Forschungsmethoden der Wirtschaftsinformatik

Abstract

The german-speaking IS community sees itself as a methodological pluralist discipline. With respect to recent debates (e.g. on rigor versus relevance) an exact knowledge of its metho- dological profile becomes increasingly important. This contribution presents the findings of a content analysis of 300 articles published in the journal WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK in the last ten years. As one result, the study identified six major methods of the german-speaking IS community: argumentative, conceptional and formal deductive research, prototyping, case studies and quantitative cross sectional studies. It could also be shown, that the metho- dological profile continually changed during the last ten years. The article also compares its findings with the current methodological profile of the anglo-american IS community based on a secondary data analysis. Keywords: