ARGUMENT DEVELOPMENT

By
Prof. Dr. Juhana Salim
©2013
ARGUMENT DEVELOPMENT
By
Prof. Dr. Juhana Salim
©2013
ARGUMENT DEVELOPMENT

Prof. Dr. Juhana Salim

Knowledge Technology Research Group
Faculty of Information Science & Technology
University Kebangsaan Malaysia
©2013
 The steps for conducting a literature
review.
Addresses
Step 6
Step 1
Write the
Select a topic
literature Specifies
Advocates and
and defines frames
Critique the
Literature The Literature
Step 5 Review Process Step 2 Search
Critique the the literature
literature

Documents Explores and

and catalogs
discovers
Step 4 Step 3
Survey the Organizes Develop the
literature and forms argument
 STEP THREE

Develop the argument

Collecting Cataloguing
Documenting data

Time to write the literature Review

Building the case for LR
 Arrange sets of facts in a logical fashion
 Analyse these findings to establish what is
known about your topic of study
 Build a case for what is known about the
subject and determine how this
knowledge addresses the research
question
Building a case
E.g.Your thesis states that :
Artificial neural networks in decision
support in cancer
 The data in your LR must support and
prove your conclusion
 The argument for this conclusion was
made by analyzing information from
different sources and deciding that :
 Artificial neural networks is used in
decision support in cancer
 E.g. of Textual Commentary
Building a case
 In preparing a LR, you must present/develop
arguments to make the research case.
 An argument is a logical presentation of
evidence that leads to and justify a
conclusion.
 The LR uses two arguments:
 Argument of discovery (inductive
argument- Discuss and explains what is
known about the subject)
 Argument of advocacy – deductive
argument
E,g. of discovery argument. Logical presentation of
evidence for:ANN in DSS in Cancer.
What is known about the subject?
 The majority of clinical trial studies
benchmarked the ANNs performance
against traditional screening methods.
 Some studies have compared ANNs with
statistical methods (Chan et al., 2003; Finne
et al., 2000;Matsui et al., 2002; Remzi et al.,
2003).
 Remzi demonstrated that ANNs are more
accurate than multivariate logistic regression
(LR) using ROC analysis and therefore
reduced the number of unnecessary repeat
biopsies.
More evidences…….
 Parekattil, Fisher, and Kogan (2003)
showed in a clinical trial on bladder
cancer that their ANNs model was more
accurate in identifying patients who
required cystoscopy thereby providing
possible savings.
02/12/2010 SIS Thesis Writing 14
 ……the popular theories being used in ITO research is the economic theory (e.g.
Transaction Cost Theory & Agency Theory), followed by sociology theory (e.g.
Relational Exchange Theory & Social Exchange Theory) and lastly strategic
management theory (e.g. Resource-Based Theory, Resource Dependence Theory,
Knowledge-Based Theory). Prior to that, most researchers used multiple
theoretical approaches rather than single theoretical approach….

 Firstly, past scholars choose to integrate transaction cost economic theory when
the researcher’s aim is to measure cost effective factors of ITO decisions towards
the organization. Transaction costs arise from the activities of evaluating,
negotiating, communicating, and controlling vendors, and these costs definitely
impact the outsourcing decision. According to Subhankar and Balakrishnan (2006),
Transaction Cost Economic Theory (TCET) applicable to measure factors like
asset specificity, overall cost advantage, the threat of opportunistic vendor
behaviour, and the complexity of the transaction. Meanwhile, agency theory is
relevant if the research measure client and vendor commitment towards the ITO
partnership or relationship. Benedikt and Frank (2009) claimed that Agency Theory
applicable to measure factors like principal-agent conflicts, information asymmetry
and goal incongruence between the external vendor and the client.

02/12/2010 SIS Thesis Writing 15

Formative Work
 Organize the data into categories and
themes
 Analyse these findings to establish what is
known about your topic of study
 Build a case for what is known about the
subject and determine how this
knowledge addresses the research
question
 Literature review
2.3.2: Methodologies for Ontology
Development
Feature Uschold and Gruninger Bernaras METHONTOL SENSUS
King (1995) and Fox et al. OGY

Year 1995 1995 1996 1997 1997

Life cycle Non-proposed Evolving Evolving Evolving Non-

proposal prototypes prototypes prototypes proposed
and
incremental
Strategy Application Application Application Application Application
with independent semi- dependent independent semi-
respect to dependent dependent
the the
application

