We have established that the information systems research domain is diverse. We have also established that the approach of Roman Ingarden provides a suitable way to discover the nature of information systems literature – the real world artefacts of information systems research. His work plays a significant part in studies of fiction, plays and poetics. So far, to our knowledge, no exemplars of a research methodology applying his approaches to scientific works exist.

Roman Ingarden’s philosophy is in harmony with common-sense realism such as that espoused by Roderick Milton Chisholm and Barry Smith. Common-sense realism provides for perspectival views capturing the diversity of the information systems research domain.

It is likely that this project will require the sort of empirical validation undertaken by Smith and Mark (1999). However, the real objects in their research were not based on intentional acts. Consequently, we believe that no method is directly applicable to undertake this empirical validation, and this remains an active line of enquiry.

The results of this investigation are promising in that a number of different studies, using a common philosophical approach, have been found. When these studies are taken together, they point towards a soundly based, novel methodology for developing a categorial scheme that can be applied in a domain characterised by diversity and, more specifically, diversity of intentionality.