philosophical and
methodological foundations of information systems are largely built upon the
philosophies, theories, and methods from other disciplines, including the
physical sciences, computer science, sociology, psychology, and
mathematics. In this course, we survey
a variety of philosophical perspectives & qualitative methods from other
disciplines by reading the original works, critical responses to these works,
and representative applications of these ideas in the IS domain.
Logically, we should first cover
philosophy of science, followed by qualitative methods. However, because one of the learning goals
for the class is to give students experience with qualitative methods, the
timing requires that we sequence the course by studying qualitative research
methods first, then philosophy of science. We will cover research paradigms in
week 2 because this foundational knowledge is needed to understand the
subsequent readings on qualitative methods.
COURSE MATERIALS:
There are
nine books on the reading list. You may
purchase these from Amazon, or borrow from the library. I have an additional
copy of books by Kuhn, Von
Bertalanffy, Giddens and Burrell &
Morgan someone may borrow from me.
Nearly all the papers are available on ABI-inform. I will distribute book chapters in
hard-copy.
GRADING:
|
Assignment: |
Percent of Grade |
Due Date |
|
Weekly Quizzes |
40% |
Start of Class |
|
Weekly Class Participation |
10% |
Every Class |
|
Qualitative Research Project: |
||
|
Qualitative research
design: 2 pages |
|
September 20 |
|
Defend the use of
qualitative method: 1 page |
|
October 11 |
|
Develop an interview guide
based on theory: 1 page |
|
September 27 |
|
Pro-actively find
appropriate participants to interview & conduct interviews (provide
names, titles, and dates of interviews) |
|
By October 25, earlier if possible |
|
Transcribe the interviews (must
be audio or video recorded) (Submit transcriptions to instructor) |
|
November 29 |
|
Oral Presentation |
20% |
December 6 |
|
Final Paper |
30% |
Before January 5 |
Qualitative Research Project:
Each
student will conduct five interviews. Interviewing
is an important skill associated with qualitative research. The learning goals from this project
include:
There are
several options that students may pursue.
Each student may work on their own, in pairs, triplets, or with the
entire class. The benefit of working
together is that you will be able to combine your interviews and possibly
develop a publishable piece of research.
As this is
a learning exercise, students should consider topics in which it will be easy
to find participants. Students might
try to pick a topic in which current UMSL students, faculty, or staff could
serve as subjects. Alternatively,
students may want to pick a topic in which subjects could be selected from
prior work places with other established contacts. Students should not pick a topic that requires interviews with
five CEOs or CIOs unless students have access to C-level executives.
Student(s)
will select their own topic. Students
have three choices:
(a) Select a new and
exciting topic that has never before been researched. This option is most appropriate for
doctoral students who have already taken several Ph.D. seminars. The benefit is that a good, original study
could serve as a pilot for a dissertation and/or lead to a publication. The drawback is that this requires a
significant amount of work under a tight deadline.
(b) Find an existing
study to replicate or slightly extend. The benefit of this approach is that new students can
quickly conquer the learning curve.
This option is appropriate if you have a strong interest in a certain
topic and would like to start building some experience with empirical research
in a certain topic area. The drawback is that you will learn less about
designing a new contribution to knowledge.
(c) Replicate Anand
Jeyaraj’s research for individual adoption.
This
might be the most appropriate option for new Ph.D. students who are not yet
familiar with the IS literature. I will
provide, via Anand, the research questions, theoretical underpinnings, and
sample interview guide. The benefit of
this approach is that students will have a good research project that can be
completed in the allotted time. In
return for Anand’s help, he will be given electronic copies of the transcribed
interviews to use in his research.
On the last
day of class, each student (or each group) will take 30 minutes to discuss
their research method and findings using Power Point.
WEEKLY QUIZZES:
At the start
of class each week, I will administer a brief quiz on the assigned
readings. The purpose of the quiz is to give you that extra incentive to
read all assignments prior to class. The quizzes will assess basic
understanding of the material, while the subsequent class discussion will
provide more erudite analysis.
WEEKLY CLASS
PARTICIPATION:
It is vital
that students attend all sessions. Please make attendance your number one
priority. This class will only be valuable if each and every one of us makes a
commitment to be prepared. That means that each student must have carefully
read all the reading assignments prior to class. We will assess the
class participation grade based on my impression of your weekly preparation,
meaningful insights, plentiful comments, intellectual curiosity, and
enthusiasm.
In a rare
circumstance that a student has to miss class (such as the birth of a child or
severe illness), please contact me immediately.
