Information Systems - The State of the Field

14 Scoping the Discipline of Information Systems

research issues are sustainable. The particular phenomenon being examined may change, but the underlying IS research issues remain.

Key concepts in IS—educational perspective

As this chapter is attempting to acknowledge the broad scope of IS, it may be useful to examine the perspective of IS educators and of business. Forty of the world’s most influential IS educators jointly specified the key concepts in IS for business students (Ives et al., 2002). Among the authors are those who, in another forum, sought to limit the scope of the IS discipline (Benbasat and Zmud, 2003)! It is suggested that this list (Table 1.2) comprises the essence of the discipline in its business and organizational contexts. The breadth of scope and the balanced focus on technology, organizational, management and social issues are noteworthy.

This suggests that IS must retain a broad focus on issues at the intersection of technology and business, and the conclusion of these eminent authors is that: ’We believe that information technology is now the prime driver and enabler of business strategy for many, if not most, organizations’ (Ives et al., 2002).

Key IS issues—industry perspective

Given that the focus of IS is on applications of technology in organizations and by individuals, then analysis of the key IS management issues confronting business can assist in defining the core focus of IS. Table 1.3 compares the top ten issues from the international study (CSC, 2004) and a study of 301 Society of Management and the Conference Board members in the USA across more than ten industries (Luftman and McLean, 2004). Although the terminology

Table 1.2 Key IS concepts—educational perspective

1What are information systems?

2How do information systems influence organizational competitiveness?

3Why have databases become so important to modern organizations?

4Why are technology infrastructures so important to modern organizations?

5What is the role of the Internet and networking technology in modern organizations and how is e-business transforming organizations and markets?

6What are the unique economics of information and information systems?

7How do information systems enable organizational processes?

8How do organizations develop, acquire and implement information systems?

9What is the nature of IS management?

10What ethical, criminal and security issues do organizations face when using information systems?

		Alignment 15
	Table 1.3 Comparison of key IS/IT issues for executives 2003
CSC international study 2003		SIM/TCB USA study 2003
(CSC, 2004)		(Luftman and McLean, 2004)
1	Maximizing the return on IT for the business	IT and business alignment
2	Enterprise architectures for business agility	IT strategic planning
3	Safeguarding information assets	Security and privacy
4	Driving competitive advantage through	Attracting / retaining IT
	innovation	professionals
5	Selecting and managing sourcing options	Measuring value of IT
6	Structuring for global organizations	Measuring performance of IT
7	Managing business change	Creating information architecture
8	Managing business relationships	Reducing complexity
9	Connecting with CEO and peers	Speed and agility
10	Adopting new roles and responsibilities	IT governance

differs across the two studies, there is a high level of consistency between the studies about the major IS/IT challenges confronting industry. This high degree of consistency across numerous studies (see also Elliot and Avison, 2005) helps in defining the core focus of the academic discipline of IS.

ALIGNMENT

Concern has been expressed that the IS discipline suffers from a lack of focus due to excessive diversity in its research. Table 1.4 shows a cross analysis of seven sources that contribute to determining IS research focus and theory using the research categories proposed by Barki et al. (1993). The table demonstrates remarkable uniformity in breadth and depth of focus by industry and education over the past 20 years. Despite specific emphasis by one or more sources, taken as a whole, there is a high degree of alignment on core issues.

The outlying categories, reference disciplines and research, could not be expected to be included as issues of concern to industry, but research and education on a specific discipline may reasonably be considered part of that discipline. The IS discipline should continue to engage in a discourse with other reference disciplines as they all seek to cater for technology-enabled transformation of industries and organizations. This appears to be one of the weaknesses of the argument that IS educators and researchers should deliberately exclude potentially relevant theory from other disciplines.

16 Scoping the Discipline of Information Systems

Table 1.4 Cross-analysis of sources determining core focus of IS research

	Research categories
	(Barki, Rivard and	Reference	External environment
	Talbot, 1993)
	ACS submission, 1992	√	√
	Benbasat and Zmud, 2003	—	—
	Baskerville and Myers, 2002	√	√
	Ives et al., 2002	—	√
	Key IS management issues,	—	—
	CSC, 2001		√
	Key IS management issues,	—
	CSC, 1988		√
	Key technology issues,	—
	CSC, 2000	√	√
	Barki, Rivard and Talbot,
	1993

ITsystems	Organizational environment	ISmanagement	ISdevelopment andoperations	ISusage	IStypes	ISeducationand research
√	√	√	√	√	√	√
√	*	√	√	√	√	*
√	√	√	√	√	√	√
√	√	√	√	√	√	√
√	√	√	√	√	√	—
√	√	√	√	√	√	—
√	√	√	√	√	√	—
√	√	√	√	√	√	√

Key: √ core focus; — not mentioned or excluded; * limited applicability

This overview of the IS discipline acknowledges the rapidly developing nature of the IS discipline as it responds to the essential dual roles of IS in enabling organizations to realize potential strategic and operational benefits while facilitating the fundamental transformation of traditional business and government practice and, in a wider context society, through the processes of global transformation.

