Research approaches

Abstract

While the previous chapter has attempted to locate the field of information systems, and to explore its origins, this chapter provides a review of a variety of research perspectives and approaches that are used within the field of information systems. This discussion is intended to help a student-researcher to select an appropriate research strategy for their own work, with a sound theoretical basis. The discussion in this chapter should also help students to understand the limitations of any particular approach that they use, and thereby allow them to offer a more carefully judged interpretation of what they achieve within their project work. In the previous chapter the argument has been put forward that information systems is a discipline of the social sciences, and that ‘information systems are social systems’. Following this line of argument, what follows in this chapter is very much concerned with ideas of approach and method based on current debates within the social sciences. For those people who have a stronger technical standpoint some of what follows may seem to be inappropriate for informing their research work. We would however suggest that in the general spirit of this book, all readers should give the ideas discussed here an opportunity to influence them. At the very least they might confirm, and perhaps give a name to, prior strongly held notions of what it is to do research.