Research Essays in Information Systems

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Research Essays in Information Systems

• Preparing for the IS470 essay

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Putting the IS470 essay in context

• Possibly the first essay of your university
  career
• The first essay of the year (3000 words)
• Due to be handed by end of term
• Stream essay in Lent Term (5000 words)
• Dissertation in the Summer Term (10000 words)

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Constraints

• Limited size
• Limited time scale
• Focus on critical review of the literature only

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Feedback

• You will receive feedback on this essay
• Reviews are an important feature of academic life
• Everybody can benefit from feedback
• Essay could form the background for your
  dissertation
• But keep an open mind for new ideas

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What the IS470 essay is NOT

• An exercise in empirical data collection and
  analysis
• A PhD thesis
• An undergraduate essay
• An exercise in journalism / description
• It is a critical review of the literature

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What we are looking for

• Given in the marking scheme
• Discovering and reviewing the relevant academic
  and research literature
• Finding materials
• Reading and reviewing materials
• Extracting and organising the ideas
• Telling a story

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Academic criteria apply

• Referencing the relevant literature
• Analysing the topic critically
• Supporting your position
• An essay that has an Information Systems focus

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Every essay tells a story

• Convey your understanding of the knowledge and
  state of debate about a topic
• Make a point
• Assess the literature
• Reach a defendable conclusion

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Assumptions

• Make reasonable assumptions about what the reader
  already knows
• MSc level makes more assumptions than
  undergraduates

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Have a well defined topic

• Helps you decide whether to include or exclude
  something
• Leaving things out is often the most painful /
  creative aspect of writing
• Demonstrate your understanding by not describing
  everything youve read

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A useful tip

• You should be able to summarise your story by
  completing the phrase
• In this essay I will show that I have understood
  that the main issue in this area is that

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Your contribution

• For a PhD we require a unique contribution to
  knowledge
• For the IS470 essay, your contribution is
• The choice of topic
• How you evaluate the literature
• How you present your analysis

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Discussion / conclusion

• Not (just) a summary
• Your distinctive message clearly stated
• What is your preferred perspective /argument?
  Why?
• Where would you like to see further development
  in this area?
• Limitations of your work
• Implications for theory and / or practice

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Theory / theoretical concepts

• Two main kinds of theoretical arguments

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Big theories

• An encompassing framework to work within
• Seek to explain a range of related phenomena
• Introduce concepts and linkages between them

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An example Social construction of technology

• Concepts of relevant social groups,
  interpretative flexibility
• Linkages in terms of how relevant social groups
  seek to limit interpretative flexibility

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Little theories

• A conceptual lens to view the situation
• Introduce refined concepts which have been
  discussed in the literature
• Dont (necessarily) introduce linkages between
  concepts

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An example Notion of resource in the resource
based view of the firm

• Very particular meaning for a term
• Discussed and criticised in the literature

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Critical literature reviews

• Might focus on choice of big theory
• More often, reviews refinements in little
  theories
• Both are acceptable in IS470 literature review
  essay

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Marking scheme
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Critical discussion of literature(40)

• Follows the guidelines suggested above and
  addresses the following
• Identifies and classifies relevant literature -
  what issues are identified.
• Shows that theories or models have been used?
• Evaluates the literature e.g as normative,
  explanatory, critical, etc and in paradigmatic
  terms.
• Summarises the knowledge that has been produced,
  and what controversies (arguments and counter
  arguments) have been raised?
• Captures the current state of knowledge and
  debate?

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Understanding of topic (30)

• Demonstrates understanding of the concepts and
  theoretical perspectives through which the chosen
  topic is discussed in the literature awareness
  and clear exposition of relevant issues
  insightful and well informed arguments good
  awareness of nuances and complexities.

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Structure and presentation of arguments (30)

• Clear summary in Abstract Essay clearly
  structured and arguments logically developed
  sensible weighting of parts meaningful use of
  diagrams and examples for clarification.
  Well-presented bibliography and consistent use of
  referencing. Use of endnote. Clear conclusions
  that flow from the review, suggest areas for
  further development, reflection on essential
  insights gained from the study as well as
  limitations.

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Referencing
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Writing academic pieces

• A piece of prose with
• an argument
• a beginningin the literature
• a middlewhere you present your argument
• an endwhere you establish a contribution
• proper references

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Journalistic piece

• Written for a nonspecialist audience
• Purpose is to describe and report on something
  that has happened
• Uncriticalbased on official reports and biased
  accounts

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A management consultants report

• Purposeto sell more consultancy services or
  solve a oneoff problem
• Makes firm recommendations
• Style is management orientedlists and bullet
  points

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An academic piece

• Addresses a particular research question
• Written in prose with supporting diagrams and
  figures
• Gains its credibility in terms of its
  relationship to a wider academic literature

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On referencing

• Why use references?
• What is meant by proper references?
• What sort of references should I be using and how
  many?
• How can I manage the process of using references?

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Complications

• Special references
• Different types of reference
• Plagiarism

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Why use references?

