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.

The World Wide Web is growing quickly and being applied to many new types of communications. As a basis for studying organizational communications, Yates and Orlikowski (1992; Orlikowski & Yates, 1994) proposed using genres. They de � ned genres as “typi� ed communicative actions characterized by similar substance and form and taken in response to recurrent situations ” (Yates & Orlikowski, 1992, p. 299). They further suggested that communications in a new media would show both reproduction and adaptation of existing communicative genres as well as the emergence of new genres. We studied these phenomena on the World Wide Web by examining 1000 randomly selected Web pages and categorizing the type of genre represented. Although many pages recreated genres familiar from traditional media, we also saw examples of genres being adapted to take advantage of the linking and interactivity of the new medium and novel genres emerging to � t the unique communicative needs of the audience. We suggest that Web-site designers consider the genres that are appropriate for their situation and attempt to reproduce or adapt familiar genres.

Instant Messaging (IM) is being widely adopted by teenagers. In a study of 16 teenage IM users, we explore IM as an emerging feature of teen life, focusing our questions on its support of interpersonal communication and its role and salience in everyday life. We qualitatively describe the teens' IM use interpersonally, as well as its place in the domestic ecology. We also identify technology adoption conditions and discuss behaviors around privacy management. In this initial investigation, we found differences in the nature of use between high school and college teens, differences we propose are accounted for by teens' degree of autonomy as a function of domestic and scholastic obligations, the development of independent work practices, Internet connectivity access, and even transportation access. Moreover, while teen IM use is in part characterized as an optimizing choice between multiple communications media, practice is also tied to concerns around peer pressure, peer group membership and creating additional opportunities to socialize.

The adaptation process for new technology is not yet well understood. This study analyzes how an inter-organizational virtual team, tasked with creating a highly innovative product over a 10 month period, adapted the use of a collaborative technology and successfully achieved its challenging objectives. The study of such a virtual team is especially useful for extending our understanding of the adaptation process as virtual teamshavemoremalleable structures than typical organizational units and controlled group experiments. Data were obtained from observations of weekly virtual meetings, electronic log files, interviews, and weekly questionnaires administered to team members. We found that the team initially experienced significant misalignments among the pre-existing organizational environment, group, and technology structures. To resolve these misalignments, the team modified the organizational environment and group structures, leaving the technology structure intact. However, as the team proceeded, a series of events unfolded that caused the team to reevaluate and further modify its structures. This final set of modifications involved reverting back to the pre-existing organizational environment, while new technology and group structures emerged as different from both the pre-existing and the initial ones. A new model of the adaptation process---one that integrates these findings and those of several previous models---is proposed.

Co-adaptive phenomena are defined as those in which the environment affects human behavior and at the same time, human behavior affects the environment. Such phenomena pose theoretical and methodological challenges and are difficult to study in traditional ways. However, some aspects of the interaction between people and technology only make sense when such phenomena are taken into account. In this dissertation, I postulate that the use of information technology is a coadaptive phenomenon. I also argue that customizable software provides a particularly good testbed for studying co-adaptation because individual patterns of use are encoded and continue to influence user behavior over time. The possible customizations are constrained by the design of the software but may also be modified by users in unanticipated ways, as they appropriate the software for their own purposes. Because customization patterns are recorded in files that can be shared among users, these customizations may act ...

This paper uses the growing volume of scholarly work on ‘water and politics ’ to conceptually and methodologically frame an approach to the social analysis of water resources management. This paper sets out the thrust and focus of such a ‘political sociology of water resources management’. The framing draws theoretical insights from sociology, development studies, and, obviously, water resources studies. The main theoretical inputs are: a) critical realism as the general ontological and epistemological foundation (Bhaskar, 1989; Sayer, 1984); b) sociological theory on structure-agency dynamics (Giddens, 1984; Archer, 1995) and the notion of public sociology (Burawoy, 2005a); development studies ’ understanding of the different meanings of ‘development ’ (Thomas, 2000); d) theory on politics and social power (Kerkvliet, 1990; Lukes, 2005); and e) my own reading of the water resources literature through the lens of the boundary concept of ‘water control’. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 1 explains where the attempt at defining a field of water resources management studies in this particular way comes from. The section situates the field in relation to development sociology as the intersection of sociology and development studies; discusses how the notions of discipline and scientific community help to understand the field’s characteristics; and briefly presents my own intellectual trajectory as part of this account. Section 2 discusses the object of a political sociology of water resources management. That discussion has four

Data is more than knowledge: implications of the reversed knowledge hierarchy for knowledge management and organizational memory In knowledge management literature it is often pointed out that it is important to distinguish between data, information and knowledge. The generally accepted view sees data as simple facts that become information as data is combined into meaningful structures, which subsequently become knowledge as meaningful information is put into a context and when it can be used to make predictions. This view sees data as a prerequisite for information, and information as a prerequisite for knowledge. In this paper, I will explore the conceptual hierarchy of data, information and knowledge, showing that data emerges only after we have information, and that information emerges only after we already have knowledge. The reversed hierarchy of knowledge is shown to lead to a different approach in developing information systems that support knowledge management and organizational memory. It is also argued that this difference may have major implications for organizational flexibility and renewal. 2

The paper describes ethnomethodologically informed ethnography (EM) as a methodology for information science research, illustrating the approach with the results of a study in a university library. We elucidate major differences between the practical orientation of EM and theoretical orientation of other ethnographic approaches in information science research. We address ways in which EM may be used to inform systems design and consider the issues that arise in co-ordinating the results of this research with the needs of information systems designers. We outline our approach to the ‘ethnographically informed ’ development of information systems in addressing some of the major problems of interdisciplinary work between system designers and EM researchers.

Appropriation is the process by which people adopt and adapt technologies, fitting them into their working practices. It is similar to customisation, but concerns the adoption patterns of technology and the transformation of practice at a deeper level. Understanding appropriation is a key problem for developing interactive systems, since it critical to the success of technology deployment. It is also an important research issue, since appropriation lies at the intersection of workplace studies and design.

When I first became interested in in-depth case-study research, I was trying to understand how power and rationality shape each other and form the urban environments in which we live (Flyvbjerg, 1998). It was clear to me that in order to understand a complex issue like this, in-depth case-study research was necessary. It was equally clear, however, that my teachers and colleagues kept dissuading me from employing this particular research methodology. ‘You cannot generalize from a single case’, some would say, ‘and social science is about generalizing. ’ Others would argue that the case study may be well suited for pilot studies but not for full-fledged research schemes. Others again would comment that the case study is subjective, giving too much scope for the researcher’s own interpretations. Thus the validity of case studies would be wanting, they argued. At first, I did not know how to respond to such claims, which clearly formed the conventional wisdom about case-study research. I decided therefore to find out where the claims come from and whether they are correct. This chapter contains what I discovered.