1. Main methods Flashcards
What is action research?
Intervention in organization - “context & puprose” > Constructing > planning action > taking action > evaluating action
What is design research?
Building of artefacts
Relevance cycle - requirements and field testing (environment)
Design cycle - build design artifacts & processes > evaluate (design science research)
Rigor cycle - Grounding + additions to KB (Knowledge base)
What is research?
A systematic collection and interpretation of information with a clear purpose, to find things out (Saunders)
What is (social) theory?
A system of interconnected ideas. It condenses and organizes knowledge about the social world
What is data?
Data is quanitative and qualitative information and evidence that have been gathered according to rules or established procedures
What is “Empirical” ?
It is a description of what we can observe and experience directly through human senses (touch, sight, hearing, smell, taste) or indirectly using techniques that extend senses (attitudes, opinions, emotions, power, authority, quarks, black holes, space, force, fields, gravity)
What is the research onion?
It is made by Saunders
It is layers that starts from the outside with philosophy and moves into the middle to data
- Can be used as an approach or method in papers
What is a philosophy / paradigm?
“A paradigm is a set of basic and taken-for-granted assumptions which underwrite a frame of reference, mode of theorising and ways of working” (Saunders)
“a set of basic beliefs (or metaphysics) that deals with ultimates or first principles. It represents a worldview that defines, for its holder, the nature of the “world” (Guba & Lincoln)
Name the philosophies / paradigms in IS research
Positivism
Critical realism
Interpretivism
Postmodernism
Pragmatism
What is positivism?
Ontology:
Real, external, independent
One true reality (universalism)
Granular (things)
Ordered
Epistemology:
Scientific method
Observable and measurable facts
Law-like generalizations
Numbers
Causal explanation and
prediction as contribution
What is critical realism?
Ontology:
- Stratified/layered (empirical,
actual and real)
- External, independent
- Objective structures
- Causal mechanisms
Epistemology:
- Epistemological relativism
- Knowledge historically
situated and transient
- Facts are social constructions
- Historical causal explanation
as contribution
What is interpretivism
Ontology:
- Complex, rich
- Socially constructed through
culture and language
- Multiple meanings,
interpretations, realities
Epistemology:
- Theories and concepts to simplistic
- Focus on narratives, stories, perceptions and
interpretations
- New understandings and worldviews as contribution
What is pragmatism?
Ontology:
- Complex, rich, external
- Reality is the practical
consequences of ideas
- Subjective and objective
variants
Epistemology:
- Focus on problems, practices and relevance
- Knowing through making
- Problem solving and informed future practice as contribution
