An Integrated Framework for Conducting and Assessing Interpretive Information Systems (IS) Research

Though the number of interpretive research in information systems (IS) has increased substantially in recent years, the development and proliferation of methodology guiding such research is relatively minimal. The IS research methodology in interpretive research is still not institutionalized. This lack of common standards poses problems both for IS researchers using the interpretive paradigm and readers of such research articles. Drawing from the two major methodological developments in the area: seven principles for conducting interpretive IS field studies (Klein and Myers, 1999) and the three criteria for assessing ethnographic research (Golden-Biddle and Locke, 1993), we examine the linkage between the two methodological lenses and propose an integrated framework for conducting and assessing interpretive IS research.