Panel Discussion
Date: Monday 18 January 2016
Time: 3:00 - 5:00pm
Venue: Graham Wallace Room (AGRW), 5th Floor - Old Building, LSE
While research based on statistical methods easily constructs causal claims, much interpretive research is content with theory refinement. New approaches are needed that go beyond this to make sure interpretive research stays relevant in a world of Big Data.
Recently, explanatory research based on identifying social mechanisms has been suggested as a useful approach (Avgerou 2013). Critical realism, while based on a different tradition, has similar goals in that it is trying to identify generative mechanisms (Mingers 2004). While it is based on a solid theoretical foundation, it is not always clear how to identify these generative mechanisms in practice.
In this panel, we discussed these approaches with some of their leading exponents, to see how they relate to each other, and to consider how they can help us to do good qualitative research.
Panellists:
Avgerou, C., 2013. Social Mechanisms for Causal Explanation in Social Theory Based IS Research. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 14(8), pp.399–419.