TENTATIVE COURSE SCHEDULE:
Week 1: 8/23 Introduction to
the Course
Week 2: 8/30 Sociological Paradigms
Week 3: 9/6 Introduction to
Qualitative Research Methods
Week 4: 9/13 The Case Study:
Positivist Approaches in IS Research
Week 5: 9/20 The Case Study:
Interpretive Approaches IS Research
Week 6: 9/27 Grounded Theory
Week 7: 10/4 Action Research
Week 8: 10/11 Nature of Scientific Inquiry
Week 9: 10/18 Beyond Either/Or
Week10: 10/25 Social Construction of Reality
Week 11: 11/1 Systems Theory
Week 12: 11/8 Theories of Change: Punctuated
Equilibrium
Week 13: 11/15 Theory of Communicative Action
THANKSGIVING BREAK
Week 14: 11/29 Structuration Theory
Week 15: 12/6 Oral Presentations
Week 1: Introduction to the Course & Each Other
Week 2: Sociological
Paradigms
Does IS research follow a
paradigm? In this class, Burrell and Morgan's seminal summary of
sociological paradigms inform the question. The book's impact in varying
fields such as sociology and business school disciplines was to compellingly
argue for theoretical and methodological diversity in organizational
studies. Critics, however, subsequently contested that research paradigms
can be neatly organized into a Cartesian plane, and some have even called their
framework "boring and misleading."
Assigned
Week 3: Introduction to Qualitative
Research
|
Major Research “Strategies” |
Major Data Collection & Analysis Methods |
|
Case
Study |
Interviewing |
|
Ethnography, Participant Observation |
Observing |
|
Grounded
Theory |
Artifacts, Documents, Records |
|
Action and
Applied Research |
|
Assigned
·
Myers, M., “Qualitative
Research in Information Systems,” published on www.isworld.org (announced in MIS Quarterly, (1997),Vol. 21, 2, pp.
241-242.)
·
Orlikowski, W., and
Baroudi, J. (1991), “Studying IT in Organizations: Research Approaches and
Assumptions,” Information Systems
Research, Vol. 2, 1, pp. 1-28.
Week 4: The Case Study
Method: Positivist Approaches
Assigned
Week 5: The Case Study Method: Interpretive Approaches
Assigned
|
Qualitative research design:
2 pages |
Students are to make
copies and present to class |
Week 6: Grounded Theory
Assigned
·
Work, B., “Patterns of software quality
management in TickIT certified firms,”
European Journal of Information Systems, Mar 2002.
Vol. 11, 1, pp. 61-73.
|
Develop an interview guide
based on theory: 1 page |
Students are to make copies
and present to class |
Week 7: Action Research
Assigned
·
Susman, G. and
R. Evered. (1978) "An Assessment of The Scientific Merits of Action
Research," Administrative Science Quarterly, (23) 4, pp. 582-603.
·
Baskerville, Richard, Myers, Michael D ,”Special Issue on Action Research in
IS—Forward,” MIS Quarterly, September 1, 2004, Vol. 28, 3,
· Iversen, Jakob, “Managing Risk in Software Process Improvement: An Action Research Approach, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 28, 3, p. 395-433.
·
Baskerville, R. and A.
T. Wood-Harper. (1998) "Diversity in Information Systems Action Research
Methods," European Journal of Information Systems, (7) 2, pp.
90-107.
·
Baskerville, R. (1999)
"Investigating Information Systems with Action Research","
Communications of The Association for Information Systems (2)19 October
Week 8: Nature of
Scientific Inquiry
According to E.D. Klemke in his
introduction to Introductory Readings in the Philosophy of Science, edited
by Klemke, Hollinger, and Kline, 1988, the Philosophy of Science is "the
attempt to understanding the meaning, method, and logical structure of science."
The Philosophy of Science studies the nature of matter (ontology), the nature
of mind (philosophical psychology), and the relationship between matter and
mind in the process of perception and knowledge creation
(epistemology). In these introductory readings, we will read that
historically, science is not an incremental acquisition of knowledge, but
rather a punctuated series of revolutions and evolutions of thought and wrought
with politics. Popper teaches that we can only falsify theories induced
from observations, but never prove them. Allen Lee reminds us why
these lofty speculations are germane to our lives as IS researchers.
|
Defend the use of
qualitative method: 1 page |
Students are to make
copies and present to class |
Assigned
Week 9: Beyond Either/Or:
Integrating Paradigms
·
Lee, A. S. (1991)
"Integrating Positivist and Interpretive Approaches to Organizational
Research," Organization Science, (2)4, pp. 342-365.
·
Mason, R. (2001), “Not
Either/Or: Research in Pasteur’s Quadrant,” Communications of the AIS, Vol, 6,
Article 16.
·
Mingers, J. (2001),
“Combining IS Research Methods: Towards a Pluralist Methodology,” Information Systems Research, Vol. 12,
3, pp. 240-259.
