Historical Research in Information System Field: From Data Collection to Theory Creation

This chapter gives important methodological, theoretical, and practical guidelines to the information system (IS) researchers to carry out a historical study. This study shows how a new theory can be discovered inductively from historical studies using a methodological guideline from Mason, McKenney, and Copeland (1997b), using multiple data collection methods, such as semistructured interviews, archival files, and published news, and using novel data analysis methods from learning and intelligent systems, such as the Self-Organizing Maps (SOMs), SOMs combined with U-matrices, and the Bayesian network modeling. It also outlines the benefits, the main problems, the characteristics, and the implications of historical research in the information system field. Finally this chapter gives future some research directions of historical research.

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