Improving guidelines and developing a taxonomy of methodologies for research in information systems

Abstract

Over the years, information systems (IS) researchers have developed guidelines for research methods. IS researchers have used the guidelines to direct the writ-ing of manuscripts in their research work. Reviewers and editors also use the guidelines when evaluating submitted manuscripts. Researchers can see what a good quality manuscript is like, and reviewers and editors can relate manu-scripts to guidelines. However, guidelines do not accurately measure good-ness. Rather, the guidelines should be understood pedagogically, for example as checklists. Despite the fact that guidelines are often used to measure the quality of research, the guidelines themselves have rarely been critically re-viewed. As a step in this direction, several methodological guidelines for IS re-search are reviewed in this thesis. Some guidelines require minor modifications based on our analysis. Some other guidelines need major updates, and one re-quires a total change. This thesis also presents and defends a classification that aims to provide a taxonomy of IS research methods. It can be utilized in select-ing an appropriate method for research.