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Article Excerpt
Abstract
We are concerned that the IS research community is making the discipline's central identity ambiguous by, all too frequently, under-investigating phenomena intimately associated with IT-based systems and over-investigating phenomena distantly associated with IT-based systems. In this commentary, we begin by discussing why establishing an identity for the IS field is important. We then describe what such an identity may look like by proposing a core set of properties, i.e., concepts and phenomena, that define the IS field. Next, we discuss research by IS scholars that either falls to address this core set of properties (labeled as error of exclusion) or that addresses concepts/phenomena falling outside this core set (labeled as error of inclusion). We conclude by offering suggestions for redirecting IS scholarship toward the concepts and phenomena that we argue define the core of the IS discipline.
Keywords: IS discipline, IT artifact, IT nomological net, errors of exclusion, errors of inclusion
ISRL Categories: IB03, IB04
Introduction
The Information Systems (IS) scholarly community, like any new collective, has strived, since its inception in the 1970s, to develop a meaningful, resilient identity within the institutions that comprise its organizational field--namely, the organizational science and information science research communities, business and information science academic institutions, and the various organizations, industries, and professional groups that comprise the information technology (IT) industry. Such a community objective is admittedly ambitious, given the high failure rate associated with organizational foundings (Aldrich 1999). Still, we maintain that, after 30 years, insufficient progress has been made in establishing this collective identity. Further, recent events-the collapse of the dot.coms, the "e-ing" of both business and other scholarly disciplines, the recent tightening of the IT job market--seem to have raised anew concerns across the discipline that the viability and unique contributions of the IS disciplin e are being questioned by influential stakeholders.
IS scholars research and teach a set of diverse topics associated with information technologies, IT infrastructures and IT-enabled business solutions (i.e., information systems), and the immediate antecedents and consequences of these information systems (e.g., managing, planning, designing, building, modifying, implementing, supporting, and/or assessing IT-based systems that serve, directly or indirectly, practical purposes). The focus of this commentary is not about whether such a diversity of topics is beneficial for the IS field (Benbasat and Weber 1996; Robey 1996). Our concern is more fundamental: We are worried that the IS research community is making the discipline's central identity even more ambiguous by, all too frequently, under-investigating phenomena intimately associated with IT-based systems and over-investigating phenomena distantly associated with IT-based systems.
In this commentary, we begin by discussing why establishing an identity for the IS field is important. We then describe what such an identity may look like by proposing a core set of properties, i.e., concepts and phenomena, that define the IS field. Next, we discuss research by IS scholars that either fails to address this core set of properties or addresses concepts/phenomena falling outside this core set. We conclude by offering suggestions for redirecting IS scholarship toward the concepts and phenomena that we argue define the IS discipline.
The Need for Establishing an Organizational Identity for IS
Albert and Whetten (1985) argue that an organizational identity must satisfy three necessary and sufficient criteria: claimed central character, claimed distinctiveness, and claimed temporal continuity. These criteria indicate that a collective's identity is based on a set of important, essential core properties that distinguish the collective from others in its environment. While these core properties will inevitably evolve in response to environmental exigencies, shifts in a collective's identity would exhibit strong path dependency.
Adopting a theoretical lens from institutional and ecological theory (Aldrich 1999), (2) it is insightful to view IS scholars as a community of nascent entrepreneurs attempting to create a new population, i.e., the IS discipline, within an organizational field populated by other scholarly disciplines or populations. Aldrich argues
Together, founders and members of new organizations create communities of practice, molded by forces that heighten the salience of organizational boundaries. Boundaries become more salient as the contrast between organizational activities and surrounding environments deepen... .Only when bounded entities emerge can selection pressures change the organizational composition of populations. (p. 161)
We argue that the primary way in which a scholarly discipline signals its boundaries-and in doing so, its intellectual core-is through the topics that populate discipline-specific research activities.
Two related problems confront the members of a new population as they strive to succeed in their environment: they must discover or create effective routines and competencies with regard to this environment, and they must establish ties with elements of the environment that might not understand or acknowledge their existence. Aldrich categorizes the first as a learning issue and the second as a legitimacy issue. We believe that the IS discipline has made significant progress in resolving the learning issue, as reflected through its methodological and theoretical rigor, its methodological and theoretical diversity, and the respect afforded the discipline's major journals, MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research. (3)...
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