RESEARCH ARTICLE Reconsidering deconstruction in information systems research Mike Chiasson 1 and Elizabeth Davidson 2 1 Department of Management Science, Lancaster University, Lancaster, U.K.; 2 Department of Information Technology Management, Shidler College of Business, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, U.S.A. Correspondence: Elizabeth Davidson, Department of Information Technology Management, Shidler College of Business, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2404 Maile Way, Honolulu, HI 96822, U.S.A. Tel: þ 1 (808) 956 6657; Fax: þ 1 (808) 956 9889; E-mail: edavidso@hawaii.edu Received: 7 February 2010 Revised: 7 September 2011 Accepted: 17 October 2011 Abstract Deconstruction, a post-structuralist approach to examining language in texts, is most often associated with the philosophical works of Jacque Derrida. After a flurry of interest among management and information systems (IS) scholars, this qualitative approach to exploring organizational texts has received little attention in the IS literature. We suggest deconstruction could help our field explore how IS texts describe the social and technical past and also prescribe and circumscribe the future of IS practice. Thus, we suggest the IS field reconsider how deconstruction might contribute to language-based approaches in IS research and practice. In this paper, we discuss deconstruction in light of the linguistic turn in social science research and the support and criticism for its use in management research. We consider IS research publications that have employed deconstruction explicitly, examine a well- known IS publication as an example of the deconstruction of IS texts, and suggest ways in which deconstruction might be applied to various genres of IS texts to inspire insights and creativity. To conclude, we highlight considera- tions for researchers who might adopt this approach and for the editors and reviewers who would evaluate qualitative research papers that employ deconstruction. European Journal of Information Systems (2012) 21, 192–206. doi:10.1057/ejis.2011.55; published online 15 November 2011 Keywords: deconstruction; post-structuralism; discourse analysis; information systems practice; qualitative methods We are written, only as we write y Jacques Derrida, Writing and Diffe ´rance Introduction and motivation Information systems (IS) – as designed socio-technical artifacts and as objects of study – are inexorably entwined with language. We use language to describe the IS we build, to explain and justify their possible uses and implications, and to represent the data and information they contain for use in various settings and for various purposes. As researchers we draw from and extend language in order to study IS phenomena. Although language is clearly important to such activities in the IS field, as practitioners and as researchers, we often do not consider explicitly the performative implica- tions of language or the ways in which language per se may contribute to persistent problems, such as the design of systems that fail to meet the needs or serve the interests of their intended users (Hirschheim et al, 1996). In this essay, we consider a language-based approach to analyzing the many types of texts found in IS-related activities, which we believe holds promise for the IS field. Deconstruction is a post-structuralist approach to analyzing language in texts and is most often associated with the work of Jacques Derrida (1978, 1982, 1985, 2002). Deconstruction has been applied European Journal of Information Systems (2012) 21, 192–206 & 2012 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/12 www.palgrave-journals.com/ejis/