• Cynical answer 1
• Because use of the literature is part of the
  marking scheme

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Critical discussion of literature (IS470 40)

• Identifies and classifies relevant literature
• Shows that theories or models have been used
• Evaluates the literature
• Summarises the knowledge that has been produced,
  and identifies the controversies that have been
  raised
• Captures the current state of knowledge and
  debate

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Use of literature (Stream essays and dissertation
20)

• Excellent use of literature to support argument
  /points
• Good use of literature to support arguments
• Use of standard literature to support argument
• Use of secondary literature to support arguments
• Relies on a superficial repeat of class notes
• No significant reference to literature

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• Cynical answer 2
• Because otherwise people will assume you have
  made things up
• If you take an idea or data from somewhere, refer
  to the source of the idea

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• Teachers pet answer
• Because it is an important skill that all
  students should have

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• Not reinventing the wheel answer
• Because it shows that you know about previous
  discussions on the topic

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• Intellectual strength answer
• Because it shows that you have grounded your
  argument in the existing literature

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• Competence in the field argument
• Because you need to show that you know the field
  before you can make credible claims about it (PhD
  literature review chapter)

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What is meant by proper referencing?

• Marking the main text with a reference to where
  ideas were taken from
• Providing a complete list of sources at the end
  of the paper

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Different styles for marking the main text
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• Example from Ciborra C U (1999) Notes on
  improvisation and time in organizations.
  Accounting, management and information
  technologies 7794.
• At a closer look, this picture of organizational
  decision making, which seems to rule out
  improvisation completely, is due to a bundle of
  assumptions embedded in a particular perspective
  of analyzing and designing organizations, the
  information-processing perspective (Galbraith,
  1977). The adoption of other perspectives (e.g.
  the one which looks at organizations as
  interpretative systemssee Daft Weick, 1984),
  coupled with the study of the organizing
  processes which take place daily in any work
  organization, would delineate a quite different
  picture, where procedures and plans are abstract
  and distant constructs, while improvisation is
  real and delivers (Crossan, Lane, Klus White,
  1996).

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• Example from Ciborra C U (1999) Notes on
  improvisation and time in organizations.
  Accounting, management and information
  technologies 7794.
• At a closer look, this picture of organizational
  decision making, which seems to rule out
  improvisation completely, is due to a bundle of
  assumptions embedded in a particular perspective
  of analyzing and designing organizations, the
  information-processing perspective 3. The
  adoption of other perspectives (e.g. the one
  which looks at organizations as interpretative
  systemssee 4), coupled with the study of the
  organizing processes which take place daily in
  any work organization, would delineate a quite
  different picture, where procedures and plans are
  abstract and distant constructs, while
  improvisation is real and delivers 5.

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• Example from Ciborra C U (1999) Notes on
  improvisation and time in organizations.
  Accounting, management and information
  technologies 7794.
• At a closer look, this picture of organizational
  decision making, which seems to rule out
  improvisation completely, is due to a bundle of
  assumptions embedded in a particular perspective
  of analyzing and designing organizations, the
  information-processing perspective3. The adoption
  of other perspectives (e.g. the one which looks
  at organizations as interpretative systemssee4),
  coupled with the study of the organizing
  processes which take place daily in any work
  organization, would delineate a quite different
  picture, where procedures and plans are abstract
  and distant constructs, while improvisation is
  real and delivers5.

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What is needed at the end of the document?

• As a minimum

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For books

• Authors surname
• Authors initials
• Title
• Place of publication
• Publisher
• Year of publication

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For journal articles

• Authors surname
• Authors initials
• Date
• Title of article
• Title of journal
• Volume and issue number
• Pages

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For web sites

• Author details (if no author, then use anonymous
  or name of organisation)
• Date of page (if given)
• Title of page
• URL
• When you visited the website

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• Similar rules apply for chapters in books, edited
  books etc.
• http//www.lse.ac.uk/library/insktr/citing_referen
  cing.htm

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References or bibliography

• Some people differentiate between
• References List of everything cited in the main
  text
• Bibliography Everything read (i.e. references
  plus other material)
• I try to refer to everything from the
  bibliography in the main text

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Why is all this information needed?

• To allow the reader to find the materials you
  refer to
• To use their knowledge of the field and its
  literature to judge your contribution

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Finding materials

• Start with some key articles
• Follow up the references they use
• To find the key references try
• The course reading list
• Library journal databases
• Google scholar

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What sort of sources should I be using?
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Books

• Provide good introduction to topics
• Provide detailed accounts of case studies
• Develop sophisticated theories and arguments

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Textbooks are a special case

• Statement of conventional wisdom, not leading
  edge thought

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Some pathetic excuses

• Im doing something really new, there are no
  books on the topic
• My topic is changing so quickly that all the
  books I can find are hopelessly out of date

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Response

• There is nothing new under the sun
• Academic work is cumulative

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Journal articles

• More likely to be uptodate
• Can be more focussed
• More of them and easier to access (ejournals)
• Varying quality and consistency

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Some pathetic excuses

• Im doing something really new, there are no
  journal articles on the topic
• My topic is changing so quickly that all the
  journal articles I can find are hopelessly out of
  date

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Response

• Again, we wont be convinced by this argument

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Web pages

• Easily accessible
• Often not refereed
• Can be source of good information or corporate
  hype or loony statements
• Limited back catalogue

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Websites of governments and other official bodies

• Official documents available for free
• Often contain excellent material (data, opinions,
  records of discussions)

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Wikipedia?

