Textbook

Information Systems: The State of the Field

John Leslie King (Editor), Kalle Lyytinen (Editor)

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Overview

Discussion of the precise nature of the Information System discipline has raged for more than twenty years and continues fiercely today. The most interesting aspect of recent debate is not only the sharpness and depth of the arguments, but the diverse conclusions arrived at by participants. While very different, these have all been reached with the genuine aim of strengthening IS scholarship, and they all add to our specific understanding of the discipline in the last two decades. Edited by two of the most prominent academics in the field, Information Systems - The State of the Field brings together such perspectives along with wider contextual discussion to provide a fertile ground for reflection, learning and further debate. It includes articles from Izak Benbasat, Robert Galliers, Rudi Hirschheim, Heinz Klein, Suzi Iacono, Wanda Orlikowski, Gerry DeSanctis, Bob Zmud, Dan Robey, Kalle Lyytinen, John King, Sal March and Ron Weber, all of whom also provide a short original commentary of their views on this debate.

Table of Contents

List of Contributors.

Foreword—Gordon B. Davis.

Series Preface—Rudy Hirschheim.

Introduction—John Leslie King and Kalle Lyytinen.

Original Papers.

1 Scoping the Discipline of Information Systems—David Avison and Steve Elliot.

2 Desperately Seeking the ‘IT’ in IT Research: A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact—Wanda J. Orlikowski and C. Suzanne Iacono.

3 Still Desperately Seeking the IT Artifact—Ron Weber.

4 The Identity Crisis within the IS Discipline: Defining and Communicating the Discipline’s Core Properties—Izak Benbasat and Robert W. Zmud.

5 Crisis in the IS Field? A Critical Reflection on the State of the Discipline—Rudy A. Hirschheim and Heinz K. Klein.

6 Change as Crisis or Growth? Toward a Trans-disciplinary View of Information Systems as a Field of Study: A Response to Benbasat and Zmud’s Call for Returning to the IT Artifact—Robert D. Galliers.

7 The Social Life of Information Systems Research: A Response to Benbasat and Zmud’s Call for Returning to the IT Artifact—Gerardine DeSanctis.

8 Identity, Legitimacy and the Dominant Research Paradigm: An Alternative Prescription for the IS Discipline—Daniel Robey.

9 Design Science in Information Systems Research—Alan R. Hevner, Salvatore T. March, Jinsoo Park and Sudha Ram.

10 Nothing at the Center?: Academic Legitimacy in the Information Systems Field—Kalle Lyytinen and John Leslie King.

11 Reach and Grasp—John Leslie King and Kalle Lyytinen.

Commentaries.

12 The Artifact Redux: Further Reflections on the ‘IT’ in IT Research—Wanda J. Orlikowski and C. Suzanne Iacono.

13 Like Ships Passing in the Night: The Debate on the Core of the Information Systems Discipline—Ron Weber.

14 Further Reflections on the Identity Crisis—Izak Benbasat and Robert W. Zmud.

15 Further Reflections on the IS Discipline: Climbing the Tower of Babel—Heinz K. Klein and Rudy A. Hirschheim.

16 ‘Don’t Worry, be Happy . . . ’ A Post-Modernist Perspective on the Information Systems Domain—Robert D. Galliers.

17 Cleaning the Mirror: Desperately Seeking Identity in the Information Systems Field—Daniel Robey.

18 Designing Design Science—Salvatore T. March.

19 The Future of the IS Field: Drawing Directions from Multiple Maps—John Leslie King and Kalle Lyytinen.

Index.

Excerpts

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Author Information

John Leslie King is Dean and Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. He previously served on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine. He has published many articles and five books on the relationship between technical and social change, and has served in key editorial positions for many academic journals, including Information Systems Research, Information Infrastructure and Policy, Information Polity, Organization Science, Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, Information Systems Frontiers, ACM Computing Surveys, the Journal of Strategic IT, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, and the Journal of Information Systems Management. He is currently a member of the National Science Foundation’s Advisory Committees for the directorates of Computer and Information Science and Engineering and Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences, and a member of the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association. He holds a PhD in Administration from the University of California, Irvine.

Kalle Lyytinen is Iris S. Wolstein Professor at Case Western Reserve University. He has published books, articles and conference papers on his research, which includes system design, method engineering, implementation, software risk assessment, computer-supported cooperative work, standardization, ubiquitous computing, IT-induced innovation in architecture and the construction industry, design and use of ubiquitous applications in health care, high level requirements model for large scale systems, and the development and adoption of broadband wireless standards and services. He serves currently on the editorial boards of several leading IS journals including the Journal of AIS (Senior Editor), Information Systems Research, the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Information and Organization, Requirements Engineering Journal and Information Systems Journal among others. He holds a PhD from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland.

New To This Edition

The editors are two of the most prominent academics in the IS field
This topic has been fiercely debated and therefore is of interest throughout the discipline
The contributors are of the highest calibre

Hallmark Features

The editors are two of the most prominent academics in the IS field
This topic has been fiercely debated and therefore is of interest throughout the discipline
The contributors are of the highest calibre