ACTION DESIGN ETHNOGRAPHIC RESEARCH – IN SEARCH OF A RIGOROUS METHODOLOGY FOR IS RESEARCH

Action Design Research (ADR) has been developed as a broader research framework to design, evaluate and redesign IT artifacts in organizational contexts while design-evaluation-redesign is inseparable and iterative. ADR seeks to build IT artifact in organizational contexts and implement, redesign and evaluate it through organizational intervention. We applied ADR in a complex context of a develop country where understanding organizational context is challenging. In this situation, we applied ADR in ethnographic methodological framework in order to understand the complex organizational context. From our empirical findings, we found that applying ADR with the ethnographic methodological framework is potential for understanding the complex contexts. We showed that the ethnographic methodology has potential complementary with ADR’s stages and processes without requiring extra stages. Further, we argued that applying ADR in ethnographic methodology can be seen as Action Design Ethnographic Research (ADER).

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