Putting the ‘theory’ back into grounded theory: guidelines for grounded theory studies in information systems

By Cathy Urquhart, Hans P. Lehmann, Michael D. Myers. Information Systems Journal, 2009

963 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Over the past decade, there has been increasing interest in the use of grounded theory in information systems research. Grounded theory is a qualitative research method that seeks to develop theory that is grounded in data systematically gathered and analysed. The purpose of this paper is to suggest guidelines for grounded theory studies in information systems. Our guidelines are based on a framework for theorizing in grounded theory studies that focuses on conceptualization and theory scope. Our hope is that the guidelines will help to raise the quality and aspirations of grounded theory studies in information systems.

Subfields: Education, Information Systems, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/49f3d7d99191cde5177919aaf3cc841f1ac64568

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

In Information Systems

In Sociology and Political Science

Citations in the corpus

An integrated big data analytics-enabled transformation model: Application to health care (2018, background): “These subelements were abstracted from the statements to describe the content of the elements [51] and move beyond description to a higher level of abstraction [52].”
Guest editorial: qualitative studies in information systems: a critical review and some guiding principles (2013, background): “While some works (e.g., Benbasat et al. 1987; Klein and Myers 1999; Lee 1989; Urquhart et al. 2010; Walsham 1995, 2006) provide authoritative guidance and recommendations regarding how various types or aspects of qualitative research are to be conducted, others (e.g., Chen and Hirschheim 2004; Dubé…”
Governance in the Blockchain Economy: A Framework and Research Agenda (2018, methodology): “By employing such techniques we increased theoretical scope and conceptualization, treating literature about governance as additional data points for analysis (Urquhart et al., 2010).”
Grounded Theory in Software Engineering Research: A Critical Review and Guidelines (2016, background): “Researchers in Information Systems (which has considerable overlap with software engineering) have lamented that “the term ‘grounded theory’ itself has almost become a blanket term for a way of coding data” [75].”
Cheating in e-exams and paper exams: the perceptions of engineering students and teachers in Norway (2020, positive): “Constant comparative is commonly used in ground theory; it makes the analysis more explicitly theoretical (Urquhart, Lehmann, and Myers 2010) and encourages the researcher to be both rigorous and theoretical.”