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IDENTIFYING THE DRIVERS OF ISD METHOD EMERGENCE 69
a prototyping approach. In practice, the emergent method unfolded as a teleological process (Van
de Ven and Poole, 1995), where the project team and company management acted from a shared
understanding resulting in a process of continuous social construction of goals according to new
decisions and discoveries. In this teleological process, consensus regarding the (re)formulation of
goals for the product under development was the main generative motor of change and the outcome
was a custom-built information system aimed at the company’s internal report production process. We
conclude that the answers to the questions of how the two methods emerged and why they emerged
differently can be understood with reference to conflict versus consensus.
This is not to say that the Multimedia case was not also a teleological process at times, that there
was not a single conflict or dialectical aspect in the Web case, or that, if closely scrutinized, the
empirical data would not also reveal life-cycle elements. Moreover, by advocating a conceptual
understanding of method emergence we do not aim to simplify the complexity of practice. The
application of the theoretical framework to the two empirical cases shows clearly that in practice
there are numerous factors, actors, and interactions that all influence and shape the emergent meth-
ods. As such, it is easy to conclude that emergent methods come about in a largely unpredictable
and unmanageable (i.e., uncontrollable) way. This may be so. However, we propose, based on the
research presented in this chapter, that theories and frameworks are needed to help practitioners
and researchers go beyond the immediate and “messy” surface phenomena of the empirical world
to a deeper, more conceptual understanding of the form(s) and driver(s) of method emergence.
From theories of method emergence it may in turn be possible to identify and proactively exploit
or avoid the generative motor(s) of a change process (Van de Ven and Poole, 1995). We suggest
that our theoretical framework or similar work can be applied by both practitioners and researchers
to read the situation before project initiation, during development, and after project completion in
order to proactively identify the dynamics inherent in or relevant to a particular change process,
to leverage these dynamics, and to be attentive to their potential pitfalls. In line with this, Walz,
Elam, and Curtis (1993) state that conflict is a powerful mechanism for facilitating learning, and
not a debilitating factor that should be suppressed. To spark creativity through conflict manage-
ment, these authors recommend the use of, for example, the devil’s advocate approach, dialectical
methods, and techniques for surfacing and resolving the project team’s underlying differences and
similarities. However, there is no guarantee that conflicts produce the desired creative syntheses
that drive the process forward in a dynamic way. Without facilitation, conflict may well lead to
unresolved power struggles or one subgroup’s unproductive domination. Facilitated social construc-
tion of goals is also a powerful vehicle for change, which can be leveraged through, for example,
formal organization (meetings, staffing, etc.) and more or less formally appointed boundary
spanners (Curtis, Krasner, and Iscoe, 1988; Walz, Elam, and Curtis, 1993). However, teleological
processes where goals are reformulated on an ongoing basis are inherently unpredictable and risk
discontinuity. Moreover, there may be underlying and undiscovered conflicts and differences of
opinion, even when such processes are facilitated.

CONCLUSION

This chapter aims to explain how and why emergent methods unfold differently. Based on literature
about contextualism, structuration theory, and change processes, a theoretical framework is developed
and used to provide narrative accounts, systematic comparisons, and generalization of findings to theory
for two longitudinal case studies of method emergence in a Multimedia project and a Web project.
The application of the theoretical framework shows that the Multimedia and Web cases are
very similar with regard to structural characteristics (such as system complexity, team size, con-