Formulating Research Methods for Information Systems

Volume 2

Chris Sauer, Leslie P. Willcocks, Mary C. Lacity, Chris Sauer, Leslie P. Willcocks, Mary C. Lacity

• Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan
• Jahr: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781137509888
• Thema: Computer Science
• Thema: Computer Science General

This edited two-volume collection presents the most interesting and compelling articles pertaining to the formulation of research methods used to study information systems from the 30 year publication history of the Journal of Information Technology (JIT).

V

Critical Literature Reviews of Information Systems Research

10

Research in information systems: a study of diversity and inter-disciplinary discourse in the AIS basket journals between 1995 and 2011

Edward WN Bernroider

Institute for Information Management and Control, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria

Alan Pilkington

School of Management, University of London, Surrey, UK

José-Rodrigo Córdoba

School of Management, University of London, Surrey, UK

Reprinted from Journal of Information Technology, 28, 79–89, 2013, doi:10.1057/jit.2013.5, ‘Research in information systems: a study of diversity and inter- disciplinary discourse in the AIS basket journals between 1995 and 2011’, by Edward WN Bernroider, Alan Pilkington and José-Rodrigo Córdoba. With kind permission from Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. All rights reserved.

The paper investigates how Information Systems (IS) has emerged as the product of interdisciplinary discourses. The research aim in this study is to better understand diversity in IS research, and the extent to which the diversity of discourse expanded and contracted from 1995 to 2011. Methodologically, we apply a combined citations/co-citations analysis based on the eight Association for Information Systems basket journals and the 22 subject-field classification framework provided by the Association of Business Schools. Our findings suggest that IS is in a state of continuous interaction and competition with other disciplines. General Management was reduced from a dominant position as a reference discipline in IS at the expense of a growing variety of other discourses including Business Strategy, Marketing, and Ethics and Governance, among others. Over time, IS as a field moved from the periphery to a central position during its discursive formation. This supports the notion of IS as a fluid discipline dynamically embracing a diverse range of adjacent reference disciplines, while keeping a degree of continuing interaction with them. Understanding where IS is currently at allows us to better understand and propose fruitful avenues for its development in both academia and practice.

Keywords: citation analysis; co-citation analysis; information systems research; reference discipline; Abbott; Foucault

Introduction

Information Systems (IS) is a relatively young field that has developed into a major body of knowledge and spread in many different ways over recent decades. The prime focus of IS is to understand and improve how sociotechnical systems comprising technical and human components or sub-systems gather, process and present data, information and knowledge to users, particularly in the context of an organizational workplace. According to Hassan and Will (2006), the IS community seems consensual in accepting that there are key problems the field addresses that are distinct from any other discipline. A number of studies have defined and mapped different elements of IS knowledge that academics and practitioners use in their work (Baskerville and Myers, 2002; Benbasat and Zmud, 2003; Chen and Hirschheim, 2004; Benbasat and Barki, 2007; Dwivedi and Kuljis, 2008; Klein and Hirschheim, 2008). These proposals reflect an interest of many to seek a firm disciplinary definition of IS in terms of core and boundary knowledge elements (Baskerville et al., 2010; Somers, 2010). To other community members there is an inherent risk in this attempt as any definition can be exclusive and potentially detrimental to the diversity of the contributing groups that form the IS community and to the fluidity of the discipline (Introna, 2003; Bryant, 2008; Paul, 2008; Oesterle et al., 2010). In the multi-disciplinary IS field borrowing of knowledge is a common method, as solutions to problems are created by drawing on theories and treatments that may have not originated in IS (Daft and Lewin, 2008). However, in this constant migration of ideas across fields, the IS field may lack some degree of originality (Wade et al., 2006), and IS may not serve as a strong reference discipline for other fields (Hansen et al., 2006). Consequently, some question if IS is on the right path to develop into a mature and lasting inter-disciplinary field (Hassan and Will, 2006).

Not helping the development of IS are recent debates in journals like the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) about the inclusion (or exclusion) of design science-oriented articles (Baskerville et al., 2010; Oesterle et al., 2010). This debate reflects an internal competition and self-justification in IS, which the well-known sociologist Bauman (1992) sees as a symptom of disciplines with a flawed discourse. Building on Baumann, Bryant (2008) extends this view and states that we need another perspective of IS, which accepts a fluid and contingent notion of a discipline where well-defined boundaries are neither helpful nor desirable.

