The debate between 'hard ' positivist and 'soft ' interpretivist research approaches has been the subject of much discussion in the IS field. Typically, the debate is framed in issues central to the philosophy of science, an area where relatively few IS researchers are truly competent. This paper attempts to illuminate the issue, particularly for students and researchers not entirely familiar with the arguments. The opposing positions are caricatured in two anecdotes which illustrate the futility of research conducted at the cul de sac extremes of each approach. The main dichotomies characteristic of each research tradition are then summarised, and categorised according to various levels, namely, paradigmatic, ontological, epistemological, methodological, and axiological. Finally, the paper considers a number of strategies

The debate between ‘hard ’ and ‘soft ’ research approaches continues in the IS field, but with little prospect of resolution. The debate is typically characterised by tendentious arguments as advocates from each approach offer a somewhat one-sided condemnation of the counterpart from the inimical research tradition. This paper begins by relating two fictitious tales which serve to highlight the futility of research conducted at the extremity of each research approach. The dichotomies which characterise these rival factions are also summarised. The debate is then framed in terms of the polarisation problem whereby IS researchers are divided geographically and paradigmatically into ‘hard ’ and ‘soft ’ camps. A variety of different strategies have been proposed for resolving the debate and these are discussed in detail. They are grouped into four categories, referred to as supremacism, isolationism, integration, and pluralism. Finally, the paper contends that the debate cannot be resolved, and offers the metaphor of magnetic polarity as a means of reflecting this. The paper concludes by arguing that it would be more appropriate to recast the debate at a macro level in order to accommodate different research agenda and recognise the strengths within each tradition.

Abstract—Action research has been presented as a promising approach for academic inquiry because of its focus on real world problems and its ability to provide researchers with a rich body of field data for knowledge building. Published examples of action research, however, are hard to find in business communication literature. What are the reasons for this? In this paper, I try to provide a basis for answering this question as well as helping other business communication researchers—particularly those interested in computer-mediated communication issues—to decide whether and when to employ action research. I offer a first-person, confessional tale-like account of an action research study of computer-mediated communication in groups. In order to focus on the lessons learned, my focus in this paper is on the process of conducting action research and not on empirical results. Some of the situations and related lessons discussed here are somewhat surprising and illustrate the complex nature of action research. The doctoral research, conducted over four years in Brazil and New Zealand, highlights the challenges associated with action research’s dual goal of serving practitioners and the research community. Index Terms—Action research (AR), business process improvement, computer-mediated communications, email, grounded theory, information systems.

Many IS scholars argue that global organizations need to understand cultural differences if they are to successfully deploy information technology. We agree that an understanding of cultural differences is important, but suggest that the concept of “national culture ” that has tended to dominate the IS research literature is too simplistic. In this article, we challenge information systems researchers to go beyond models of national culture. We propose that IS researchers should adopt a more dynamic view of culture – one that sees culture as contested, temporal and emergent.

Abstract Little research has been conducted to date on the specific topic of the tailoring of systems development methods. Two related research areas—contingency factors research and method engineering—have exhibited a primarily deductive research focus. In contrast, this paper presents an inductive study into method tailoring in practice within the Motorola organisation. The findings illustrate the sophisticated multi-level tailoring process at industry, organisational and project level. The multi-level tailoring process depicted here overcomes the problem of trying to comprehensively tailor a method in a development environment in which time is not available for a lengthy tailoring process on each project. The paper builds on both the contingency factors and method engineering streams, and also contains useful practical guidelines for practitioners. I.

It is generally taken as axiomatic that systems development methodologies play a useful role in guiding the systems development process, and that their increased adoption would improve the process and product of systems development. This paper summarises the arguments and pressures which support the use of methodologies. However, the problems associated with the use of methodologies have not perhaps received as much attention in previous research. A number of factors are identified in the paper which question the value of methodologies. These dichotomous arguments— in favour of and against the use of methodologies—bring about a dilemma for systems developers as to whether to adopt a formalised development methodology or not. This research study was therefore concerned with investigating the nature of systems development and the use and role of systems development methodologies in actual practice. The study adopted a comprehensive multi-phased research strategy. Firstly, the researcher’s commercial experience as a systems developer, coupled with a detailed examination of the literature, and a pilot study involving personal interviews with experienced developers in 5 organisations were drawn upon to validate and refine the research objective. The next stage of the research involved a postal survey of developers in 776 organisations. Quantitative statistical techniques were used to analyse the survey responses. Following this, the final phase of the research involved a field study comprising personal interviews with 16 experienced practitioners in eight organisations. The field interview data was analysed in a qualitative manner so as to elucidate and elaborate on the survey findings. Based on the research findings, the paper presents an empirically-grounded framework which describes the development

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How governments tried to transform the technology and the market for cryptography and cryptographic services and the implications for the regulation of information and communications technologies

This study describes the implementation of open source software in a large Irish public sector organization, Beaumont Hospital. The findings reveal a radical shift in open source deployment from invisible horizontal infrastructure systems to highly visible vertical applications. The case study describes the implementation of these systems, the difficulties encountered, and also the benefits in terms of astonishing cost savings of #13m over 5 years. These details are useful in that few studies have thus far quantified the savings from the deployment of open source software (OSS). Given that Beaumont were already receiving academic pricing discounts for many of their original proprietary closed source applications, the savings for a typical commercial organization could be even higher. Also, in many cases, the extra functionality available in the OSS systems deployed allowed for a richer feature set overall. The study also identifies the primary drivers in the move to OSS, namely principle, pragmatism and practicality. This is useful, since while several studies have considered the motivation of OSS developers, the motivation of actual users of OSS has received far less attention. The study also indicates how a typical company can contribute back to the OSS community in their own unique way, by distributing applications form their own domain of expertise, rather than having to make detailed code contributions to the original code base.

The literature on electronic marketplaces reveals much confusion around matters of definition and description. In particular, there is a lack of consensus on what constituts an electronic marketplace, as well as the inter-organisational processes which they support. Despite the disparate, and often contradictory, perceptions of electronic marketplaces in the literature, electronic marketplaces, operating as intermediaries in the market sys- tem, are observable in practice. This paper explores the characteristics of eight electronic marketplaces operating as market intermediaries in various business sectors. It builds on existing research to develop and refine a characteristics framework by examining the value proposition, product-market focus, market value activities, management value activities and technology/information value activities, ownership, revenue model and market struc- ture of the eight marketplaces. The paper concludes by outlining a refined characteristics framework and argues that the key characteristics of marketplaces is their ability to aggregate and disseminate knowledge to their participants; a task facilitated by their market,