A Meta-theory for Understanding IS in Socio-technical Systems

Information systems (IS) research often attempts to examine and explain how technology leads to outcomes through usage of information technology (IT). Although extensive research in this area has resulted in a significant number of theories, limited work has been done on integrating these theories. This paper presents adaptive structuration theory (AST) as a meta-theory for examining IS within a socio-technical systems (STS) context. Two main contributions are: 1) an understanding of meta-theory and how it fits with other meta-studies and 2) applying AST as a meta-theory to: A) achieve deeper domain understanding, B) provide an overarching perspective for reviewing literature and linking existing theories, and C) build and test better domain specific theories of IS within STS. The paper also provides illustrations on reviewing literature using AST in the virtual team domain as well as an illustration of theory development using meta-theory in the domain of technology-mediated learning.