The overlaps between Action Research and Design Research
A Personal View on Research and Writing
1. A (Personal) View:
Research, Writing, and Publications
Dr. Sandeep Purao
Professor of IST
Penn State University
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2. About Me
• PhD in Management Science (Minor: Computer Science)
• Was faculty in a Business School, now in an Information School
• Research and publications
– Focus: IT in organizational settings
– Source Discipline: MIS (affinity to Org Sciences and SE)
– Publications: ACM, IEEE, IS, CSCW
– Two recent (from 2011):
• Action Design Research. MIS Quarterly 35(1): 37-56 (with Sein, Henfridsson, Rossi,
Lindgren)
• Monitoring Service Systems from a Language-Action Perspective. IEEE Transactions
on Services Computing 4(1):17-30. (with Robinson)
• Editorial responsibilities include / have included
– Several including CS and IS; among others: MIS Quarterly, ISR
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3. What do you do during your PhD years?
• What do you / should you do during your PhD years?
• Take classes
• Get good grades
• Work with your advisor
• Attend project meetings
• Prepare reports to sponsors
• Generate papers to report your research
• Do research under your advisor’s guidance
• Present your research in conferences when you can
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4. What should you do during your PhD years?
• What do you / should you do during your PhD years?
• Learn how to think about research
• Learn how to scope research ideas
• Learn how to place these in prior streams
• Learn how to use appropriate research methods
• Learn how to contribute to the academic disciplines
• Learn how to use and create many kinds of manuscripts
• Learn how to communicate ongoing and completed work
• Learn how to become an effective independent researcher
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5. Emphasizing Key To-Do’s
• What do you / should you do during your PhD years?
• Learn how to think about research
• Learn how to scope research ideas
• Learn how to place these in prior streams
• Learn how to use appropriate research methods
• Learn how to contribute to the academic disciplines
• Learn how to create and use many kinds of manuscripts
• Learn how to communicate ongoing and completed work
• Learn how to become an effective independent researcher
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6. The Role of Writing
Do the research, THEN Report the results OLD
• Conducting Research • Reporting Research
• Understand problem • Describe approach
• Create solution • Describe algorithms
• Refine solution • Describe benefits
• Gather data • Demonstrate results
• Analyze data • Describe limitations
• Generate findings • Describe next steps
Is this true? 6
7. Consequences
• We tend to form the following impressions:
– Writing is fluff, research is key
– Writing is something you have to do
– Writing is not important, doing research is
– Writing well does not mean that your research is good
NOT true!
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9. The Importance of Writing
• Time as a Surrogate for the importance of Writing ?
• Conference Papers vs. Journal Articles
8 months
conference
journal
24 months
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10. The Importance of Writing
• Time as a Surrogate for the importance of Writing
• Conference Papers vs. Journal Articles
12 months 8 months
conference
journal
18 months 24 months
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11. A Personal Narrative - I
• Several years ago: on a ferry from Helsinki to Stockholm
• Purao, Rossi and Sein:
– “We should articulate our ideas about combining organizational
intervention and technology design as a research method”
• Working with R. Cole (IST PhD student, then taking 532,
did this as part of that course)
– a first effort submitted to ICIS (premier conference in IS).
– comparing our hazy proposal against two existing approaches:
action research and design research
• Paper accepted at ICIS
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12. A Personal Narrative - II
• Sein, Purao and Rossi on multiple continents
– “We should move ahead on articulating our ideas about
combining organizational intervention and technology design as
a research method – now that we have a better understanding of
how it compares with other research methods”
– R. Cole (IST PhD student) moved on to his dissertation effort
related to security
• In 2007, meeting at Design Research conference with
Henfridsson and Lindgren
– “Would you like to join the team to articulate this? We see your
work with Volvo as the perfect example of what we would like to
articulate.”
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13. A Personal Narrative - III
• The Team of Five working across continents and time-
zones
– “Let’s pull together a manuscript for submission. We can target
MIS Quarterly. Our ideas have been brewing for some time now
and we have rich experiences about this method”
• In 2008, at the next annual conference, after several
iterations of the manuscript online including:
– “What the @#@$% are you doing? Why did you go back to the
previous version? You wasted all my edits.”
– “I think we are doing this all wrong. We need to have the
example at the beginning so that the readers can appreciate ..”
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14. A Personal Narrative - IV
• Submission to MIS Quarterly – Early 2008
– Manuscript: 55 pages
• First Round Reviews Received – Late 2008
– Three Reviewers – 6 pages, 12 pages, 25 pages
– Associate Editor Report – 15 pages
• Responses to First Round
– Devised strategy for response, multiple documents including
some named ‘plan of attack’ – Jan 2009 – 3-5 pages
– Responses to reviewers crafted – 8 pages, 10 pages, 27 pages
– Responses to AE crafted – 8 pages
– Manuscript thoroughly revised – 51 pages
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15. A Personal Narrative - V
• Submission of Revised Manuscript – July 2009
– Manuscript: 51 pages
– Response to review team: ~ 53 pages
• Research presented in many universities by authors
• Second Round of Reviews Received – March 2010
– Three Reviewers (not sure if one changed from first round)
– Conditional acceptance indicated by the journal
– Reviews - 6 pages, 5 pages, 8 pages
– Associate Editor Report – 12 pages
– AE would like clarification on role of theory and how it changes
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16. A Personal Narrative - VI
• Responses to Second Round
– Devised strategy for response – April 2010 – 2 pages
– Responses to reviewers crafted – shorter now
– Responses to AE crafted – 20 pages
– Manuscript revised – 46 pages
• Re-submitted – May 2010
– Acceptance indicated – June 2010
• Queued for publication – September 2010
• Actual publication in print – March 2011
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17. A Personal Narrative - VII
• Now
– Multiple dissertations under way in at least 5 universities
– SAP-sponsored workshop in Shanghai in December
– Follow-on research investigations
– Multiple queries for talking with industry partners
– Personal celebrations
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20. The Review Process
Submission
AE Decides
Reviewers
Desk-reject by SE Assigned by AE
SE Decides
Assignment of AE Reviewers
Accept
Authors Receive
Desk-reject by AE Report
Reviewers
Submit reviews
Authors Revise
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One Version
22. A Different Role for ‘Writing’
• Writing is not a process of reporting NEW
– It is an integral part of doing research
• Writing is not a process of reporting
– It is a process of communicating with colleagues
• Writing is critical because it allows you to connect
– With appropriate audiences and communities and colleagues
• Writing is critical because it allows you to work
– Work with multiple researchers
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23. Using ‘Writing’
• Start writing as you start doing your research NEW
– Use it to clarify your thoughts
– If unclear, emulate prior writings
– If necessary, create skeletons
• Identify audiences and communities
• Work with multiple researchers
– Within and outside your department
– Within and outside your university
• Prepare manuscripts for conferences and journals
• Subject your writing to informal and formal reviews
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24. The Writing Process
• How does the writing process work?
• Goals
– Writing as reflection
– Writing as persuasion
– Writing as story-telling and narrative
• Techniques
– Writing as increasingly elaborate outlining
– Writing as moving across levels of abstraction
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