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Institutional Ethnography: Mapping Out Textual Mediation and Ruling Relations in Information Systems Research

Institutional Ethnography (IE) offers a new theoretical perspective to guide inquiry within the information systems field. IE begins with a problematic - a disjuncture- that asks how some particular corner of the world is organized and answers this question through ethnographic techniques to explore the lived experience of the people at the core of the research. From this standpoint, institutional ethnographers map out how this experience is textually mediated and coordinated (organized) within a complex web of institutions and others. We reinterpret the findings from two research studies to demonstrate how an IE lens facilitates asking new questions and contributes new understandings around fundamental IS topics. We offer a discussion of the merits of this approach and conclude with some recommendations for how researchers can leverage IE in their own work.