The IS discipline is located to assist these organizations and industries through both research and education. The energy that powers organizational innovation fuels the energy and excitement that enthuses IS researchers to contribute to the development and revision of IS theory.

Although this chapter acknowledges different views and orientations of researchers in this comparatively new and exciting discipline, core concepts and issues identified by researchers, educators and industry over the period from 1988 to 2003 display fundamental alignment and agreement in their focus. We have demonstrated that there is much more coherence in the discipline than is frequently observed, and this has not meant narrow boundaries in its focus of study.

IS has reached a level of maturity where it has gone beyond merely incorporating seminal works in other disciplines: it now acts as a reference discipline in its own right. Its status has changed from an

References 17

emerging to an accepted academic discipline, impacting on teaching, research and practice. Its work is both important and permanent.

NOTE

1Editors’ Note: This paper was produced as an original contribution to this volume, but appears first in the chronological order of the papers because it is an update of a paper first published by Avison and Fitzgerald in 1991, and developed further in Elliot and Avison in 2005, and provides a good general introduction to the topics.

REFERENCES

ACS (1992) Submission to Review of Computing Disciplines, Australian Computer Society, Canberra.

Avison, D. and Fitzgerald, G. (1991) ‘Information systems practice, education and research’, Journal of Information Systems, 1(1), pp. 5–17.

Avison, D. E. and Fitzgerald, G. (2003) Information Systems Development: Methodologies, Techniques and Tools, 3rd edn, McGraw-Hill, London.

Avison, D. E. and Myers, M. D. (1995) ‘Information systems and anthropology: An anthropological perspective on IT and organizational culture’, Information Technology and People, 8(3), pp. 43–56.

Barki, H., Rivard, S. and Talbot, J. (1993) ‘A Keyword classification scheme for IS research literature: An update’, MIS Quarterly, 17(2), pp. 209–26.

Baskerville, R. and Myers, M. (2002) ‘Information systems as a reference discipline’, MIS Quarterly, 26(1), pp. 1–14.

Carr, N. (2003) ‘IT doesn’t matter’, Harvard Business Review (May), pp. 1–10. Checkland, P. B. (1999) ‘Systems thinking’, in W. L. Currie and R. G. Galliers (eds),

Rethinking Management Information Systems, OUP, Oxford.

CSC (2004) 16th Annual Survey of IS Management Issues, Computer Sciences Corporation, El Segundo, California.

Dickson, G. W., Benbasat, I. and King, W. R. (1980) ‘The management information systems area: Problems, challenges and opportunities’, in Proceedings of the First International Conference in Information Systems, McLean, E. R. (ed.), pp. 1–8.

Elliot, S. and Avison, D. (2005) ‘Discipline of information systems’, in D. Avison and J. Pries-Heje (eds), Research in Information Systems: A Handbook for Research Supervisors and Their Students (Butterworth Heinemann), pp. 185–206.

Giddens, A. (1987) Social Theory and Modern Sociology, Polity Press, Cambridge. Habermas, J. (1979) Communication and the Evolution of Society, Beacon Press.

Ives, B., Valacich, J. S., Watson, R. T. and Zmud, R. W. (2002) ‘What every business student needs to know about information systems’, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 9, pp. 467–77.

Kling, R. E. (1996) Computerization and Controversy, Academic Press, San Diego. Lamb, R. and Kling, R. (2003) ‘Reconceptualizing users as social actors in information

systems research’, MIS Quarterly, 27(2), pp. 197–235.

Latour, B. (1987) Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Harvard Universilty Press, Cambridge, Mass.

18 Scoping the Discipline of Information Systems

Lee, A. S. (2001) Editorial, MIS Quarterly, 25(1), pp. iii–vii.

Luftman, J. and McLean, E. R. (2004) ‘Key issues for IT executives’, MISQ Executive, 3(2), pp. 89–104.

Mumford, E. (1995) Effective Requirements Analysis and Systems Design: The ETHICS Method, Macmillan, Basingstoke.

OECD (2001) The Internet and Business Performance, OECD, Paris.

Orlikowski, W. J. and Baroudi, J. J. (1991) ‘Studying information technology in organizations: Research approaches and assumptions’, Information Systems Research, 2(1), pp. 1–28.

Sambamurthy, V., Bharadwaj, A. S. and Grover, V. (2003) ‘Shaping agility through digital options: Reconceptualizing the role of information technology in contemporary firms’, MIS Quarterly, 27(2), pp. 237–63.

Shannon, C. E. and Weaver, W. (1949) The Mathematical Theory of Communication, University of Illinois Press, Chicago.

