This article defines and discusses one of these qualitative methods - the case research strategy Suggestions are provided for researchers who wish to undertake research employing this approach Criteria for the evaluation of case research are established and several characteristics useful for categorizing the studies are identified A sample of papers drawn from information systems journals is reviewed The paper concludes with examples of research areas that are particularly well-suited to investigation using the case research approach

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The case research strategy in studies of information systems

What do a seventeenth-century mortality table (whose causes of death include "fainted in a bath," "frighted," and "itch"); the identification of South Africans during apartheid as European, Asian, colored, or black; and the separation of machine- from hand-washables have in common? All are examples of classification -- the scaffolding of information infrastructures. In Sorting Things Out, Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star explore the role of categories and standards in shaping the modern world. In a clear and lively style, they investigate a variety of classification systems, including the International Classification of Diseases, the Nursing Interventions Classification, race classification under apartheid in South Africa, and the classification of viruses and of tuberculosis. The authors emphasize the role of invisibility in the process by which classification orders human interaction. They examine how categories are made and kept invisible, and how people can change this invisibility when necessary. They also explore systems of classification as part of the built information environment. Much as an urban historian would review highway permits and zoning decisions to tell a city's story, the authors review archives of classification design to understand how decisions have been made. Sorting Things Out has a moral agenda, for each standard and category valorizes some point of view and silences another. Standards and classifications produce advantage or suffering. Jobs are made and lost; some regions benefit at the expense of others. How these choices are made and how we think about that process are at the moral and political core of this work. The book is an important empirical source for understanding the building of information infrastructures.

https://www.reciis.icict.fiocruz.br/index.php/reciis/article/download/794/1436

Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences

While computer-mediated communication use and research are proliferating rapidly, findings offer contrasting images regarding the interpersonal character of this technology. Research trends over the history of these media are reviewed with observations across trends suggested so as to provide integrative principles with which to apply media to different circumstances. First, the notion that the media reduce personal influences—their impersonal effects—is reviewed. Newer theories and research are noted explaining normative “interpersonal” uses of the media. From this vantage point, recognizing that impersonal communication is sometimes advantageous, strategies for the intentional depersonalization of media use are inferred, with implications for Group Decision Support Systems effects. Additionally, recognizing that media sometimes facilitate communication that surpasses normal interpersonal levels, a new perspective on “hyperpersonal” communication is introduced. Subprocesses are discussed pertaining to re...

Computer-Mediated Communication Impersonal, Interpersonal, and Hyperpersonal Interaction

This paper develops a new theoretical model with which to examine the interaction between technology and organizations. Early research studies assumed technology to be an objective, external force that would have deterministic impacts on organizational properties such as structure. Later researchers focused on the human aspect of technology, seeing it as the outcome of strategic choice and social action. This paper suggests that either view is incomplete, and proposes a reconceptualization of technology that takes both perspectives into account. A theoretical model—the structurational model of technology—is built on the basis of this new conceptualization, and its workings explored through discussion of a field study of information technology. The paper suggests that the reformulation of the technology concept and the structurational model of technology allow a deeper and more dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology and organizations. This understanding provides insight into the li...

The duality of technology: rethinking the concept of technology in organizations

We examined 155 behavioral information systems research articles published from 1983-1988and found that while this research is not rooted in a single overarching theoretical perspective itdoes exhibit a single set of philosophical assumptions about the nature of valid evidence andthe phenomena of interest to information systems researchers. We argue in this paper that thesephilosophical assumptions draw on the natural science tradition, and hence may not always beappropriate for inquiry into the relationships between information technology and people or organizations. In particular, we suggest that the development and use of information technologywithin organizations is inherently processual and contextual, and that these characteristics are notalways adequately captured by the philosophical assumptions prevalent in information systemsresearch. Positing social process as central to information systems phenomena asserts theimportance of studying the ongoing interactions among people, information technology andorganizations, as these are situated historically and contextually.We argue in this paper that the dominant research perspective in information systems research isnot well-equipped to deal with situated interactions over time, and propose additional researchphilosophies to augment the one currently favored by behavioral information systemsresearchers. We outline the features of such additional research perspectives, the interpretive andthe critical, providing empirical examples to illustrate how and when they may be useful. Weconclude that multiple research perspectives can usefully be employed within the informationsystems community to enrich understanding of behavioral information systems phenomena.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/2451_14404.pdf?abstractid=1289076&mirid=1&type=2

Studying Information Technology in Organizations: Research Approaches and Assumptions

A concept of the user is fundamental to much of the research and practice of information systems design, development, and evaluation. User-centered information studies have relied on individualistic cognitive models to carefully examine the criteria that influence the selection of information and communication technologies (ICTs) that people make. In many ways, these studies have improved our understanding of how a good information resource fits the people who use it. However, research approaches based on an individualistic user concept are limited.

