Action research has been widely espoused within IS as a methodology for achieving relevant research, simultaneously addressing problems pertinent to practice as well as generating valuable IS theory. Debate, however, continues to revolve around the standing of action research. The need to address an applied problem as well as the imperative to deliver substantive research findings builds a degree of conflict into the process of action research (McKay and Marshall 2001) which has led some commentators to doubt whether action research is viable. In contrast, we believe that action research is not only feasible but an essential tool for developing and evaluating social theory. However, the need to serve the two masters of practice and research, at the heart of the action research dialectic, inevitably constrains the research process. The exigencies of practical problem solving and the need to deliver solutions limit the time and resources available for rigorous data collection and validation, and constrain the research agenda. Nonetheless the theory generated by action research reflects the dynamics and complexity of the real world milieu in which it was developed. Rather
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.