Download - IS Research: Its Past, Present, and Future
IS Research 1
IS Research: Its Past, Present, and Future
by
Edgardo Donovan
ITM 699 – Dr. Wenli Wang
Module 1 – Case Analysis
Monday, January 25, 2010
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IS Research: Its Past, Present, and Future
nformation systems research is a relatively new academic discipline
which has increased in importance over the past 50 years as the
rate of information technology adoption has evolved dramatically.
Decision support/design science, value of information, human-
computer systems design, IS organization and strategy are the main IS research streams
that are of great interest not only to information systems practitioners and scholars but are
extremely relevant to the average information worker as well. The massive growth of
information systems research has also contributed to its identity crisis. Information
systems research is being drawn upon by other traditional research disciplines such as
organization science, management science, and computer science as they too recognize the
information systems component pervading their fields.
The 2004 research article titled “The Evolution of Research on Information Systems:
A Fiftieth-Year Survey of the Literature” by Rajiv Banker published in the literary journal
“Management Science” outlines five research streams that constitute modern information
systems research. The decision support design science research stream studies the
application of computers in decision support, control, and managerial decision making. The
human computer systems design research stream emphasizes the cognitive basis for
Because of the interdisciplnary nature of IS research scholars have emerged from varied backgrounds: organization science, computer science, information science, engineering, economics, and managementscience/operations research.
IZAK BENBASATMIS Quarterly, 2003
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effective systems design. The IS organization and strategy research stream focuses the level
of analysis on the focus of value of the IS investment instead of the perception of a system
or its user (Banker 281).
The future of information research is constantly evolving. Scholars expect to see
new theories of electronic agency, which will rely on emerging technological capabilities to
specify richer, algorithmically dynamic information endowments and the decision making
profiles of software agents (Banker 284). As more and more legacy systems, databases,
applications, and front-end user interaction mediums are developed the level
sophistication of human computer interaction will increase. A greater number of
information systems will not only be used to execute commands, store, process, and share
information but they will mimic human-decision making according to sophisticated pre-
programmed parameters. This will greatly expand the range of human-computer
interaction studies as researchers will begin analyze how information systems effectively
execute desired reactive/proactive tasks based on a sophisticated pre-programmed
behavioral pattern. This can be as simple as programming a computer to play chess or as
complex as a system that automates strategy formulation and execution vis-à-vis securities
trading.
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Figure 1. Evolution and State of Information Systems (Grover 278)
The 2006 research article titled “A Citation Analysis of the Evolution and State of
Information Systems within a Constellation of Reference Disciplines” by Varun Grover
published in the “Journal of the Association for Information Systems” outlines how
information systems research drew heavily from other traditional disciplines in its earlier
stages and vice-versa. It is customary for new fields of research to borrow from other fields
while progressively evolving as a distinct mode of inquiry (Grover 274). The studies of
organization science, management science, and computer science have and will continue to
share many topics of interest among each other. Now after 50 years of existence
Information Systems as a discipline is possibly moving away from the conventional
reference disciplines while building a tradition of its own (Grover 274). Given the
pervasive and quasi ubiquitous presence of information systems technology in our society,
now many traditional fields are drawing from information systems research to better
research and understand modern day phenomena. This dynamism leaves many questions
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unanswered. Is the field more fragmented? Is it creating an intellectual engine that is being
drawn upon by other disciplines as they too recognize the IS component pervading their
fields (Grover 272)? Because of the interdisciplinary nature of IS research scholars have
emerged from varied backgrounds: organization science, computer science, information
science, engineering, economics, and management science/operations research
(Benbasat). Throughout the history of academic research one can find examples of
evolving disciplines which dramatically reshape old contextual boundaries. For example,
the field of Economics is a classical exemplar of a totipotential system, where the tendency
to cite intradisciplinary work is extremely high and the tendency to cite interdisciplinary
work is extremely low. Economics serves as a dominant source of theoretical inputs to
many other disciplines in the social sciences. However, information systems can also
progress backward in that a system at a totipotential stage might return to the
partipotential stage (Grover 278).
Figure 2. Foundational Fields Used in Culnan and Swanson’s (1986) and
Cheon et al.’s (1992)
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The 2003 research article titled “The Identity Crisis Within the IS Discipline:
Defining and Communicating the Discipline’s Core Properties” by Izak Benbasat published
in “The MIS Quarterly” examines the schism dynamics within the information systems
community in greater detail. 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 deepen. Only when bounded entities emerge can selection pressures change the
organizational composition of populations (Benbasat 184). These changes do not
necessarily happen in a clear and neat fashion and can bring about an identity crisis within
a community of practice lacking a well defined proprietary center of gravity. The confusion
due to origins stemming from an amalgam of multiple disciplines may influence scholars to
devise new constructs to reclassify traditional concepts so as to devise clearer disciplinary
boundaries or to distance one discipline from another. This strategy may not prove to be
effective. There are adverse consequences to both increasing the degrees of separation in
models being investigated or decreasing the ratio of IT-related constructs to total number
of constructs in a research model (Benbasat 185).
Information systems research despite its strong ties to its foundational fields of
organization science, management science, and computer science may indeed continue to
occupy a centralized amorphous existence in relationship to the former disciplines.
Information systems is the "glue" that binds the enterprise together, and IS has an impact
on every aspect of organizational life. This belief implies that the unique identity of
information systems lies in focusing attention exclusively on the immediate nomological
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net surrounding the IT artifact. Rather, information systems’ strength as a scholarly
community derives partly from its study of the first-order, second-order, and third-order
effects of IT that span multiple functional areas and business processes (Argawal 390).
Information systems research is a relatively new academic discipline which has
increased in importance over the past 50 years as the rate of information technology
adoption has evolved dramatically. The massive growth of information systems research
has also contributed to its identity crisis. Information systems research is being drawn
upon by other traditional research disciplines such as organization science, management
science, and computer science as they too recognize the information systems component
pervading their fields.
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Bibliography
Agarwal, R., and Lucas Jr., H. C. (2005). Comments on " The information systems
identity crisis: focusing on high-visibility and high-impact research”. MIS Quarterly,
29(3), September, pp. 381-398.
Banker R. D., and Kauffman R. J. (2004). The evolution of research on information
systems: a fiftieth-year survey of the literature in management science. Management
Science, 50(3), March, pp.281-298.
Barki, H., Rivard, S., and Talbot, J. (1993) A keyword classification scheme for is
research literature: an update. MIS Quarterly, 17(2), June, pp. 209-226.
Benbasat I., & Zmud R. W. (2003) The identity crisis within the IS discipline: defining
and communicating the discipline’s core properties. MIS Quarterly, 27(2), 183-194.
Cheon, M. J., C. Lee, and V. Grover (1992) "Research in MIS - points of work and
reference: a replication and extension of the Culnan and Swanson study,"
ACM SIGMIS Database (23) 2, pp. 21-29.
Grover, V., Ayyagari, R., Gokhale, R., Lim, J., and Coffey, J. (2006) A citation analysis of
the evolution and state of information systems within a constellation of reference
disciplines. Journal of the AIS, 7(5), May, pp. 270-325.
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Whinston, A. B., Geng, X. (2004) Operationalizing the essential role of the
information technology artifact in information systems research: gray area, pitfalls,
and the importance of strategic ambiguity. MIS Quarterly, 28(2), p149-159