Information Systems - The State of the Field

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typologies can help to derive a broad classification of what is involved at the level of language (‘structures of signification’ in Giddens’ terms), organizations and technology. We readily admit that the organizational level should have been broadened to other types of social entities, i.e. any type of social associations including society as a whole. Information systems are replacements for natural language communications that tend to precede social actions or are necessary to coordinate them. IS replace natural language interaction by a more limited set of predefined language constructs (cf. Hirschheim, Klein and Lyytinen, 1995). They can also serve as a mere transmission channel of natural language messages (as in email, voice mail, etc). Social actions can broadly be classified into two types. The first includes those that make a claim to power or efficiency and aim at achieving previously determined objectives with minimal effort (teleological action). They include what Giddens (1984) called ‘structures of domination’. The second category involves some form of communication about facts, effectiveness and norms of social appropriateness, fairness, justice and good taste. This category also includes discourse in which the communication partners argue and negotiate their differing views on what the facts are (truth), which means are effective to achieve desired outcomes (means tests and their reliability), what is or is not socially appropriate, and what is fair and just in conflict of interest situations (omitting aesthetic discourse about questions of good taste for the sake of brevity).

Of course, the linguistic medium (terminology, symbolic functions, etc.) of different types of IS itself becomes part of the social language context. Examples of research on how the introduction of new technology provides opportunities for social structuring (e.g. Giddens’ ‘structures of signification’) have already been published (cf. Barley, 1986; Orlikowski, 1993).

Arenas (or Spheres) of Social Interaction as Core Phenomena of IS Research

The focus on the ‘language context’ reminds us that the essential core phenomena for the IS discipline are the various types of interactions taking place between humans either directly or indirectly when mediated by technological (IT artifact) interfaces. This suggestion is not the same as putting the IT artifact at the center of a nomological net. Therefore, we propose that a step in the right direction of defining flexible boundaries for the IS discipline (as advocated in several other contributions) is to build on Lee’s idea of focusing on the interactions between the human-social domains (or spheres) of action and the technology subsystems. In distinction to Lee (undated)

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we avoid the term ‘social system or subsystem’ as not all spheres of human interaction are easily construed as ‘systems’ without introducing a mechanistic bias—we realize however that in some domains the systems concept might be fruitfully applied, e.g. in the sense of Luhmann (cf. Stehr and Bechman, 2005).

In the first ICIS conference, Bariff and Ginzberg (1980) had already proposed that four levels of analysis needed to be considered: individual, group, organization and society. However, with the emergence of globalism, we need to add international organizations and intercultural systems to the mix. From this perspective it is parochial that past IS research has mostly limited itself to organizations and groups as its preferred study domains. This has, of course, begun to change as growing numbers of researchers have begun to recognize that a societal and global perspective will be indispensable for a constructive approach to the offshoring phenomenon. In light of this, our earlier framework (Hirschheim, Klein and Lyytinen, 1996) for defining core research issues needs to be broadened. Our current perspective leads us to define the following three major interaction systems that together could shape the identity of the IS discipline:

·The interactions or cross-impacts of technology with the social context of individuals, groups, communities of practice, organizations, institutions, societies and the world’s global socio-cultural-political- economic constituencies.

·The relationships between different technologies that can support and enhance the creation and exchange of meanings; this includes the study and design of their interfaces and their language context of use as the latter differentiates itself along various dimensions both locally and globally. This also includes but is not limited to the ontological representation issues; in fact, all possible media and structures for negotiating, storing and transmitting coded meanings are to be included.

·The complete set of interactions and cross-impacts of technology between the aforementioned types of agents themselves (individuals, groups, organizations, institutions, societies, global social entities) and various types of technology. Both within category and crosscategory interactions are important.