Simon, H. A. (1981) The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass. Stamper, R. (1997) ‘Organisational semiotics’, in J. Mingers and F. Stowell (eds),

Information Systems: An Emerging Discipline, McGraw Hill, Maidenhead.

2

Desperately Seeking the ‘IT’ in IT Research: A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact

Wanda J. Orlikowski and C. Suzanne Iacono

INTRODUCTION

We begin this commentary with what we believe is a telling observation: that the field of Information Systems (IS), which is premised on the centrality of information technology in everyday life, has not deeply engaged its core subject matter—the Information Technology (IT) artifact. While there have been a number of attempts over the years to conceptualize IT artifacts in various ways (as we will describe below), we find that, by and large, IT artifacts—those bundles of material and cultural properties packaged in some socially-recognizable form such as hardware and/or software—continue to be under-theorized. Indeed, IS researchers tend to focus their theoretical attention elsewhere, for example, on the context within which some usually unspecified technology is seen to operate, on the discrete processing capabilities of artifacts (as separate from how they operate in context), or on the dependent variable—that which the technology presumably affects or changes as it is developed, implemented, and used. The outcome is that much IS research draws on commonplace and received notions of technology, resulting in conceptualizations of IT artifacts as relatively stable, discrete, independent, and fixed. As a consequence,

Reprinted by permission, Orlikowski, W. J., S. Iacono, 2001, ‘Desperately seeking the IT in IT research: a call to theorizing the IT artifact’, Information Systems Research 12(2), pp. 121–34. Copyright 2001, the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences, 7240 Parkway Drive, Suite 310, Hanover, MD 21076, USA.

20 Desperately Seeking the ‘IT’ in IT Research

IT artifacts in IS research tend to be taken-for-granted or are assumed to be unproblematic.

The status of technological artifacts as taken-for-granted is not restricted to the IS field, but has permeated most studies of technology, including those in sociology (Bijker, 1995) and organizational studies (Orlikowski and Barley, 2001). For example, Pinch and Bijker (1987, p. 21) argue that ‘...in the economic analysis of technological innovation everything is included that might be expected to influence innovation, except any discussion of the technology itself.’ Articulations of the nature and role of technology, and theories of its interdependence with social contexts are also missing from classic social theory, where technology is either ‘black-boxed’ and treated as a monolith (Latour, 1987), or it ‘vanishes’ from view in the preoccupation with social constructions (Button, 1993). Processes such as innovation and change are conceptualized largely in socio-economic terms, while ‘things’ are not considered or are treated as self-evident (Pinch and Bijker, 1987). Technology, as the quintessential ‘thing,’ dissipates into the atmosphere around us, or it becomes emblematic of our ‘age.’ We throw it up as a banner of our times, but then instantly let it recede from view by stereotyping or ignoring it.

In this paper, we present evidence for our assertion that IS research has not seriously engaged its core subject matter—the IT artifact. Our evidence is based on a review of the full set of articles (N = 188) published in the Information Systems Research journal since its inception ten years ago. For each article, we examined whether and how IS researchers conceptualized and dealt with information technology, and then analyzed the results. After presenting the findings, we discuss their implications, and then offer some directions for research that are premised on the critical importance of developing and using theories of information technology in IS research.

CONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF THE IT ARTIFACT

During the 1980s, several IS researchers attempted to overcome shortcomings in what they perceived to be overly narrow views of technology in the IS field. They offered alternative conceptualizations of what technology is, how it has effects, and how and why it is implicated in social change. Kling and Scacchi (1982), for example, developed the concept of ‘web models’ of computing in contrast to what they saw as the dominant ‘discrete-entity’ model of computing. From their perspective, information technology is more than just the tools deployed on the desktop or the factory floor. It is

Conceptualizations of the IT Artifact 21

the ensemble or ‘web’ of equipment, techniques, applications and people that define a social context, including the history of commitments in making up that web, the infrastructure that supports its development and use, and the social relations and processes which make up the terrain in which people use it. A few years later, Markus and Robey (1988) presented a number of different ways of understanding and studying the relationship between technology and organizational change. In their analysis, technology can be theorized as playing different roles—as an independent variable, a dependent variable, or as one of a number of players in an emergent process of change, where the outcomes are indeterminate because they are situationally and dynamically contingent.

Given Kling and Scacchi’s and Markus and Robey’s articulations of alternative conceptualizations of technology in the 1980s, we wondered what IS researchers had done with them since then. Had they used or built on these conceptualizations, elaborated or expanded them, or perhaps even created new ones? And how had such alternative conceptualizations influenced our collective understanding of the nature and role of technology in organizational and socio-economic practices? To answer these questions, we examined the evidence, reviewing every article that has been published in Information Systems Research (ISR) since the journal’s commencement in 1990 through to the end of 1999—a decade’s worth of data on research in the IS field. Categories of information technology conceptualizations were derived inductively from the data, using the grounded theory approach known as ‘open coding’ (Strauss, 1987). The interpretations and labels we gave to those conceptualizations were informed by the literature on technology, as reflected in the fields of IS, computer science, organization studies, and sociology.

