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We all like a good story, but as researchers we too often dismiss a story as being tangential or superfluous. In this paper we review how early adventurous information systems researchers attempted to use organizational stories in their work, but in doing so may have used mere fragments of stories as an alternative method to gathering data for the design, development, or documentation of information systems. From a theoretical perspective formed by the use of the social construction of technology, we reexamine the purpose or functions of myths and relate these to the functions of stories (which can be experiential, explanatory, validating, and prescriptive) and illustrate how myths are similar to the stories (that are normative or descriptive, practical or philosophical) we hear in organizations today. We explore the elements of a story and show why researchers need to be aware of not just the purpose of the organizational story (through elaboration of the myth), but also the telling of the story (through vividness) and the order in which the story is told (through the use of episodes). A researcher gleans understanding through storytelling by reacting, matching, eliciting, and collaborating with organizational participants, but above all the researcher must appreciate the story as a whole. In this paper we develop a new research method based on storytelling. In doing so we aim to inspire IS researchers to realize the depth and richness found in organizational stories and to appreciate and use stories in their own work.

Although our general knowledge about open source communities is extensive, we are only beginning to understand the increasingly common practices by which corporations design software through engagement with these communities. In response, we combine design theorizing with field-study research (1) to analyze rich qualitative data from over 40 corporations participating in the Linux open source community and (2) to synthesize the observed corporate-open source community engagements into a new type of information systems design theory that we call responsive design. Empirically, we document how corporate participants in these contexts respond to market decisions, interdependent ideologies, and distributed relationships by continuously establishing and maintaining connections with community members; connections that stem from the social and material rules inherent in the open source community. Based on these observations, we create the theory of responsive design as a particular form of corporate software design which, beyond the inclusion of external participants, distinguishes itself from traditional monocentric design in which one corporation controls a dedicated team of software designers focused on solving an isolated and singular organizational problem. Guided by the principles of interconnection, opportunism, and domestication, we define responsive design as the kind of design approach that enables corporate participants to create and maintain productive design practices in response to the complex and dynamic landscapes of activities that are the foundation of corporate-communal engagements. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical implications of this new form of corporate software design.

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The Web is alive with news stories, pictures, music, and videos. How will organizations, managers, and other users find out what content is available, then locate it, analyze it, and make it meaningful? In this tutorial, we identify and classify eight types of information delivery systems (IDS) that we refer to as alpha, beta, gamma and delta and push technologies. For pull technologies we explain "surfing the Web", search engines, spiders and bots, personal agents, and finally evolutionary agents. For push technologies we explain Webcasting, channels and subscriptions, and data mining methods for determining preferences and filtering topics. We also examine the role of the evolutionary agents in push technologies. Throughout the paper, we provide examples of current pull and push technologies in each of the categories for pull and push. We include both personal and corporate applications. We then examine the managerial and social implications of higher-level IDS and suggest what is in store for users of information delivery systems in the future.