An Encounter with Grounded Theory: Tackling the Practical and Philosophical Issues, in Qualitative Research in Information Systems: Issues and Trends

Urquhart, C (2001) An Encounter with Grounded Theory: Tackling the Practical and Philosophical Issues, in Qualitative Research in Information Systems: Issues and Trends. In: Qualitative Research in Information Systems: Issues and Trends. Idea Group Publishing, pp. 104-140. ISBN 1930708068

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Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the practical and philosophical issues of applying the grounded theory approach to qualitative research in Information Systems. Over the past decade, we have seen a substantial increase in qualitative research in general (Klein, Nissen and Hirschheim, 1991; Walsham, 1995; Markus, 1997; Myers, 1997; Myers and Walsham, 1998; Klein and Myers, 1999; Walsham and Sahay, 1999; Trauth and Jessup, 2000; Schultze, 2000) and also an increase in the use of grounded theory (Toraskar, 1991, Orlikowski, 1993, Urquhart, 1997, 1998, 1999a, 1999b; Adams and Sasse, 1999, Baskerville and Pries-Heje, 1999, Trauth, 2000). Over the past three years, the most frequent request I have had from postgraduates is for some insight into the ‘how-to’ of coding and grounded theory