In this paper, we examine the theoretical constructs that shape this user concept and contrast these with alternative views that help to reconceptualize the user as a social actor. Despite pervasive ICT use, social actors are not primarily users of ICTs. Most people who use ICT applications utilize multiple applications, in various roles, and as part of their efforts to produce goods and services while interacting with a variety of other people, and often in multiple social contexts. Moreover, the socially thin user construct limits our understanding of information selection, manipulation, communication, and exchange within complex social contexts. Using analyses from a recent study of online information service use, we develop an institutionalist concept of a social actor whose everyday interactions are infused with ICT use. We then encourage a shift from the user concept to a concept of the social actor in IS research. We suggest that such a shift will sharpen perceptions of how organizational contexts shape ICT-related practices, and at the same time will help researchers more accurately portray the complex and multiple roles that people fulfill while adopting, adapting, and using information systems.

Reconceptualizing users as social actors in information systems research

Recent empirical studies of computing use in organizations and in public life are examined. The roles of computer technologies in the workplace, in decision making, in altering power relationships, and in influencing personal privacy are examined. In addition, studies that examine the social accountability of computing arrangements to broad publics are reviewed. All studies of computing in social life make important assumptions about the social world in which computing is embedded. Two broad perspectives are contrasted. Systems rationalism, a collection of approaches including management science, managerial rationalism, and the systems approach, is found to be most helpful in stable settings, when there is considerable consensus over important social values. Segmented-institutionalist analyses, which assume social conflict rather than consensus, are particularly powerful as the social world of computing use becomes more dynamic and as a wider variety of groups is involved.

Social Analyses of Computing: Theoretical Perspectives in Recent Empirical Research

Publisher Summary This chapter examines web models for understanding the dynamics of computing development and its use in organizational life. The chapter describes the study of the relative explanatory power of the discrete-entity model and web model by drawing upon the existing research literature and three case studies. The chapter explores different kinds of insights each model provides into the social dynamics of computing development and use. The chapter also illustrates the ways by which each model provides analytical power for making evaluations and predictions. Five major propositions that web analysts essentially make about the dynamics of computing development and use are also presented. The chapter concludes by examining two additional cases of computer developmentand use. It is noted that web models allow better predictions of the outcomes of using socially-complex computing developments in contrast to the discrete-entity models. Web analysts examine the interaction between people and technologies as part of a larger social and technical mosaic, in which the development and use of the focal technology is embedded.

The Web of Computing: Computer Technology as Social Organization

Part I. Coming To Terms With Community: 1. Introduction: designing for virtual communities in the service of learning Sasha Barab, Rob Kling and James Gray 2. Models of community learning and online learning in communities Margaret Riel and Linda Polin Part II. Designing for Web-supported Community: 3. Designing system dualities: building online community Sasha Barab, James MaKinster and Rebecca Scheckler 4. Characterizing collective behavior online: the social organization of hangouts, clubs, associations, teams and communities Rob Kling and Christina Courtright 5. Online teacher communities: technology snake-oil or powerful catalysts for professional development? Mark Schlager and Judi Fucso 6. Community of practice a metaphor for online design? Thomas Schwen Part III. Characterizing Community/Member Participation: 7. Autonomy, interaction and knowledge-building as bases for learning at the math forum Ann Renninger 8. An exploration of community in a knowledge forum classroom: an activity system analysis Jim Hewitt 9. Co-evolution of technological design and pedagogy in an online learning community Amy Bruckman 10. From ambitious vision to partially satisfying reality: an evolving socio-technical design supporting community and collaborative learning in teaching education Sharon Derry, Julia Lee, Jong-Baeg Kim and Jennifer Seymour Part IV. Researching Online Community: 11. Using social network analysis to study online learning communities Emmanuel Koku and Barry Wellman 12. Computer-mediated discourse analysis: an approach to researching online communities Susan Herring 13. Shared 'we' and shared 'they' indicators of group identity in online teacher professional development Kirk Sluder and Sasha Barab 14. Sociocultural analysis of online professional development: a case study of personal, interpersonal, and community aspects James Gray and Deborah Tatar.

http://catdir.loc.gov/catdir/samples/cam041/2003051524.pdf

Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning

Many advocates of computer-mediated distance education emphasize its positive aspects and understate the kind of work that it requires for students and faculty. This article presents a qualitative case study of a Web-based distance education course at a major U.S. university. The case data reveal a taboo topic: students' persistent frustrations in Web-based distance education. First, this paper will analyze why these negative phenomena are not found in the literature. Second, this article will discuss whether students' frustrations inhibit their educational opportunities. In this study, students' frustrations were found in three interrelated sources: lack of prompt feedback, ambiguous instructions on the Web, and technical problems. It is concluded that these frustrations inhibited educational opportunities. This case study illustrates some student perspectives and calls attention to some fundamental issues that could make distance education a more satisfying learning experience.

Rob Kling

Papers

Reconceptualizing users as social actors in information systems research

Social Analyses of Computing: Theoretical Perspectives in Recent Empirical Research

The Web of Computing: Computer Technology as Social Organization

Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning

Students' frustrations with a Web-based distance education course