• Treat like a textbook
• May contain errors
• Topic rather than disciplinary focus may cause
  problems

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Newspapers

• Easily searchable
• Good source for historical information and
  chronology
• Limited back catalogue

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How many references should I have?

• Enough to support your argument
• Judge by journal articles (15)
• Quality and depth of reading counts

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How do I manage this?

• Endnote software package and Word
• http//www.lse.ac.uk/library/guides/Endnote/Endnot
  e.htm

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Features of Endnote

• A database of things youve read
• Automatically formats in text citations and
  provides a full list of references at the end of
  the document

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Complications

• Ive read something that refers to something
  else, which do I cite?
• Both, but clearly state which one youve read

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There are three main ways of citing in text

• Ciborra (1999) argues that ...
• Here is a paragraph of ideas Ive read about
  (Ciborra, 1999 Whitley, 1984)
• This view of organizational decision making is
  due to a bundle of assumptions embedded in a
  particular perspective of analyzing and designing
  organizations (Ciborra, 1999, p. 81)

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Plagiarism
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• This view of organizational decision making is
  due to a bundle of assumptions embedded in a
  particular perspective of analyzing and designing
  organizations

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School definition

• All work for classes and seminars as well as
  scripts (which include, for example,
  examinations, essays, dissertations and any other
  work, including computer programs) must be the
  student's own work. The definition of a student's
  own work shall include work produced by
  collaboration expressly permitted by the
  department or institute concerned. Quotations
  must be placed properly within quotation marks
  and must be cited fully and all paraphrased
  material must be acknowledged completely.
  Infringing this requirement, whether deliberately
  or not, or the deliberate or accidental passing
  off of the work of others as the work of the
  student is plagiarism.

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Paraphrasing

• Your own rendition of essential information and
  ideas expressed by someone else presented in a
  new form

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Quoting

• Only three occasions for using a quotation
• Where the original author has written something
  more elegantly than you could ever write it. For
  example, poetry.
• Where you need to prove that it was a particular
  author who said those words. You should try to
  include the page reference on such occasions.
• Where there is no reasonable way of paraphrasing,
  such as when quoting lists or formulae.

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Paraphrasing (2)

• This is a valuable skill because
• It is better than quoting information from an
  undistinguished passage
• It helps you control the temptation to quote too
  much
• The mental processes required for successful
  paraphrasing helps you to grasp the full meaning
  of the original

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Six steps to effective paraphrasing

• 1) Read the original passage until you understand
  its full meaning
• 2) Set aside the original, and write your
  paraphrase
• 3) Jot down a few words below your paraphrase to
  remind you later how you plan to use this
  material. Write a keyword or phrase to indicate
  the subject of the paraphrase

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• 4) Check your version with the original to make
  sure that your version accurately expresses all
  the essential information in a new form
• 5) Use quotation marks to identify any terms or
  phrases that you have borrowed exactly from the
  source
• 6) Record the source (including the page) so that
  you can credit it easily if you decide to
  incorporate the material into your paper.

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An example
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Original

• Students frequently overuse direct quotation in
  taking notes, and as a result they overuse
  quotations in the final paper. Probably only
  about 10 of your final paper should appear as
  directly quoted matter. Therefore, you should
  strive to limit the amount of exact transcribing
  of source materials while taking notes. Lester,
  James D. Writing research papers, 2nd Edition,
  (1976) 4647

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A legitimate paraphrase

• In research papers students often quote
  excessively, failing to keep quoted material down
  to a desirable level. Since the problem usually
  originates during note taking, it is essential to
  minimize the material recorded verbatim (Lester
  4647).

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A plagiarized version

• Students often use too many direct quotations
  when they take notes, resulting in too many of
  them in the final research paper. In fact,
  probably only about 10 of the final copy should
  consist of directly quoted material. So it is
  important to limit the amount of source material
  copied while taking notes.

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For further information, go to

• http//owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/r_
  paraphr.html

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Anti-plagiarism checking

• All submitted essays are checked against various
  online anti-plagiarism services
• Helpful for illustrating what we expect and why

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Some examples
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The new JISC interface
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Appropriate quotations
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Whose conclusions?
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Your argument?
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Using a case study?
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The perfect literature review
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Paraphrasing or copying?
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Other peoples lists
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Reusing your own work
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Your argument?
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Appropriate reuse
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Any queries?

• If you have any queries about plagiarism or
  paraphrasing, you must speak to one of the course
  organisers before you submit your work

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Other useful resources

• http//learning.lse.ac.uk/
• http//learning.lse.ac.uk/detail.asp?EventID20
  (Introduction to essay writing)
• http//learning.lse.ac.uk/detail.asp?EventID22
  (Effective reading strategies)

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