ISWORLDnet SUMMARY

I would like to know if there should be a separate senior/master
class that discusses Social Science issues like "Philosophy,
Paradigms, Epistemology, and Ontology". Or, should those issues
be inserted in a "Research Methodology" class?

Is it safe to argue that "Burrell and Morgan's Sociological
Paradigms and Organizational Analysis"  (Heineman 1979 Ch. 1-3)"
is more than enough for what an MIS fellow needs to know?

Last, I am interest to collect a list of articles in Research
Methodology and Philosophy. Please send me 5-20 titles of what
are believed to be "must read" and "classical".

I am going to write a summary of the responses to this list in
about four weeks from now. *** 


(John Beachboard)

You might get a more considered reply if you provide a bit more
information regarding the program.  I am not sure what you mean
by MIS fellows.  Are these folks intending to conduct research
or are you trying to achieve informed practitioners more capable
of evaluating and consuming IS research?


(Richard Southwick)

1) Burrell & Morgan: This is a nice read but from my "qualitative"
   perspective I don't think the distinction between Interpretive
   and Critical holds up given contemporary trends in qualitative
   research. Critical folks will vehemently argue I'm sure. I
   believe that Denzin and Lincoln's use of the term "Seventh
   Moment" in their Handbook of Qualitative Research illustrates
   the melding of the critical and interpretive perspectives.
2) My "classic" recommendation: C. Wright Mills (1959), The
   Sociological Imagination (ch 1-2).


(Haim Kilov)

Philosophical issues, and especially those of philosophy of
science, certainly deserve to be studied in various MIS courses,
as well as perhaps in a separate class. We have successfully
included discussions of these issues in the Data and Knowledge
management course since (exact) philosophical ideas provide a
sound foundation for concepts and constructs used in modeling of
business and IT systems.

More details in:

H. Kilov and I. Sack. "Exploiting reusable abstractions in
    organizational inquiry: Why reinvent square wheels?" 
    In: Inquiring Organizations: Moving from Knowledge
    Management to Wisdom (Eds. James Courtney, David B. Paradice,
    John D.  Haynes), Idea Group, 2005.

H. Kilov. "Semantic interoperability: using RM-ODP to bridge
    communication gaps between stakeholders." Proceedings of the
    Workshop on ODP for Enterprise Computing (WODPEC 2004) in
    conjunction with EDOC. Mon-terey, California, 2004. IEEE Press.

H. Kilov and I. Sack. "Philosophy-based mechanisms for
    communication between business and IT experts." Organizations
    and Society in Information Systems (OASIS) Workshop at ICIS-2004,
    Washington, DC, December 12, 2004.


(Keng Siau)

We have a number of MIS research seminars and the MIS Research
Methodology is a separate seminar course.

For my Research Seminar in MIS Topics, I have my students read
the following philosophy and social science readings (in addition
to other journal papers and topics):

(i)   Kuhn T.S. "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions",
      3rd edition, The University of Chicago Press, 1996
(ii)  Allison, G.T., Zelikow, P., "Essence of Decision:
      Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis", 2nd edition, Addison
      Wesley Longman, 1999.
(iii) Janis, I.L., "GroupThink", 2nd edition, Houghton Mifflin,
      1982 (only chapters 6 and 8).


(Joerg Evermann)

I'm teaching a IS research course. Included in that is Kuhn's
SSR. Recommended background literature is Brian Fay's 
"Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science". The latter is a
very good, concise, and readable book on the various "~isms"
that you might find in social science discussions.


(Frank Land)

I missed your initial enquiry.  But you should add the following to
your list:

Avgerou, C., Ciborra, C., Land, F., (eds), (2004), The Social Study
of Information and Communication Technology: Innovation, Actors and
Contexts, Oxford Unioversity Press, Oxford.

The book contains some very relevant material and has good
bibliographies...


(Ray Hackney)

There are of course the International Symposium of Research Methods
(ISRM) which run just prior to our main conferences, ie ISOneWorld,
AMCIS, ICIS, ECIS, etc.

  http://www.information-institute.org/


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