Strategy to Middle-out Middle-out Top-down Middle-out Bottom-up

identify
concepts 17
 Literature review
2.3.2: Methodologies for Ontology
Development ( cont…)
INTRODUCE about methodologies for ontology development
...there are some methodologies for ontology development that has been reported
by: Uschold and King (1995), Gruninger dan Fox (1995), Bernaras et. al
(1996), SENSUS (1997) and METHONTOLOGY (1997)…

ISSUE on methodologies for ontology development

Ontology development is dealing with the issues of knowledge acquisition. According
to Gomez-Perez et al. (2004), researchers in the field of ontology is also facing
problems because they have no methodology adequately tested and can recommend
the steps involved and the degree to which this ontology development must be
done. What can be seen in the ontology development is that each research team,
they usually have their own principles, design criteria and steps in the process of
developing ontology which is suitable to their studies. 18
 Literature review
2.3.2: Methodologies for Ontology
Development
( cont…)
SYNTHESIS
Based on the five types of methodologies for ontology development ,
METHONTOLOGY (1997) is the only methodology providing prototype life cycle.
However, the methodology proposed by Gruninger and Fox (1995) provide a
sequence of modeling activities that need to be implemented based on condition to
extend the ontology is constructed by first obtaining the prior scenario. For the
methodology proposed by Bernaras et al. (1996), they consider the life cycle of
ontology construction is the same as the life cycle used in modeling applications using
the ontology. The methodology proposed by Uschold and King (1995) and the
SENSUS (1997), did not have life cycles for the construction of ontology in their
methodologies.

19
 Literature review
2.3.2: Methodologies for Ontology Development
( cont…)

IMPLICATION to my study

Based on various types of methodologies for ontology development, the methodology

proposed by Uschold and King (1995) is the appropriate methodology to be
applied to the ontology development in this study. Process in ontology development
that was proposed by Uschold and King are also much easier and clearer to
understand which consists of identifying the purposes of ontology development,
perform the development ontology, ontology evaluation and produced
documentation.

Weak justification

20
Building the case for argument
 Compiling and arranging sets of facts in a
logical fashion that will prove the thesis
you have made about the research topic
 How to build the case for the literature
review?
- develop argument.
 What is an argument?
- logical presentation of evidence that
leads to justifies a conclusion.
Argument
1. Argument of discovery
- Discuss and explain what is known about the
subject in question
- serves as foundation for the second argument

2. Deductive argument
- Argument of advocacy: analyzes and critique the
knowledge gained from the synthesis of the data produced
by the discovery argument to answer the research question

The answer to this argument is the

THESIS STATEMENT
More examples: Interest area: Leadership
style for organization in the 21st century
 Discovery argument: Produce findings
that documented many leadership styles
and their effective users.
 Advocacy argument: Use the above
findings to determine which, if any, of
these styles meets the needs of a 21st
organization.
 You conclude: participatory leadership fit
style is the best fit for the 21st century
organization (Thesis statement)
Literature Survey
Aim: Gather prior knowledge about the
subject of study
1. Examine the information gain from
literature search
2. Transform it into findings
3. Build the findings into a story line that
describes about what is known about
the topic under study
Survey the literature: Argument of
Discovery

Claim a

Major
Premises Claim
as (What
evidence Warrant
is
known?)

Claim n
Business-IT Alignment- Claim 1
Some Factors affecting alignment
Evidence for claim 2
Claim 2- Planning sophistication affect shared
domain and not directly affecting alignment
Surveying requires 3 tasks
1. Assemble the collected data
Catalogue and document major work
2. Organize the information
3. Analyse the patterns of the data
Concept Centric Vs Author Centric
Author to Concept Centric
Units of analysis
Types of Knowledge in IT Outsourcing
 A variety of multidisciplinary knowledge and skills is
a key ingredient of outsourced IT project (e.g
Blumenberg et al., 2009).
 It involves integrating and coordinating knowledge
from many individuals of different disciplines and
backgrounds, with varied experiences and
expectations, located in different parts of the
organization (Peppard & Ward, 2004).
 Generally, past researchers have classified knowledge
poses by an IT professionals in two types of
knowledge: business domain knowledge and
technology specific knowledge

02/12/2010 SIS Thesis Writing 33

 Types of Knowledge in IT Outsourcing
 Basselier et al. (2003) classified knowledge in IT into two types:
“hard” (explicit) component and “soft” (tacit) component.
 Explicit IT outsourcing knowledge refers to the technical
knowledge while the tacit IT outsourcing knowledge refers to
managerial knowledge related to IT outsourcing project.
 Technical knowledge refers to knowledge about the technology
used to implement the project (e.g. programming languages,
network architecture, security, database architecture). Business
application domain knowledge refers to knowledge about client’s
business processes, business rules, activities, stakeholder needs,
and business objectives for the software.