Based on our coding of the 188 articles published in the past decade of ISR, we identified 14 specific conceptualizations of information technology. We then compared these 14 conceptualizations, looking for commonalities and differences, and found we could cluster them into five broad meta-categories each representing a common set of assumptions about and treatments of information technology in IS research. Our labels for these meta-categories signal the primary conceptualization of technology that distinguishes each category: the tool view, the proxy view, the ensemble view, the computational view, and the nominal view. Below, we first discuss these various views of information technology evident in the ISR literature, before turning to a discussion of their representation in the literature and the implications of such results for current and future IS research.

22 Desperately Seeking the ‘IT’ in IT Research

I. Tool View of Technology

The tool view represents the common, received wisdom about what technology is and means. Technology, from this view, is the engineered artifact, expected to do what its designers intend it to do. As such, what the technology is and how it works are seen to be largely technical matters—matters that are separate, definable, and unchanging, matters over which humans have control. Two scholars—Rob Kling and Bruno Latour—have conceptualized this view in the course of moving beyond it. Kling (1987, p. 311) describes the ‘tool’ view of information technology as: ‘A computing resource [that] is best conceptualized as a particular piece of equipment, application or technique which provides specifiable information processing capabilities.’ He argues that such a view conceives of information technology independently of the social or organizational arrangements within which it is developed and used. Latour (1987), in turn, argues that the tool view ‘black boxes’ technologies and assumes that they are stable, settled artifacts that can be passed from hand to hand and used as is, by anyone, anytime, and anywhere. George et al. (1990)—in a study that investigates the impacts of GDSS on group decision-making—provide an example of this view. They conceptualize the IT artifact as a set of group communication tools with specifiable features that are hypothesized to produce more effective group outcomes than would result from face-to-face communications without those tools.

We found that the ‘tool’ view was represented in the ISR literature in four different ways—as a tool for labor substitution, a tool for enhancing productivity, a tool for information processing, and a tool for changing social relations. These four conceptualizations share a view of information technology as a relatively unproblematic computing resource, and have in common the treatment of such technology as the primary independent variable in the studies undertaken. Little conceptual or theoretical attention is paid to the technology. Often it is just named—as in ‘Lotus 1-2-3’—and its technical features are listed. What matters most in these studies is the dependent variable—that which is affected, altered, or transformed by the tool. What this view suggests is that tool-using humans and organizations can vary labor needs, increase performance, enhance informationprocessing capabilities, and shift social relations.

Technology as labor substitution tool

Since the days of mechanization and automation, it was assumed that new technologies would substitute for and replace labor. Organizations

Conceptualizations of the IT Artifact 23

would be more productive because fewer people could do more work (and more reliable work). Early studies of technologies such as shop-floor numerical control machines ignited age-old fears that machines would replace workers (Castells 1996) and led to predictions of mass unemployment. Similar arguments were made for information technology (Attewell and Rule 1984). Applegate et al. (1988, p. 129), for example, argue that management information systems are organizational ‘tool[s] for downsizing and restructuring’ as they can replace scores of analysts and middle managers and enable organizations to work more cheaply and efficiently.

Technology as productivity tool

Subsequent notions of technology shifted from labor-substitution to labor-augmentation. Technologies here are seen to be ‘productivity tools,’ prosthetic devices that enable individuals and social institutions to extend their reach and achieve performance benefits in the course of their ongoing socio-economic activities. To describe the technical features of a new technology is to understand what that technology will do, as its performance capabilities are assumed to be designed in the technical features. For example, in the 1980s, the flexible features of PCs were thought to enable more productivity because workers could more easily shift from one task to another. In the 1990s, the collaborative features of groupware were thought to enable increased productivity as workers could more easily develop and maintain work collaborations. In this view, performance outcomes are assumed to be positive and to result from replacing older (read: slower, less efficient, less accurate, more cumbersome, and more time-consuming) ways of working with new technologyenabled ways of working.

Technology as information processing tool

In practice, simple substitution of new technologies for older ways of doing things did not always produce the expected labor reductions or performance enhancements. An alternative ‘tool view’ argued that what technology does best is to alter and enhance the ways that humans and organizations process information. For example, at the institutional level of analysis, Leavitt and Whistler (1958) hypothesized that computerization of the firm would allow for information collected at the bottom levels of the firm to flow to the top, thus, recentralizing decision-making authority. More recently, the Internet has been conceptualized in information processing terms, being seen as a large-scale repository of information that can be searched, manipulated, and used for socio-economic gain. IS researchers have