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

IS Research 2

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

IS Research 3

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.

IS Research 4

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

IS Research 5

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)

IS Research 6

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

IS Research 7

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.

IS Research 8

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.

IS Research 9

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