杏吧论坛

Prof Susan Scott MAR 4.30

This course is compulsory on the MPhil/PhD in Management - Information Systems and Innovation. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

Students from related PhD programmes who are interested in learning about research design may be able to join the course with the teacher's permission.

The course introduces students on the MPhil/PhD in Management – Information Systems and Innovation to theoretical and practical foundations of social science research design. It is concerned with core interdisciplinary principles of research design that span disciplinary and methodological traditions. Grounded in examples from Information Systems research, the course is centred on exploring principles of research design for different types of research questions. The course will provide a platform for students to consider a range of research design options and methodological approaches.

It is intended to form part of the academic training of doctoral students, enabling them to become more critical producers of research, able to articulate the various rationales, strengths, weaknesses, and trade-offs entailed in research design choices. By the end of the course, students will be familiar with multiple research design options and be better equipped to embark on their own research projects. It is not a “methods” course per se but will enable students to navigate important design considerations involved in adopting specific approaches using different forms of data in their research. By studying this course, students will understand how to produce research that will stand up to critical review as well as becoming more informed reviewers of research produced by others.

The first part of the course explores core concepts of research design including an examination of knowledge claims in social science and more particularly how these have emerged in different kinds of information systems research (positivism, realism, constructivism). In each case, there will be references to information systems and digital innovation research with examples of how different epistemological stances have shaped the major contributions in our field of study.

This content is taught in the spirit of methodological pluralism with the assumption that how we do research ultimately depends on the nature of the particular research question and the type of data that are availab