Building on Davison and Martinsons’ concerns: a call for balance between contextual specificity and generality in IS research

ions and what the boundaries of applicability of the abstractions might be. This is clearly not a very desirable way to engage with context, but this pattern is often evident in studies. The second approach might be to first adapt a general theory to the given context. In our case, I believe it is best to start with a consideration of relevant omnibus and discrete contextual elements (see Figure 1 for sample contextual elements for the virtual team study), select those elements we seek to focus on (given the scope or objectives of the study), Figure 1 Selected context elements of the virtual teams in Sarker and Sahay study. Building on Davison and Martinsons’ concerns S Sarker