Information Systems Research
Relevant Theory and Informed Practice
Published on 11. April 2006
XXIV, 744 pages
978-1-4020-8095-1 (ISBN)
Description
Information Systems Research: Relevant Theory and Informed Practice comprises the edited proceedings of the WG8.2 conference, "Relevant Theory and Informed Practice: Looking Forward from a 20-Year Perspective on IS Research," which was sponsored by IFIP and held in Manchester, England, in July 2004. The conference attracted a record number of high-quality manuscripts, all of which were subjected to a rigorous reviewing process in which four to eight track chairs, associate editors, and reviewers thoughtfully scrutinized papers by the highly regarded as well as the newcomers. No person or idea was considered sacrosanct and no paper made it through this process unscathed. All authors were asked to revise the accepted papers, some more than once; thus, good papers got better. With only 29 percent of the papers accepted, these proceedings are significantly more selective than is typical of many conference proceedings.
This volume is organized in 7 sections, with 33 full research papers providing panoramic views and reflections on the Information Systems (IS) discipline followed by papers featuring critical interpretive studies, action research, theoretical perspectives on IS research, and the methods and politics of IS development. Also included are 6 panel descriptions and a new category of "bright idea" position papers, 11 in all, wherein main points are summarized in a pithy and provocative fashion.
This volume is organized in 7 sections, with 33 full research papers providing panoramic views and reflections on the Information Systems (IS) discipline followed by papers featuring critical interpretive studies, action research, theoretical perspectives on IS research, and the methods and politics of IS development. Also included are 6 panel descriptions and a new category of "bright idea" position papers, 11 in all, wherein main points are summarized in a pithy and provocative fashion.
Reviews / Votes
"An exceptional and indispensable resource for anyone conducting research in the field of information systems (IS), this textbook is a must-have. The book adeptly traverses the philosophical underpinnings of modern IS research design, rendering it an indispensable asset for novice and experienced researchers alike." (Mihailescu Marius Iulian, Computing Reviews, June 24, 2024)
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Bonnie Kaplan | Duane P. Truex | David Wastell
Information Systems Research
Relevant Theory and Informed Practice
Book
06/2004
Springer
€160.49
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Content
Young Turks, Old Guardsmen, and the Conundrum of the Broken Mold: A Progress Report on Twenty Years of Information Systems Research.- Young Turks, Old Guardsmen, and the Conundrum of the Broken Mold: A Progress Report on Twenty Years of Information Systems Research.- Panoramas.- Doctor of Philosophy, Heal Thyself.- Information Systems in Organizations and Society: Speculating on the Next 25 Years of Research.- Information Systems Research as Design: Identity, Process, and Narrative.- Reflections on the IS Discipline.- Information Systems- a Cyborg Discipline.- Cores and Definitions: Building the Cognitive Legitimacy of the Information Systems Discipline Across the Atlantic.- Truth, Journals, and Politics: The Case of the MIS Quarterly.- Debatable Advice and Inconsistent Evidence: Methodology in Information Systems Research.- The Crisis of Relevance and the Relevance of Crisis: Renegotiating Critique in Information Systems Scholarship.- Whatever Happened to Information Systems Ethics?.- Supporting Engineering of Information Systems in Emergent Organizations.- Critical Interpretive Studies.- The Choice of Critical Information Systems Research.- The Research Approach and Methodology Used in an Interpretive Study of a Web Information System: Contextualizing Practice.- Applying Habermas' Validity Claims as a Standard for Critical Discourse Analysis.- Conducting Critical Research in Information Systems: Can Actor-Network Theory Help?.- Conducting and Evaluating Critical Interpretive Research: Examining Criteria as a Key Component in Building a Research Tradition.- Making Contributions From Interpretive Case Studies: Examining Processes of Construction and Use.- Action Research.- Action Research: Time to Take a Turn?.- The Role of Conventional Research Methods inInformation Systems Action Research.- Themes, Iteration, and Recoverability in Action Research.- Theoretical Perspectives in IS Research.- The Use of Social Theories in 20 Years of WG 8.2 Empirical Research.- Structurantion in Research and Practice: Representing Actor Networks Their Structurated Orders and Translations.- Socio-Technical Structure: An Experiment in Integrative Theory Building.- Exposing Best Practices Through Narrative: The ERP Example.- Information Systems Research and Development by Activity Analysis and Development: Dead Horse or the Next Wave?.- Making Sense of Technological Frames: Promise, Progress, and Potential.- Reflection on Development Techniques Using the Psychology Literature: Over Two Decades of Bias and Conceptual Blocks.- Systems Development: Methods, Politics, and Users.