|
Downloadable documents on this
site require Adobe Acrobat Reader (which you can
download here - FREE)
ECRM:
The European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management
Studies
| |
|
Volume 1 Issue 1 November 2002
Gender Reflexivity: A Missing Element from Action Research in Information
Systems
Teresa Waring, School of Management, University of Newcastle upon Tyne
t.s.waring@ncl.ac.uk |
 |
|
|
|
|
Much of the literature on AR in IS appears to
have forgotten its radical roots and its subjective epistemology. More
rigorous, mechanistic approaches and control mechanisms are continuing to emerge
rather than more insightful and innovative methods of interpretation and
reflexivity to facilitate making sense of the research. AR is a methodology,
like ethnography, that involves people and as such is subject to organisational
power and politics that can have dimensions of age, race, social class as well
as gender. This paper argues that action researchers involved in information
systems development should become more critical in their approach and provide
insight into their research by avoiding linguistic reductionism and sanitised
stories that remove the struggle, conflict and injustice inherent in all
organisations involved in change. This can be done in a variety of ways. One
such approach is by developing and presenting stories that are interpreted
through different lenses that reveal to the reader new dimensions in the
research. The lens used in this paper is a gender lens. |
|
Keywords:
Action Research, Information Systems development
Download FULL
PAPER
Return
to Contents |
|