Week 10: The Social
Construction of Reality
The back cover of Searle's book
brilliantly captures the issue of the Social Construction of Reality:
"In the Social Construction
of Reality, eminent philosopher John Searle examines the structure of
social reality (or those portions of the world that are facts only by human
agreement, such as money, marriage, property, and government) and contrasts it
to a brute reality that is independent of human agreement. Searle shows
that brute reality provides the indisputable foundation for all social reality,
and that social reality, while real, is maintained by nothing more than custom
and habit."
Assigned
|
Pro-actively find
appropriate participants to interview & conduct interviews (provide
names, titles, and dates of interviews) |
Students are to make
copies and present to class |
By October 25, earlier if possible |
Week 11: Systems Theory
We start with Von Bertalanffy,
generally recognized as the father of general systems theory. Von
Bertalanffy was a biologist and philosopher, who searched for the universal
laws of organization. His legacy is important because many believe social
systems are like living organisms in the sense that both display wholeness,
interact with their environment, exhibit strategies of self-maintenance, and
experience cycles of birth, growth, maturity and death.
Assigned
Week 12: Theories of Change: Punctuated Equilibrium
Two biologists, Stephen Jay Gould
and Niles Eldredge, made significant contributions to their field, which have been
subsequently adopted in ours. Specifically, Gould and Eldredge noted that
the fossil record shows that many species seem to "appear" quite
rapidly and then remain stable during their existence. Thus, rather than
species gradually and incrementally changing over time, most change occurs when
a population is separated and evolves into a new species in 10,000 to 50,000
generations (peanuts in terms of geologic time!). Thus, evolution occurs
in periods of punctuated change followed by periods of equilibrium. In
the social organizational context, researchers have adopted punctuated
equilibrium as a basis for studying organizational change.
Assigned
Week 13: Communicative Action
Habermas’
theory of communicative action extends the concept of a critical theory.
Habermas' theory is oriented towards participation and emancipation. Thus,
communicative action is germane to studying information systems (e.g.,
information systems design).
The
assumption that is basic to communicative action is the idea that communication
pervades all that individuals do – communication is a form of action. Habermas
draws on the work of Austin who theorized that much of speech constitutes
action. For example, if a minister during a wedding ceremony declares: “I
hereby declare you man and wife” the persons involved are in fact married. This
“speech act” is goes by the name of a “declarative.” Thus, to understand
Habermas’ communicative theory we first have to understand
Assigned
·
BOOK:
Austin,J. L. (1975) How to Do Things With Words,
·
BOOK:
Habermas,J. (1984) The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One: Reason
and the Rationalization of Society,
·
Klein,
H., and Huynh, M., "The Critical Social Theory of Jurgen Habermas and its
Implications for IS Research," in Social Theory and Philosophy for
Information Systems, edited by John Mingers and Leslie Willcocks, Wiley,
Chichester, 2004,pp. 157-237.
Week 14: Structuration Theory
What is the relationship among
organizational structures, agents (such as IS developers, users, managers) and
information technology? Not an easy to question to answer.
Consider first the traditional and opposing views on the just the relationship
between structure and agents (let alone throwing IT into the mix). The
Structuralist/Functionalist perspective, based on the legacy of Parsons, views
that agents react to objective social structures; thus this view is strong on
structure and weak on agent's freewill. In contrast, Interpretive
Sociologists view agents as completely free to act in their own subjective
reality; thus this view is strong on agent's free will, but weak on structure.
An alternative to these opposing views is proposed in the works of Anthony
Giddens. He views agents and structures not as a dualism of independent
phenomena, but as a duality. "Structure" is created and
recreated by the actions of knowledgeable agents. Although Giddens did
not address information technology in any detail, IS researchers have applied
his ideas, with varying conformity to his original works, to the IT
domain. I've also included four articles that debate structuration theory
in the accounting context (the Boland verses Scapens & Macintosh
papers.) This lively debate displays some of the challenges of
importing theories to new domains.
Assigned
·
BOOK: Giddens, The Constitution of Society: Outline of the
Theory of Structuration,
·
Jones, Matthew, Wanda
Orlikowski, and Kamal Munir, "Structuration Theory and Information
Systems: A Critical Reappraisal," Social Theory and Philosophy for
Information Systems, edited by John Mingers and Leslie Willcocks, Wiley,
·
Orlikowski, Wanda, and
Robey, Daniel, "Information Technology and the Structuring of
Organizations," Information Systems Research, Vol. 2, 2, 1991, pp.
143-169.
·
Orlikowski, Wanda,
"The Duality of Technology: Rethinking the Concept of Technology in
Organizations," Organization Science, Vol. 3, 3, August 1992, pp.
398-427.
|
Transcribe the interviews
(must be audio or video recorded) (Submit transcriptions to instructor) |
Students are to make
copies and present to class |
November 29 |