Yoshinori Tsubota

In this article, management information research focused on "practical theory" is reconsidered. The existing studies show that empirical studies are not sufficient to understand practice. Based on Husserl's arguments, analyzing practice from actor's subjective conscious experience seems important. Moreover, discussion of Schutz, who applied Husserl's theory to social science, shows different characteristics of consciousness in "practice" and "theorization", a set of criteria for "theorization" based on practice, and characteristics of social science. Through these arguments, it is clear that management information research for practical theory and social science needs to construct concepts based on the relations of "social actions", and should focus on revealing human consciousness and informational functions in organizational communication.

On the study of information systems, interpretivist and positivist approaches are often compared and characteristics of both approaches have been discussed. In this paper, the author would like to explore what and how interpretivist approach clarifies the usage of information systems in an organization, especially, by clarifying the target of the understanding in "information systems phenomena." To explain such points, the author refers to previous study about understanding other's intention and achieving communication. In order to apply this theory in an actual situation, user's interpretation of schedule function in a groupware at one company is examined.