Analysis and Contribution

1
Analysis and Contribution

• Geoff Walsham
• Lecture 4 of Course on Interpretive Research in
  IS - Oslo University

2
Contents of Lecture 4

• Impressions and themes
• Analyzing all your data
• Qualitative data analysis techniques
• Legitimising your approach
• Constructing a contribution
• Generalising from interpretive studies

3
Impressions

• In addition to field notes, I normally write a
  personal comment on the interview and the
  interviewee. Here is one from my colleague
  Michael Barrett
• The meeting started off on a very cool note with
  X being frank and open with me about his feelings
  on our meeting. He kept on repeating that he
  had to protect his staff from numerous requests
  made of them from the centre and regions (me
  being one of them). He was a friend of Y (my
  contact) but .

4
Themes

• I also generate sets of initial themes from my
  field notes as a basis for reflection,
  theorising, and interaction with my
  co-researchers (if any)

5
Brazil Country Office - Some Themes

• Background
• Internal comms department of 4 people
• External comms handled by PR agency
• The software package
• Little use of anything locally
• Except for head office intern - to see what is
  happening back at HQ
• Functionality issues
• Slow
• Messy interface/would like to customise
• Organizational changes
• None as yet
• Not clear what are expectations on the local
  office
• HQ ignores Latin America (markets too small)

6
Analyzing All Your Data

• Best tool for analysis is your own mind and that
  of others
• So read your data carefully and then read it
  again
• Make data/theory links as discussed earlier
• Try your ideas on others through working papers,
  conversations, seminars

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Qualitative Data Analysis Techniques(e.g. Nudist)

• Method for linking themes to specific pieces of
  text in your notes and transcripts
• But very time consuming (displacement activity?)
• Doesnt replace the need for thought
• And can tend to lock you in to one way of
  looking at the data

8
Legitimising Your Analytical Approach(Klein and
Myers 1999)
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A Warning about Klein and Myers (1999)

• Certainly valuable to think about your work in
  relation to the principles
• But a particular study could illustrate all of
  our suggested principles and still not come up
  with interesting results
• Dont merely say I have applied the principles
• Do say Here are my interesting results

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Constructing a Contribution

• Who is your audience (or audiences)
• To what literature are you aiming to contribute?
• What do you claim to offer that is new to the
  audience and the literature?
• How should others use your work?

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Example Klein and Myers (1999)

• Key audience interpretive researchers wanting to
  reflect on their approach and defend their work
• Literature interpretive work in IS
• Claim to offer Set of principles (based on
  hermeneutics/pheneomenology)
• Use by others In fact, authors may find it
  useful to refer to the principles when their work
  is submitted for peer review (87-88)

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Generalizing from Interpretive Studies(Walsham
1995)

• Development of concepts
• Generation of theory
• Drawing of specific implications
• Contribution of rich insight

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Development of Concepts

• Zuboff (1988) - concept of informate
• Walsham (2004) - concept of knowledge
  communities are a complex network of
  sense-readers and sense-givers, taking action,
  reflecting on it, making representations based on
  their tacit knowing, reading others
  representations, and taking further action in
  turn

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Generation of Theory

• Theories of organizational consequences of IT -
  Orlikowski and Robey (1991), Jones and
  Nandhakumar (1993)
• Walsham (2004) A basic model of communication
  with a sociological complement

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Drawing of Specific Implications

• Relationship between design and development and
  business strategy - Walsham and Waema (1994)
• Walsham (2004) on incentives and disincentives
  for knowledge sharing on forms of
  representation etc.

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Contribution of Rich Insight

• Suchman (1987) - limits of machine intelligence
  differences between plans and prcatical actions
• Walsham (2004) - weaknesses of the knowledge as
  object literature deep meaning of tacit
  knowledge