I have been trying to persuade my colleagues that viewing, sorting, and searching large lists of data in a grid are less usable than performing those actions on that data in the context where it is used or displayed.
For example, seeing a list of all of your contacts in a grid in a CRM doesn't seem to make as much sense as either searching to find the contact you're interested in, or following links from deals, verticals, activity streams, etc.
I was wondering if there is any formal research on the topic to back this up.