Research Objective and Context

My pragmatic beliefs are the primary motive behind the choice of a practice-based problem as a topic of inquiry. Cherryholmes (1992) comprehensively described the pragmatist’s approach to scientific inquiry when he explained how each pragmatic researcher determines his or her research topic and research methods. According to Cherryholmes (1992, p. 13),

“Pragmatic choices about what to research and how to go about it are conditioned by where we want to go in the broadest of senses.”

It is the potential practical outcomes of the inquiry to the stakeholders that matter. These potential ends were what conditioned and determined the research protocol and techniques used in this study. As a researcher, I share a similar perspective with Reason and Bradbury (2001) and Coghlan and Brannick (2009) that management research must cater to and benefit at least three different audiences. First, it must strive to produce results that are of value to the research’s immediate stakeholders. Second, it should contribute to knowledge repertoires. Finally, management research should nourish the personal and professional development of the researcher.

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With this triple objective in mind, I elected the Group2 PMIS implementation issue as a topic of inquiry. The problem was a real practical challenge harbouring the potential to benefit the researched organisation in multifarious ways. First, identifying and understanding the challenges that faced the implementation in Group2 can facilitate their elimination. This can improve the implementation effectiveness, which may contribute to the overall improvement of the delivery of Group2 projects (Raymond & Bergeron, 2008). Second, the research process may end up embedding a new capability into Group2 by enacting action research as a new way of learning that could be redeployed for other practical problems (Roth et al., 2007).

Academically, this research is significant in various ways; it holds potential to contribute to the bridging of the apparent gap in the PMIS implementation empirical literature in developing countries (Al-Saleh, 2005; Ejodame, 2015). This research will also help develop me professionally and scholastically. Also, the scope and nature of this research has potential to develop my skills in managing change, information systems, and research.

The research was conducted in a natural setting, whereby I formed part of the problem to be investigated. The research covered a research problem encountered in a real-life situation at a temporary organisation (further details about the context is provided in section 4.2). A practice-based problem induced the research design employed in this study. The research stakeholders worked for different organisations that were all in a contractual relationship with the MOH of Saudi Arabia (the owner of the construction projects group that was the site of this research). My professional role evolved during the research journey, from being solely focused on the implementation of the PMIS in Group2 projects to a broader role that covered several areas such as Group2 quality practices, governance, and monitoring and control.

Concerning this research, the geographical disparity of research sites and the complicated political relationship between the different stakeholder groups were the contextual characteristics that affected both the research design and process.

When I joined Group2 organisation the PMIS implementation had already commenced. The implementation was not progressing smoothly as exemplified in the implementation progress official report issued by Group2 PMO. Stakeholders were not willing to adopt and use the PMIS, despite the “MOH” client being keen to finish the implementation. Originally, the MOH required the implementation to finish within 6 months starting March 2015. The MOH expected the PMIS to improve their decision-making capability by enhancing information

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flow, transparency, and control. A team from the PMO, I included, was responsible for implementing the PMIS. Therefore, I was compelled to study Group2’s PMIS implementation process to improve its outcomes. As discussed in the introduction section, to achieve this objective, it was necessary to identify the challenges facing the implementation, understand them, and to intervene to overcome them. This was an ambitious objective considering the timeframe of both the implementation process and the DBA program.

Several reasons made me believe that the identified research objective was achievable. First, because the implementation issue was anchored on top of Group2 management agenda, hence; it was expected that the research would receive ample support. Second, because there were several sites where the implementation was yet to start in semi-parallel sequence. I was convinced that several action research cycles could be observed in a short time period.

Third, being fully dedicated to the PMIS implementation, I thought that I could devote adequate time to research activities that were perceived as part of the implementation process. Fourth, access to the research sites was not problematic as I was part of the team responsible for the implementation in Group2. Finally, the multi-site action research design facilitated the smooth movement of research activities between different PMIS implementation sites. Therefore, I was certain that action research was the most suitable approach for enabling the achievement of the multiple research objectives within this complex context.

3.1.1 Justification for Using Action Research

Because, of the tight relationship between researcher identity and research design, I strove to explicitly highlight my scholar-practitioner identity as I saw it. Ontologically, being a realist, I believe in the existence of a world that is independent of me. Although this ontological position has been traditionally attributed to the positivist tradition, Johnson and Duberley (2000) correctly sustained that there is still room for other philosophies to claim this ontological position while distancing themselves from positivist epistemology. Based on this perspective, I subscribe to the pragmatist view in regards to epistemology. It is critical to note that being a pragmatist; I depart from positivism's philosophical conceptions concerning access to knowledge about the world. I do not believe that it is possible to objectively observe the social world out there. The observer and the observed are always interdependent which always affect each other one way or another.

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One of the main implications of this position is that I view reality as what works in a specific context at a specific time (Simpson, 2009). It is thus temporal and contextual. My concern as a researcher is to uncover practical solutions for practical problems. I acknowledge and understand that as a participant in creating and understanding the social context into which I am enquiring, I both affect and am affected by the inquiry's context. Consequently, to me, it is unwarranted to suggest that while researching a social context, a researcher may detach oneself in a manner that enables “objective” evaluation of the enquiry. My position is in line with the thinking of American mainstream pragmatist philosophers such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead (Simpson, 2009).

Instead of debating issues of truth and reality, pragmatism focuses on ‘what works’

concerning the truth and the research questions. Pragmatism accepts the existence of reality but does not see reality as stable; reality is constantly changing as a result of actions (Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2003) cited in Faffelberger (2018).

Considering my ontological position, my epistemological believes, the research objective and context, I decided to select a qualitative methodology for this research project. Qualitative research is considered optimal when the researcher wishes to explore a contextual setting (Creswell et al., 2007). This research setting is considered highly contextual due to the particularity of the temporary organisation nature and the high impact of the research stakeholders on the research process and results.

This thesis departs from the tradition of equating qualitative research to interpretive research and instead submits to the notion that qualitative research has different varieties, which originate from different research paradigms (Goldkuhl, 2012). One of those alternative paradigms is pragmatism, which is different from the interpretive paradigm in two main facets. First, pragmatism does not dismiss the use of quantitative data as invalid, while interpretivism does. The second difference, which is critical to this research, is that pragmatism's focus is action, rather than meaning (Creswell et al., 2007; Morgan, 2014).

Bearing in mind the action focus of my research project, I evaluated my options within the qualitative research realm. Creswell (2006) discussed five of the most prominent qualitative strategies in management research. The author compared narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and case study. The author rightly

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demonstrated that the primary differentiator between these five qualitative research approaches is the objective of the research. Narrative studies are commissioned to explore and report on an individual life story. Phenomenology is about understanding and describing the essence of a lived experience. Ethnography is very similar to phenomenology except that it focuses on a shared cultural experience. Case study research focuses on understanding and providing a rich analysis of a lived experience which could be an event or a process of single or multiple cases. Lastly, grounded theory is commissioned with the intention of producing a theory that is grounded in the data collected from the field. Although some of these approaches may fit the requirement in my research contexts such as case study and grounded theory, none of them promises to guide the change intended in this project. As the lack of action focus on those five approaches, I decided to employ action research as a research strategy.