Divided by a Common Language ? a Response to Marshall Scott Poole

Marshall Scott Poole identifies some important issues in the treatment of adaptive structuration theory in our review of the use of Giddens’s structuration theory in IS research (Jones and Karsten 2008). We argue, however, that a number of his criticisms reflect differences in our respective use of particular terms and that the statements made in Jones and Karsten are reasonable, especially in the light of Giddens’s own writings. There are some substantive differences between our position and that of Poole, though, especially in relation to the distinctiveness and compatibility of positivist and interpretive research, and the immateriality of Giddens’s structures. Arguments are presented to show that, as Jones and Karsten discussed, Giddens’s position is able to offer a plausible and self-consistent account of IS phenomena, including those such as the role of material artefacts in the U.S. legal system, “distributed cognition,” and the use of GDSS that Poole suggests are incompatible with Giddens’s account of structuration.