The difficulty of studying inter-organisational IS phenomena on large scales: critical reflections on a research journey
The difficulty of studying inter-organisational IS phenomena on large scales: critical reflections on a research journey
复制标题
大规模研究组织间 IS 现象的难度：研究之旅的批判性反思
作者：
Kai Reimers;R. Johnston;S. Klein
我们认为，当在整个行业和大于单个实施项目的时间段内研究组织间信息系统(IOIS)时，支撑许多现有的小规模组织间信息系统(IOIS)研究的某些理论承诺是站不住脚的。我们通过详细分析我们在四个国家的药品供应链中IOIs的五年国际比较研究的早期阶段应用传统研究设计方法时遇到的问题来提出这一论点。我们发现，我们单位的大规模需要从离散变量(因变量和独立变量)的构建以及输入-输出过程逻辑的构建转向源于结构化理论和实践理论的替代建模方法。我们通过将其应用于两个案例来说明这种新镜头的启发性力量。这篇论文将引起IOIS研究人员的兴趣，因为我们已经系统地找出了将IOIS研究限制在比实际现象更小的单位和时间尺度上的困难的原因。因为我们拒绝以这种方式限制自己的研究对象，所以我们比其他人更大胆地进入这些有问题的领域。
We argue that certain theoretical commitments that underpin much existing Inter-organisational Information Systems (IOIS) research at small scales become untenable when IOIS are studied at the scale of whole industries and over time periods greater than individual implementation projects. We make this argument by a detailed analysis of the problems we encountered when applying conventional research design methods in the early stages of a five year international comparative study of IOIS in pharmaceutical supply chains in four countries. We found that the large scale of our unit required a move away from the construction of discrete variables (dependent and independent) as well as from input-output process logic, to an alternate modelling approach derived from Structuration Theory and Practice Theory. We illustrate the revelatory power of this new lens by applying it to two cases. The paper will be of interest to IOIS researchers because we have systematically worked out the reasons for difficulties that limit IOIS research to unit and time scales smaller that the actual phenomenon. Because we refused to limit our own research object in this way, we ventured further into these problematic areas than others.