Abstract
While social scientists have been using the grounded theory method for almost 40 years, the IS field has been a late adopter of the methodology. Thus, even as grounded theory’s importance as an IS research method has increased over the last decade, many misconceptions and misunderstandings about the method and its use still exist in our community. This paper presents important aspects of the Glaserian approach to grounded theory studies. The account is based on a personal perspective acquired from both doing grounded theory research and reading the wide grounded theory literature. Readers will benefit by gaining a deeper understanding of the approach, including its nature and benefits as well as its risks and demands. The objective of this paper is to help novice IS researchers interested in theory-building studies to grasp the complexity and nature of the method.
Table of Contents
Martin and Turner (1986, p. 141) defined grounded theory as an ‘inductive theory discovery methodology that allows the researcher to develop a theoretical account of the general features of the topic while simultaneously grounding the account in empirical observations of data.’[1] In grounded theory everything is integrated; it is an extensive and systematic general methodology (independent of research paradigm) where actions and concepts can be interrelated with other actions and concepts – in grounded theory nothing happens in a vacuum (Glaser, 1978; Glaser and Strauss, 1967).
The grounded theory method offers ‘a logically consistent set of data collection and analysis procedures aimed to develop theory’ (Charmaz, 2001 p. 245). These procedures allow the identification of patterns in data; by analysing these patterns researchers can derive theory that is empirically valid (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Martin and Turner, 1986). This is so because ‘the theory-building process is so intimately tied with evidence that it is very likely that the resultant theory will be consistent with empirical observation’(Eisenhardt, 1989).[2]
An excellent example of grounded theory in information systems research can be found in Orlikowski (1993), which won MIS Quarterly's Best Paper Award for 1993. Grounded theory allowed Orlikowski to focus on elements of context and process and on actions of important players associated with organisational change. This influential paper played an important role in making IS scholars aware of the usefulness of grounded theory for IS research. Since then, many IS researchers have successfully used and published grounded theory studies (e.g. Baskerville and Pries-Heje, 1999; Lehmann, 2001b; Maznevski and Chudoba, 2000; Trauth and Jessup, 2000; Urquhart, 1997; Urquhart, 1998; Urquhart, 1999; Urquhart, 2001).
While grounded theory studies still constitute a minority group in IS research (Lehmann, 2001b), the value of grounded theory has now become acknowledged within the IS field. This recognition reflects the tremendous progress of interpretive research from its insignificance in the 1980s (Orlikowski and Baroudi, 1991) to its current mainstream status in the IS community (Klein and Myers, 2001; Markus, 1997). However, the increased interest and adoption of the grounded theory method brings to the surface the issue of shortage of guidance on how to apply the method in IS studies. This paper contributes by providing an introduction to the method that focuses on (a) describing the use of the grounded theory method with case study data, (b) presenting a research model (c) discussing the critical characteristics of the grounded theory method, (d) discussing why grounded theory is appropriate for studies seeking both rigour and relevance, and (e) highlighting some risks and demands intrinsic to the method. Figure 5.1, “Thematic structure.” illustrates the structure of the paper.
