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Divided by a Common Language? A Response to Marshall Scott Poole

Matthew R. Jones, Helena Karsten, Divided by a Common Language? A Response to Marshall Scott Poole. MIS Quarterly 33(3), 589–596, 2009.

Abstract:

Marshall Scott Poole identifies some important issues in the treatment
of Adaptive Structuration Theory in our review of the use of Giddens's
structuration theory in IS research (Jones and Karsten, 2008). We
argue, however, that a number of his criticisms reflect differences in
our respective use of particular terms and that the statements made in
Jones and Karsten (2008) are reasonable, especially in the light of
Giddens's own writings. There are some substantive differences between
our position and that of Poole, though, especially in relation to the
distinctiveness and compatibility of positivist and interpretive
research, and the immateriality of Giddens's structures. Arguments are
presented to show that, as Jones and Karsten (2008) discussed, Giddens's position is able to offer a plausible and self-consistent
account of IS phenomena, including those such as the role of material
artefacts in the US legal system, “distributed cognition” and the use of
GDSS that Poole suggests are incompatible with Giddens's account of
structuration.

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BibTeX entry:

@ARTICLE{jJoKa09a,
  title = {Divided by a Common Language? A Response to Marshall Scott Poole},
  author = {Jones, Matthew R. and Karsten, Helena},
  journal = {MIS Quarterly},
  volume = {33},
  number = {3},
  pages = {589–596},
  year = {2009},
  keywords = {structuration theory, ontology, epistemology},
}

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