No single reference discipline looks across all three of these major interaction systems from the perspective of how information and knowledge is engaged in and created by social action. Therefore IS researchers could claim these domains or spheres of interactions as their own core phenomena, but include the results of other disciplines that may study special aspects of these domains as for

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example advertising effects (marketing), individual problem solving (cognitive psychology of man–machine interfaces), manage- ment–labor communications (industrial relations), control hierarchies (organizational theory), inter-government communications (political science), and so forth. Finally, if information and knowledge aspects of domains or sphere of social actions were made the core of IS research, then IS becomes a discipline of trans-organizational innovation. In this context, the outsourcing of routine functions built around canned ontological representations loses its identitythreatening character.

IS RESEARCH—IMPLICATIONS OF BEING A ‘COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE AND KNOWING’

Approximately half of the articles explicitly recognize the importance of analyzing IS research as a social process of knowledge creation. We agree that this is a healthy balance. The social process view of knowledge creation has two consequences that could have been expressed more clearly in our JAIS contribution.

·First, it applies to the praxis of IS development and use at all levels of interaction as were indicated above. That is knowledge creation in the organization is not a technical issue but a social process issue which is the same point already made regarding limitations of a techno-centric conception of the role of IS in the field, i.e. organizations and other units of analysis.

·Second, it also applies to the nature of IS research itself and then touches on the very core and mission of the discipline. It is the second aspect that is the subject matter of the current debate. It is reflected in the keywords that emerged from this side of the debate such as community of practice, identity, unity and diversity, various forms of legitimacy, discourse with reference disciplines, boundary formation and trans-disciplinarily—to name just a few.

From this discussion, we have learned some important ideas that complement our JAIS comments on the paradigm discussion. There is only one important claim with which we disagree, namely that the ‘community of practice’ perspective supports an optimistic assessment of the future legitimacy of IS. In fact, we reach an almost opposite conclusion.

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The Fundamental Importance of the ‘Community of

Practice (and Knowing)’ Perspective

DeSanctis has offered an excellent contribution to the IS community by suggesting that the social structure of our discipline (or in fact any academic discipline) can and should be analyzed using the perspective of the community of practice (CoP) literature. Our following discussion presumes that the reader is familiar with DeSanctis’ summary of five defining criteria of a CoP. It is a major shortcoming of our JAIS article that it failed to recognize the fruitful implications of examining the structure and processes of the IS research community as a potential CoP. It naturally complements Kuhn’s (1970) notion of a paradigm community, on which we built. However, we hasten to add that we did cover issues that have a close relationship to the propositions and claims raised by DeSanctis albeit under somewhat differing labels. They can be found in the section on ‘Internal Disconnects’ (p. 255) under such phrases as ‘tolerance of alternative paradigms’ (and their associated communities), ‘fragmentation and paradigm conflict’, ‘vehicles of knowledge creation’, ‘relevance for whom’, and most importantly ‘the communication deficit’. These issues do not simply disappear by renaming the IS discipline from an ‘adhocracy’ to ‘a community of practice’.

Why the CoP&K Concept Currently Spells Trouble for IS as an Applied Discipline

At least two issues arise from the observation that DeSanctis uncritically imports some assumptions from the CoP literature, which do not necessarily hold in the context of an academic discipline, particularly not for the IS discipline. These assumptions are that CoP is a community with shared assumptions on the nature of the world segment with which it is dealing and on the nature knowledge that is the foundation for its practice. A second assumption is that a CoP enjoys relatively unproblematic, outside legitimation. We feel that the current debate could be enriched and deepened considerably, if these (and possibly other) assumptions of the CoP metaphor were articulated more clearly so that the state of the discipline as a CoP can be debated more rigorously.

