The enabling role of Web services in information system development practices: a grounded theory study

Web services is not the only technical solution available to this aim: standards like EDIFACT, COM and many others are actually available. For a discussion, see for example K. Turowski, Spezifikation und Standardisierung von Fachkomponenten Wirtschaftstinformatik 43(3), 2001, pp 269–281. The use of the WWW infrastructure for inter-application communication is also not entirely new, as it can be viewed as an evolution of B2B applications like e-marketplaces (Rossignoli C. The contribution of transaction cost theory and other network-oriented techniques to digital markets, Information Systems and E-Business Management 2007, doi:10.​1007/​s10257-007-0063-z; Rossignoli C and Mola L. E.M.P. As Enabler Of New Organisational Architectures: An Italian Case Study, Proceedings of the Bled eCommerce Conference, 2004).

This issue is made more complex by the indeterminacy of factors like: (1) The wide range of ISD methods and initiatives now available; (2) The non-existence of a unique definition of “classical” ISD principles; (3) the ambiguity and generality of expressions like “web system development”.

The use of case study methodology in social sciences was thoroughly discussed also in Eisenhardt KM “Building Theories From Case Study Research.” The Academy of Management Review 14(4), October 1989, pp 532–550, raising the issue if better grounding theories on a single case (more in-depth and focused on qualitative and contextual aspects—“better stories”) or on several cases, (more shallow and focused on theoretical sampling -“better constructs”) (Gibb Dyer W Jr and Wilkins A “Better Stories Not Better Constructs to Generate Better Theory: A Rejoinder to Eisenhardt.” The Academy of Management Review 16(3) 1991, pp 613–619); (Eisenhardt KM “Better Stories and Better Constructs: The Case for Rigor and Comparative Logic.” The Academy of Management Review 16(3) 1991, pp 620–627).

In addition, to better understand the technical and organizational complexity of the project, the researchers could take advantage of the strong technical background and the right “feeling” for promising investigative directions of the project manager, who actively participated in theory generation and actually co-authored other reports and papers produced by this research.

One could wonder whether theoretical concepts were actually emerging from data (and not imported from pre-existing theories) in this study, as it should be according to the GT methodology. In facts, data collection was based on a pre-existing questionnaire and informing theory was initially used to motivate the exploration and later to discuss the findings. Actually, as shown in the next section, the open questionnaire was intended just to launch the descriptive exploration, it was very broad and open to any kind of free interpretation and contribution; on the other side, existing literature was used with care during the final discussion, according to the indications given by Strauss and Corbin themselves: “When an investigator has finished his or her data collection and analysis and is in the writing stage, the literature can be used to confirm findings and, just the reverse, findings can be used to illustrate when the literature is incorrect, is overly simplistic, or only partially explains the phenomena” (Strauss AL and Corbin J Basics of qualitative research: techniques and procedures for developing grounded theory (2nd edn) Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, 1998, pp 52–53).

Indeed, besides the three networks of concepts related to the core categories, the researchers built several additional networks, along with their mutual relationships. The three categories evidenced here were selected as the most significant and investigated in more detail.

The team leader was present during this interview and he intervened for better specifying his role.

The word “insemination” is quite peculiar: it is actually an “in vivo” term, reflecting the Italian expression “inseminazione” actually used by the interviewees.

i.e. By everyone in the team except the system architect and one junior developer who had lower visibility on system analysis during the project.

The book is very pragmatic and targeted to “perplexed software and management professionals” (p. XX, preface) more than to academic researchers; though, it is founded on deep and extensive empirical evidence, and also very well connected with existing literature on the topic.