02/12/2010 SIS Thesis Writing 34

Types of Knowledge in IT Outsourcing
 according to Tafti (2006), knowledge in IT outsourcing is not only
technical and business knowledge, but also in other modes of
knowledge.
 Past researchers classified knowledge into one dimension of
classification without take into consideration the metacognitive
level of knowledge
 Since knowledge transfer is bound under the learning themes,
mapping the types of knowledge within metacognitive level of
knowledge involved in the ITO project is important. Therefore, the
researcher develop a new classification of knowledge in ITO.

02/12/2010 SIS Thesis Writing 35

Types of Knowledge Using feature map in
analysing ideas

1. Lee et al. (1995)

2. Kirsch (2000)
3. Goles (2001)
4. Basseliar & Benbasat
(2003)
5. Tiwana (2004)
6. Tafti (2006)
7. Simon et al. (2007)
8. Goles et al. (2008)
9. Langer et al. (2008)
10. Chan et al. (2008)
11. Tesch et al. (2009)
12. Kang & Hahn (2009)
13. Tiwana (2009)
14. Zainuddin et al. (2010)

My Own Classification
02/12/2010 SIS Thesis Writing Seminar 36
Critique the Literature
What is critiquing?
- The art of interpreting the meaning of a
piece of literary, scientific and technical
work.
- A critique consist of well found argument
stemming form a detailed analysis and
assessment of that work.
- Interprets the current understanding of the
research topic and determines how this
knowledge answers the research questions,
given what I now know about the subject.
When conducting the critique, ask:

 What is the answer to the research question

I have posted?
Given
 What I now know about the subject?
 If the answer is clear and is defined in the
discovery argument, you have found the
thesis i.e.
 The conclusion of your LR.
 A thesis concluded from the synthesis of
current knowledge about the topic.
How to reach a conclusion?
Implicative argument
A logical interpretation of evidence to
produce propositions that signal a specific
conclusion:

Discovery argument Advocacy argument

IF Then

(R1…R2…Rn Therefore C1 + (C1 Therefore C2)

Factors influencing ICT abuse
Some Misunderstanding on critical
reviews
Summarizes of related theories

02/12/2010 SIS Thesis Writing 41

 In conclusion, this research chooses the underlying Implication to the study
theories through the lens of strategic management
views, sociology view and psychology view.
Multidisciplinary views have provided a rich and diverse
schema for developing future research conceptual
framework.
 …..Using tenets from the resource-based view,
resources that are critical to long-term organizational
performance could be identified. Resource-based
perspective provides a framework that highlights the
importance of (i) evaluating firms’ valuable and unique
knowledge and capabilities; (ii) identifying skilled human
resource; and (iii) assessing what resources and/or
capabilities should be extended and upgraded through
outsourcing partnership, in order to make firms gain
and/or sustain competitive advantage.
 …..knowledge-based views could prescribe the best
means for obtaining external knowledge from the
vendor in order to stay competitive and innovative.
Only with innovative capability could sustain the
relevance of each organization presence.

02/12/2010 SIS Thesis Writing 42

 …..the researcher need more than strategic management views;
the researcher need an understanding of the episodes of
information and knowledge exchange from sourcing partner,
which is later guided the researcher to incorporate Social
Exchange Theory (SET) to develop more holistic framework.
 ……knowledge transfer also need a learning capability at both
client and vendor site. All the exercises, routines, procedures
during the project must be stored in organizational memory
Implication to the study
system whereby the organization could later retrieve and reuse
back the knowledge to sustain the organizational learning curves.
Therefore, Organizational Learning Theory (OLT) is incorporated
to support the key constructs in this research.
Attempt made to
 Each of the principal theories reviewed in the above sections present previous
contributes in some way to explaining and justifying strategies of work within an
cooperation and knowledge transfer in ITO. None of these
overall
explanations should be seen as being superior to another, and it
conceptual
cannot be assumed that knowledge transfer in alliances is always
prompted by single objective. In fact, it is helpful if we view these
framework and in
explanations as being complementary that can support each other a systematic way?
view.

02/12/2010 SIS Thesis Writing 43