For this purpose, it is fruitful to note the great similarity between a community which shares a paradigm (i.e. Kuhn’s paradigmatic community) and a CoP as long as we define paradigm broadly as any shared frame of reference with an associated stock of meanings taken for granted about some domain of interest. We also add that, just like a paradigmatic academic community, a CoP tends to evolve a shared

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lifeworld (in the sense of Schutz and Luckmann’s [1974] The Structures of the Lifeworld; see also Berger and Luckmann’s [1967] The Social Construction of Reality) through which newcomers become socialized into the prevailing terminology, definitions (stocks of meaning) and practices that the CoP is taking for granted. To put it in Heidegger’s terms, to be a member of a CoP is a specific way of ‘being-in-the- world’ through continuous engagements with the (physical) entities that make up this world (‘ready-to-hand-entities’) and ‘being-with- others’ about whom we have to worry and with whom we relate to the entities of the community’s shared lifeworld. From these ongoing community engagements, a common stock of meaning is built up, which is grounded on accepted practices. Along with this comes an internally recognized, but partly informal record of achievements, which enables relatively smooth and efficient communications in day-to-day affairs of common interest. If we put knowledge work and knowledge creation at the core of a CoP, we might emphasize this symbolic meaning aspect by speaking of a ‘CoP and Knowing’ or CoP&K. Boland and Tenkas (1995) presented a persuasive argument that organizations typically consist of several interacting CoP&K (cf. further discussion in Klein and Lyytinen, 2005).

In fact this is the key point. If organizations consist of several interacting CoP&K, in spite of having a single center of authority, the same is likely to apply to academic disciplines without a single center of authority and strong paradigmatic consensus. Therefore, the first major issue raised by DeSanctis’ contribution is its implicit assumption that IS is one great community of practice. Unfortunately she does not say anything about the internal structure of the IS community (as we do in our JAIS contribution) nor about its boundary to the sister disciplines (computer science, software engineering, information or library science) nor about its relationship to other CoPs, which are very important for IS as an academic field, such as the professional IS practitioners and general management.

Indeed, the articles in this very book provide overwhelming evidence that paradigm conflict is alive and well. This is prima facie evidence that IS consists of several interacting CoP&K. Based on the literature analysis in Orlikowski and Baroudi (1991) and Hirschheim et al. (1996), we could argue that we have at least three major paradigms that, with their associated research literature, potentially function as the frame of reference for at least three communities of practice. Within each of these three major communities, there are important subdivisions and hence there may actually be more than three CoP&K. For example, Hevner et al. have claimed to bridge two paradigms, which in fact are both sub-communities of positivism—albeit different ones.

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If we accept the similarity, or perhaps identity, of the paradigm (which Orlikowski and Baroudi preferred to call a ‘research philosophy’) and the ‘CoP frame of reference’ concepts, at least for the lifeworlds of academia, then the notion of paradigm conflict leads to the notion of adhocracy and this seems to support the idea that IS as a discipline may not be one but several CoP&Ks. Each of these subscribes to a different view of the (social) world, values, research methods, legitimacy criteria and mission for IS as a discipline. Yes, we have routines for global interaction like academic conferences (e.g. ICIS, AMCIS, ECIS, etc.) and shared journals; but once at a global conference, we head off to separate CoP meetings—the ones that we feel are most supportive of our current research interests. Interaction between these subCoP&K is very infrequent and therefore fails one of DeSanctis’ critical criteria that we are all just one CoP. Similarly for journals; we tend to read those papers that share the paradigmatic lens and literature of our own research associates.

On the positive side, a CoP&K analysis of the field could yield a much richer picture of the internal community structure than the crude distinction of just three fundamental research paradigms. This monograph is one of the rare examples where papers with sharply conflicting perspectives are published together and commented on from differing perspectives—otherwise benign indifference (or silent hostility) instead of spirited cross-paradigm (cross-CoP&K) debate is the rule. To some extent DeSanctis indirectly recognizes the ongoing fragmentation of IS research when speaking of ‘spawning other venues of interaction’ (p. 365) and the need for continuing to ‘develop forums of interaction and debate’ (p. 370). Our JAIS article also strongly supports this recommendation with a similar call for ‘Required Changes in Institutional Publication Practices’ (p. 276) to overcome internal communication deficits.

