I didn't get invited to join the official class community, so I'm posting here: 

Neuman Readings Ch 2-3

Ch2

I think the section on basic research provides some backing for a statement I made in class; that is, it is important to read many things and to venture beyond the immediate confines of your discipline.  That doesn’t mean reading everything under the sun (however you might get lucky and hit on 2 seemingly disparate but very workable ideas), but rather reading from either related disciplines or domains of IS practice. You never know what subsequent connections might be made - see the chickens and AIDS discussion: (Neuman, 2006), p. 24. 

 

We discussed in IS 360 the possibility that, “most intuitive leaps are acts of recognition” (Simon, 1996). It would seem reasonable to assume that one needs a good supply of mental artifacts from which to draw connections and have other scientific “breakthroughs”. The real issue may be leveraging lifetime and large scale learning, that is, put it in meaningful and retrievable forms. This might involve you can make use of linked lists, redundancy, representation and indexing (Simon, 1996) or maybe even cognitive mapping (phase 3 of our research project).

 

Social impact assessment research might be an interesting approach to studying offshore outsourcing. While there has been much speculation about the effects on white-collar workers in the US, I haven’t seen many journal articles on the social impacts at the offshore sites. (Aside from some articles describing high-turnover at Indian call centers due to rude and abusive Americans: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/17/BUGB3FPGT01.DTL&type=tech)

 

Chapter 3

 

The chapter asserts that good theories adhere to the principle of parsimony, which is an indication of a more convincing theory. Is this really true, or is it an indication for a psychological desire on the part of the beholder for beauty and symmetry. The latter idea is expressed in: “Is Beauty a sign of Truth in Scientific Theories?” (McAllister, 1998) – unfortunately only available in hardcopy to the best of my knowledge; however, others have commented on the scientific search for beauty in explanation. The search for scientific elegance proved detrimental to the latter half of Einstein’s career when he was unable to reconcile with the “ugliness” of quantum mechanics (http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm), (http://www.slate.com/id/3119/). Are IS journal editors afflicted with the same craving for a theory with a “pretty face” as New York fashion editors?

 

Neuman (2006) goes on to discuss classifications of simple vs. complex concepts. He describes the benefits of a typology as being parsimony and the ability to “bring order out of chaos”. This is echoed in Simon’s (1996) notion of “bounded rationality” as a method of creating simplified pictures to cope with the complexity of the world (Simon, 1996). Another method might be the System Dynamics Approach, pioneered by J. Forrester at MIT, to account for seemingly irrational behavior in complex systems. Here’s a good tutorial: http://www.albany.edu/cpr/sds/DL-IntroSysDyn/ch3_f.htm.

 

Weinberg (1975) used the phrase “science is essentially reductionist” to describe the process of reducing a study to be the study of other things (Weinberg, 1975). This sounds like he was describing science as the paring down of ideas to what Neuman called the “ideal type”. Design Science theory has been described in terms of a “normative” à “how to” [do/make something] (Walls, Widmeyer, & El Sawy, 2004). Perhaps this is the ideal type for design science?

 

Neuman (2006) discussed the requirements and forms for causal explanations. Along with the need for temporal order and association there is the need to eliminate other plausible alternatives. The “no spuriousness” between cause and effect warns us that relationships between variables may be due to alternative, unrecognized causes (Neuman, 2006). This seems to jibe with what Weinberg has said about “emergent properties” – there isn’t really a new cause, or property, simply a previously unobserved property (Weinberg, 1975).

 

I thought it was interesting that a text on social research methods discussed Network Theory, but not Social Network Theory or Actor Network Theory, the latter recognizing the importance of “actants” in the network (LaTour, Callon & Law, 1986, 1987, 1997). I’m not sure if Neuman meant a distinction between Network Theory and Social Network Theory? (See: http://www.istheory.yorku.ca/)

References

McAllister. (1998). Is beauty a sign of truth in scientific theories? American Scientist, 86, 174-183.

Neuman. (2006). Social research methods: Pearson Education, Inc.

Simon. (1996). The sciences of the artificial (Third ed.). Cambridge, Mass: the MIT Press.

Walls, Widmeyer, & El Sawy. (2004). Assessing information systems design theory in perspective: How useful was our 1992 initial rendition? (pp. 28): Journal of Information technology theory & Application.

Weinberg. (1975). An introduction to general systems thinking (Silver Anniversary Edition ed.): Dorset House Publishing.