36 BUILDING CAPACITY FOR E-GOVERNMENT: Contradictions and Synergies in the Dialectics of Action Research David Wastell University of Manchester Peter Kawalek University of Manchester Mike Newman University of Manchester Mike Willetts Salford City Council Peter Langmead-Jones Lancashire Constabulary Action research has been widely espoused within IS as a methodology for achieving relevant research, simultaneously addressing problems pertinent to practice as well as generating valuable IS theory. Debate, however, continues to revolve around the standing of action research. The need to address an applied problem as well as the imperative to deliver substantive research findings builds a degree of conflict into the process of action research (McKay and Marshall 2001) which has led some commentators to doubt whether action research is viable. In contrast, we believe that action research is not only feasible but an essential tool for developing and evaluating social theory. However, the need to serve the two masters of practice and research, at the heart of the action research dialectic, inevitably constrains the research process. The exigencies of practical problem solving and the need to deliver solutions limit the time and resources available for rigorous data collection and validation, and constrain the research agenda. Nonetheless the theory generated by action research reflects the dynamics and complexity of the real world milieu in which it was developed. Rather