The above analysis now allows us to state our arguments concerning the ‘external disconnects’ more succinctly with the concept of CoP&K. Our point was that the professional practitioners’ CoP&K is separate from the loose intellectual federation of academic CoP&K. From this arise obvious communication deficits. To address them we called for a new research priority to create better ‘understanding of our organizational stakeholders’ and to develop social boundary-spanning ‘knowledge creation and transformation networks’. Of course, these networks should reach out to all stakeholders and constituencies that are of importance to IS as a discipline.

Until this happens, it is misleading to diagnose that all is well with IS as long as IS researchers form a thriving CoP&K. This is the second major issue. By not connecting to the outside and without outside validation, IS as an academic discipline in the longer term is at risk of losing its

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legitimacy regardless of how much ‘vibrancy’ it signals with its internal processes (DeSanctis, p. 7). However, we do agree with DeSanctis and others (e.g. Robey) that the only way to meet this threat is to ‘Resist the Lure of the “Dominant Research Paradigm”’, to focus on substantive questions, to embrace inter-disciplinarity (Galliers) with the widest possible participation (DeSanctis, p. 369), improve communication and so forth. However, we are not convinced that the emphasis of substance should go hand in hand with less attention to method and commentary (DeSanctis, p. 373). In the state of differing community standards of quality, how else can we even know what substance means and where we can find it if not through commentary on results and the prevailing methods, which are often applied by way of fashion without proper reflection and justification.

CoP&K Summary

Given more space, we could find many quotes in the other articles supporting our conclusion that a CoP&K is a great analytical contribution to the current debate, but its application to the state of the discipline yields little reason for comfort. It reinforces our notion that IS suffers or will suffer substantially unless it finds ways to overcome its internal and external communication deficits. We do agree with DeSanctis that the internal communication deficits at this point have their positive sides—as demonstrated by this monograph—but they are still worrisome. The very fact that we have the discussion in this book shows that internal communication and reflection can be increased across CoP (paradigmatic) boundaries. The good will demonstrated by all towards this project and the widespread interest in and contributions to this debate have given us hope that IS will emerge stronger rather than weaker from this debate.

CONCLUSIONS

It should be apparent to everyone that this debate is unique (at least in IS). Never before have so many diverse and well-known voices come together between the covers of one book to debate their often conflicting views so openly and sincerely. Therefore, we consider ourselves honored and fortunate to be a part of this project. While the long-term outcome of this effort is uncertain, the hope is that this will inspire a second round of double-loop learning (Argyris) which may

References 321

lift the debate to a higher level to meet the very significant challenges that await us.

We are reminded of the classical debates on the contrasting conceptions of Systems Science and hard vs. soft Operations Research. Commentators such as Ackoff and Checkland warned the Systems and OR communities of taking a too narrow view of the nature of their mission and problems, emphasizing the need for a ‘soft’, i.e. humanistic/social theoretic, perspective. Their calls mostly fell on deaf ears. We hope that history will not repeat itself in that the vigor of the field lies in its pursuit of diverse, trans-disciplinary trajectories (Galliers), and as Robey formulates it: ‘responses that are not seen as entirely self serving . . . we should not ignore the wealth of theoretical and methodological guidance available in related fields’ (2003, p. 357). In our minds, these fields include both philosophy and the social and cultural sciences but, at the same time, we must not forget computer science nor the practices and contributions of industry.

If the debate has shown anything, it is that ‘. . . different theoretical lenses lead to very different conclusions regarding the status and the future direction of the field’ (Ives et al., 2004, p. 120). Regardless of what the lenses are, we agree with Lyytinen and King (2004, p. 242) who state that the future of the field will lie with: ‘(1) salience of the subjects studied, (2) the strength of results from the study, and (3) the plasticity of the field with respect to changing circumstances.’ In our view, disagreements about the interpretation of these three factors are not a sign of weakness, but of health.

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