This paper describes and illustrates a symbolic interactionist approach to critical ethnographic research in organizations. Aneclectic approach to interpretive sociology for management accounting researchers is developed and explicated. Also, an integrated interpretive perspective is described for the study of issues of power and ideology. The method offers the potential for new and additional ...

A recently conducted piece of micro-level, interpretive IS action research has enabled the delivery of direct user benefits through the adoption of a methodological approach which focuses specifically on the interpretive generation of meaning by authorial individuals. Drawing on recent debates concerning knowledge and identity within social anthropology, IS and social psychology, this approach ...

Reasoning with hypothetical cases helps decision-makers evaluate alternate hypotheses for deciding a case. The hypotheticals demonstrate the sensitivity of a hypothesis to apparently small factual differences that may require different results because they shift the tradeoffs among conflicting underlying principles. By anticipating variations, the decision-maker seeks to formulate as general an...

I outline an interpretive theory of vagueness, emphasizing its advantages as a theory of language in use, compatibility with the data of descriptive linguistics, and its explanation for the interest-relativity of vagueness. Central to the theory is the notion that a 'language' in the usual sense is not a well-defined object but a cluster of more or less similar sound-meaning mappings which spea...

Steinmueller are gratefully acknowledge.