Description

The place of ethnographic methods in information systems research

Ann Brown

Cass Business School, City University London, London, England

Abstract

The IS research community was formed around the problems and questions raised by organisations’ attempts to exploit the new Information and Communications Technology (ICT). The subject is concerned with both the ‘hard’ characteristics of the ICT application under study and the social context of the organisation within which it is to be or is being deployed. Mixed methods are designed to deal with both these somewhat disparate situations in a single study and are likely to be of particular value for IS research. Ethnography is a research method that can make a powerful contribution in mixed methods studies. However as yet, both mixed methods and ethnography form only a small number of empirical IS paper. Ethnographers seek to immerse themselves in a social situation and become part of the group being investigated in order to understand the meanings that actors put upon phenomena or situations. It is the data collection methods that distinguish this method from other qualitative research methods. The researcher accumulates data from personal observations of events and human action in addition to all the traditional sources of documents interviews, etc. Choosing this research method represents a big investment for the researcher. This paper outlines some of the key issues unique to IS ethnographers and identifies three organisational situations for which ethnographic methods are likely to yield significant value – ICTenabled major change; ICT supported complex organisational operations that involve many expert participants and ICT supported ill understood management problems. Two cases, illustrating the use made of ethnographic methods in two of these situations, are described and assessed (Miscione, 2007; Mattarelli, Bertolotti, & Macri, 2013). This paper concludes that there is an important place for both Mixed Methods and Ethnographic Research Methods in the IS research Discipline.

Keywords: ethnographic research methods, Information Systems Research, Information Systems Research discipline