Co‑operative inquiry (CI) is a form of action research which emphasises participation. This paper discusses CI as a research methodology. An overview is given and then greater detail is provided using as a vehicle my use of CI in a particular research study. This study explored whether conventionally‑educated systems developers could adopt a richer model of organisations by using metaphors for organisations as cognitive structuring devices. Finally some reflections are given on the challenges CI poses for both individual researchers and the wider academic community.

In this paper, we review literature on existing measures of service quality applicable to information systems services. We offer the Template Process as an alternative to more traditional methods, illustrating the process with findings from research into the quality of an IS service in a major UK Electronics company as perceived and expected by both service users and deliverers. We conclude with a discussion of the merits and shortcomings of the Template Process and suggestions for further research.

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.

This paper reports on the multi‑layered research into telehealth in the UK conducted through a critical theory perspective. Telehealth is an umbrella term for health services delivered at a distance and, more specifically, over various telecommunication networks. The paper aims to offer an alternative perspective on telehealth, focusing on rationalities, knowledge claims and ways of legitimising telehealth. The paper concludes that there are competing and difficult to reconcile rationalities influencing telehealth, conflicting knowledge claims and no commonly agreed ways of legitimising telehealth.

The aim of this paper is to elaborate on the concept of action research. With inspiration from work performed by Checkland and McKay & Marshall the conceptualisation we are suggesting is illustrated in a model consisting of three different practices. Action research means that a research practice and a business practice are interacting. This interaction constitutes a third practice, which is at the same time a business change practice and an intervening empirical research practice. In the paper, we show how the three practices are interlinked to each other. The analysis is based on a work practice theory (ToP).

Based on a recently completed major study of an emerging business practice in the area of information systems management, this paper explains and discusses several important aspects of using the "Glaserian" approach to grounded theory. Grounded theory is an effective approach to produce rigorous research that is simultaneously relevant to business and management theory development and to professional practice. The paper presents a research model and delineates a number of characteristics, risks and demands intrinsic to the method, which can help researchers contemplating the use of grounded theory methodology for their studies.

Over the last two decades or so, the discussion of and research into the question of a nexus between teaching and research, has expanded exponentially. Much has been learnt, and said; with a growing rhetoric, with only general insights emerging and being supported by particular empirical evidence. The study of a nexus between teaching and research is not a single coherent field; rather it is beset by epistemological, methodological, political and practical differences. To date, much of the discussion and research on the nexus has arisen due to varying views and alleged agreed consensus as to the nature of the academic profession; the role of the academyuniversity and thus, how the concepts of teaching and research (including scholarship) have been conceptualised and enacted to inform teaching practice. There is a continuing debate as to whether research undertaken by academic staff within the boundaries of a university adds value to the teaching and student learning. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the usefulness of focus groups as a way of exploring and making sense of the conceptions staff have with regard to the nexus between teaching and research. Two focus groups were held with a sample of IS academic teachers. The merits and limitations of using a focus group are discussed given this area of investigation with some possible research areas highlighted. The paper argues that focus groups for this type of study are not appropriate on their own and should be considered as part of a much wider and multi methods research design when attempting to make sense of a complex, multifaceted and emotional areas of teaching, research, scholarship, administration, management and knowledge transfer; and the identify of IS in Higher Education.

This paper exemplifies the combined use of Grounded Theory and of the ArenasSocial Worlds Theory in a study of the discursive interaction amongst middle managers at a UK University administration and academic computing services. This study aimed at exploring the role of discursive interaction and negotiation in the organisational adaptation of information systems, by defining the premises upon which discourses were constructed and deployed on the basis of particular worldviews and how in turn they informed back different worldviews. It presents key lessons learned from this approach in relationship to the roles of codification, of relationships bewtween conceptual categories and between between theoretical influences and empirical work, as well as those emerging from the lived experience of research analysts.