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Writing-Up
Geoff Walsham
Lecture 5 of Course on Interpretive Research in IS - Oslo University
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Contents of Lecture 5
• Writing an academic paper
• Structuring the paper
• Discussion of various components
• The art of persuasion
• English language issues
• Writing-up a longer piece of work
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Writing an Academic Paper
• Crucial question: what is your key message?
• To what audience?
• What is new about your contribution?
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Structuring the Paper
• Create an outline including sections and sub-sections
• Think about the length of the various sections
• Write material on the sections to outline their contents and how they will connect
• Discuss the outline with a co-author or colleague
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Title
• Important - should be sharp and focused on your contribution
• See some of Orlikowski’s titles:‘CASE tools as organizational change: investigating
incremental and radical changes in systems development’
‘Technological frames: making sense of information technology in organizations’
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Abstract
• Should summarise the whole paper (it is not an introduction)
• Topic; why it is important; what you have done; what are your key conclusions
• In less than 150 words
• Write the abstract early - it is a good test as to whether you know what you are trying to say and why
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Introduction
• Not too long!
• Why is this topic important?
• How are you planning to develop your contribution in this paper?
• How is the rest of the paper structured?
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Literature Review
• Not just everything you have read on the topic
• A structured review of interesting aspects of the literature
• But showing why your paper is needed
• Can include references that you do not like to make your argument - but be polite!
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Methodology
• Reporting on ‘soft’ human issues is not an excuse for sloppiness (Walsham 1995)
• Collection of field data: research sites chosen, why, who was interviewed, their job roles, other data sources, time period of the data collection …
• Analysis: how data were recorded; how they were analyzed; iterative process between theory and data ...
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Methodology - Comment
• You won’t get a paper published in a good journal just because you have written a good methodology section
• But you might get a paper rejected by a good journal because your methodology section is weak
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Empirical Data and Analysis
• Make it a coherent, interesting story
• Sometimes helpful to have an ‘overview’ before giving details
• Use plenty of quotes, but make sure that they directly support the point that you are making
• Tables can be useful to summarise key points being made in the text
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Discussion and Conclusions
• What is your key contribution?
• How does this advance our knowledge?
• To what extent will your results generalise to other contexts?
• What further work could be done (but not much on this in a paper)?
• Pay attention to a good ending
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The Art of Persuasion(Walsham 1995)
‘Van Maanen (1989) reminds us that establishing validity in the eyes of a reader is part of the art of persuasion, and is as much a matter of rhetorical style and flair as it is of accuracy and care in matters of theory and method’
• Practice/practice/practice …
• Develop your own style
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English Language Issues
• Lear how to write grammatically
• Get a competent native speaker to check your English
• If you write well in your own language, you can learn to write well in English
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Writing-Up a Longer Piece of Work
• Basic ideas remain the same
• But structure is even more important
• Flow between different sections/chapters needs additional linking material
• What have others done? What have I done? So what? (thesis structure)