The two positions above do little to recognize how IS has been both stable and fluent at different times. It is necessary to crystallize this development in order to draw lessons from where IS has been and where it could go next. To this aim, we use Abbott’s (1988, 2001) ideas on disciplines to analyze the dynamics of IS article citations and co-citations in the eight Association for Information Systems (AIS) basket journals (AIS, 2011) from 1995 to 2011. The AIS basket suggests a list of the top IS journals and thereby influences the work of many academics and practitioners worldwide. We explore the expansion and contraction of discourse within these IS journals, and seek to highlight the role of IS in an attempt to clarify the discursive formations originally raised by Foucault (1972). By doing so, we move away from highlighting discourse in the knowledge objects themselves and thus do not attempt a content analysis. We abstract IS’s sources into subject fields and investigate their sizes and inter-connected structure, which may in turn lead to the rules of discursive formations that help and are also needed to better understand IS within the dynamic context of social science disciplines (Abbott, 2001). This understanding could allow us to define avenues for future development in both academia and practice.

Our findings suggest that IS is indeed in continuous interaction and competition with other disciplines, with General Management slowly losing its dominant position as the reference discipline at the expense of a growing variety of others such as Business Strategy, Marketing, Social Sciences, and Ethics and Governance. This view would enable IS academics and practitioners to formulate strategies to keep ownership over certain domains of problems while continuing to expand and make their knowledge relevant to other disciplines. By considering how the disciplines position themselves within the co-citation networks, we see how IS moves from the periphery in the early period into the center of the network in the late period. This now places IS in an ideal position, where members of IS from the center interact to embrace a diverse range of problems, concepts and theories, which are pulled from and pushed back to a variety of adjacent reference disciplines. Currently, there seems no danger to IS from Wiegand’s (1999) central metaphor stating that any discipline can be trapped in its own discursive formation. However, as we perceive a highly dynamic inter-disciplinary discourse within IS, academics and practitioners need to be wary when groups seek to define unity in IS with specific or ‘obvious’ and well-defined objects and configurations. This may obscure the importance of IS in a wider and dynamic system of disciplines, and thus limit inter-disciplinary visibility of IS in research and practice, as well as stifling the exploration of new themes and areas of work.

The article is structured as follows. First, we revisit current views on the status and nature of IS as a discipline, and develop our research aim further with three research questions. We also briefly present Abbott’s and Foucault’s ideas and how they inform this study. This is followed by our methodology section and findings. Lastly, we discuss the results regarding the IS discipline and its dynamic inter-disciplinary discourse, and conclude by drawing a number of implications, which we see as relevant for the characterization of IS and its next steps.

Theoretical background

The nature of IS

Many internal advocates claim that within IS there is already a sufficient set of ‘core’ and ‘real’ knowledge elements (i.e., topics, concepts and phenomena) that can be considered unique and as such IS has become mature enough to become a reference discipline for others (Baskerville and Myers, 2002; Benbasat and Zmud, 2003). Related work attempts to code the body of IS knowledge by distilling published work (Hirschheim et al., 2004). By doing so, different distinct areas of IS competence, such as IS application or IS development knowledge among others, have been characterized. Calls are being made to structure the knowledge elements into reference frameworks with coherent sets of ideals and themes, which can be offered to several audiences inside or outside IS practitioners, students or academics. It is argued that these attempts, including the discussion of boundaries, can make the work of IS people more valuable and relevant (Hassan, 2006).

A contrasting perspective acknowledges the variety of other disciplines that extensively engage with IS, leading to profound difficulties in defining unique discourse with a clear set of unique knowledge elements (Bryant, 2008; Somers, 2010). Within this diversity, IS can draw on a range of epistemological views and access means to acquire and understand IS-related phenomena (Orlikowski and Baroudi, 1991; Vessey et al., 2002; Chen and Hirschheim, 2004). Advocates of this perspective consider that key to a healthy development of IS is the degree of permeability (fluidity, flexibility and variety) allowing IS to take or give knowledge to other disciplines (Bryant, 2008). The taking refers to borrowing concepts from other disciplines while recognizing the underlying constraints and debates in their fields. These concepts can then be adapted to unique IS matters and may then be returned or pushed back to the fields.

An intermediate position between stability and fluidity is currently emerging in the IS discourse in which the focus is shifted from the end goal (achieving a recognized discipline) to the processes that underlie its development. Within this position proposals have been made to emphasize the visibility of IS obtained by focusing on salient results as a way of legitimizing IS activity within a wider and dynamic market of ideas (Lyytinen and King, 2004); the continuous formation of communities of practice to enable better communication and sharing of knowledge between IS groups (Klein and Hirschheim, 2008); and the acknowledgement that IS can be both stable and dynamic at different periods of time (Córdoba et al., 2012). This intermediate position requires an in-depth study of how IS knowledge is the by-product of discipline interaction, and how such interaction influences our understanding of what IS is/should be about. This will also offer insights as to what can be done in the future in IS research and practice.

Discipline development

To understand how disciplines develop and can be organized, we now turn our attention to the ideas of Foucault (1972) regarding discursive formations and the work of Abbott (1988, 2001) on knowledge disciplines. Both sociologists provide insightful perspectives on how scientific knowledge evolves and how disciplines are established around it. Foucault (1972) provides a background against which scientific knowledge is organized and ‘ordered’ into different discourses in Western socie...