Qualitative Studies in Information Systems: A Critical Review and Some Guiding Principles

Up until the mid-1990s, for a significant proportion of mainstream IS scholars, particularly those in North America and Asia, research meant quantitative research, and studies not using the so-called scientific methods were excluded from the definition of research itself (e.g., Lee and Liebenau 1997). Fortunately, due to the untiring efforts of a small number of leaders in the qualitative research community, and with support from broad-minded senior scholars of the discipline who saw value of diversity in the mainstream and recognized the fact that fast changing phenomena are difficult to investigate solely through the use of traditionally privileged methods, our discipline has moved beyond this distressing phase. Indeed, qualitative research is now seen as a legitimate enterprise in much of the IS research community, and this is evident from the representation of this form of research in leading, mainstream conferences and in prominent journals that had, in the past, been (or were seen to be) reluctant to publish this form of work.