Complete thesis - Murdoch University

Action Research in ITWithin Information Systems research, Action Research is celebrated as unique in the way itassociates research and practice, so research informs practice and practice informs researchsynergistically (Avison et al, 1999). Although a survey of the literature shows that the academiccommunity almost totally ignored Action Research – Avison et al (1999) reports only29 articles on Action Research, spanning the years 1971 to 1995, by the end of the 1990sit began growing in popularity for use in scholarly investigations of information systems,spurred by the relevance of research results. Action Research was explicitly introduced tothe IS community as a purely research methodology by Wood-Harper (1985). Like Mumford(1983) and Checkland (1981) Wood-Harper also incorporated Action Research conceptsinto an action-based systems development methodology. Double-loop organisational learning(Argyris and Schön, 1978), strongly linked to Action Research in IS, also took as one of itsinspirations the work of Lewin.Although human and social factors have a very strong impact on the success of software developmentendeavours and the resulting system, much of Software Engineering research in thelast decade is technical, quantitative and de-emphasises the people aspect (John et al, 2005).The call to broaden the focus of empirical SE research to address the human role in softwaredevelopment was made in the late 1990s, with researchers exhorted to study nontechnicalissues and the intersection between the technical and nontechnical in SE (Seaman, 1999).Here the approach advocated is that of interpretive empirical research – in particular controlledexperiments that take subjects out of their work context into controlled environmentsto enable establishing cause-effect relationships. Although this approach was advocated as ameans of taking advantage of the strengths of the blend of technical and human behaviouralaspects in SE, it is flawed: longitudinal effects are hard to examine in controlled environmentsand short term effects are not extremely relevant for long-term industrial projects.An acknowledgement of the place of Action Research in SE is very much more recent. For example,John et al (2005) advocates the full range of qualitative methodology and perspectives,including Action Research, as possibly providing deeper insights into Software Engineeringthan hard-core controlled experiments where samples are drawn from student populationswhile the study implies statements about industrial settings.Mixed methodology approaches are only recently being reported as applied in SE: an exampleis CALIBRE (Fitzgerald, 2004) an FP6 project funded through the European Union.CALIBRE uses a scientific research backbone, qualitative and quantitative case studies withdata formalised and categorised for subsequent analysis, and a number of Action Researchprojects which will undergo an initial cycle of feedback and reflection. The project has two193