- Enterprise System as an Orchestrator of Dynamic Capability Development: A Case Study of the IRAS and TechCo.- On Transferring a Method into a Usage Situation.- From Critical Theory into Information Systems Practice: A Case Study of a Payroll-Personnel System.- Resistance or Deviance? A High-Tech Workplace During the Bursting of the Dot-Com Bubble.- The Politics of Knowledge in Using GIS for Land Management in India.- Systems Development in the Wild: User-Led Exploration and Transformation of Organizing Visions.- Improvisation in Information Systems Development.- Panels and Position Papers.- Twenty Years of Applying Grounded Theory in Information Systems: A Coding Method, Useful Theory Generation Method, or an Orthodox Positivist Method of Data Analysis ?.- Building Capacity for E-Government: Contradictions and Synergies in the Dialectics of Action Research.- New Insights into Studying Agency and Information Technology.- Researching and Developing Work Activities in Information Systems: Experiences and the Way Forward.- Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: Reflections on Information Systems Research in Health Care and the State of Information Systems.- The Great Quantitative/Qualitative Debate: The Past, Present, and Future of Positivism and Post-Positivism in Information Systems.- Challenges for Participatory Action Research in Industry-Funded Information Systems Projects.- Theory and Action for Emancipation: Elements of a Critical Realist Approach.- Non-Dualism and Information Systems Research.- Contextual Dependencies and Gender Strategy.- Information Technology and the Good Life.- Embracing Information as Concept and Practice.- Truth to Tell?.- How Stakeholder Analysis can be Mobilized with Actor-Network Theory to Identify Actors.- Symbolic Processes in ERP Versus Legacy System Usage.- Dynamics of Use and Supply: An Analytic Lens for Information Systems Research.- Applying Adaptive Structuration Theory to the Study of Context-Aware Applications.
2 THEORETICAL FOUNDATION (p. 517-518)
The strategization of information technology (IT) to attain a competitive edge is ritualistic among private institutions (Ives and Learmonth 1984; McFarlan 1984) and contributes to an extensive list of classical business applications (Clemons 1991). Notwithstanding these testimonial cases of successful MIS, the feasibility of IT-based competitive sustainability remains debatable within academia (see Mata et al. 1995; Mykytyn et al. 2002). Citing reasons such as the prevailing adoption of IT as a strategic necessity (Clemons 1986) and the possibility of generating even deadlier reactions from rivals through creative duplication (Kettinger et al. 1994; Vitale 1986), many have contested the viability of IT-derived competitiveness and emphasized that research in this domain should focus on "describing how, rather than systematically why" IT can deliver strategic benefits (Reich and Benbasat 1990, p. 326).
Unsurprisingly, in light of their copious organizational influence and the substantial implementation investments they require, ES are readily conceived by scholars as the next logical candidate for the reimbursement of competitive value (Ross and Vitale 2000). As IT-based business solutions, ES are touted as configurable software packages that purportedly enable the collation of transaction-oriented data and functional processes into a singular infrastructure (Lee and Lee 2000; Markus et al. 2000a; Markus and Tanis 2000). Nevertheless, despite the projected benefits of prepackaged ES (Markus et al. 2000b), there remain unresolved adoption hurdles. Implicit within ES packages are business principles that emulate industry best practices (Everdingen et al. 2000).
These posited business paradigms, as predefined by the vendor, serve as convenient templates for corporations to mirror competitive praxis, although in many instances the projected benefits of the implemented ES do not materialize (Markus and Tanis 2000). The failures have been attributed to a blend of socio-technical constraints surrounding ES, such as their complexities, their customization difficulties, and the presence of cultural misfits underlying their inherent business process assumptions and those of the adopting organization (Howcroft and Light 2002; Lee and Lee 2000; Soh et al. 2000).
While we do not underestimate the aforementioned technological and organizational challenges of ES implementation, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on how competitive benefits can be manifested through ES adoption, rather than the reason why they can or cannot be realized. As conceived by Rosemann (1999), the fundamental notion of ES is analogous to the developmental objective in mapping the entire array of enterprise business processes into an integrated infostructure.
From this perspective, ES are predominantly operational commodities that double up as "the key element of an infrastructure" which conveys a holistic business solution to adopters (Rosemann and Watson 2002, p. 201). Yet, despite the consensus among researchers of the strategic significance of ES, their exact business potential has not been exploited beyond the extrapolative predictions of existing MIS trends (Davenport 2000a; Hayman 2000; Markus et al. 2000b). Consequently, the question of how ES can deliver competitive qualities continues to evade answering in strategic MIS research and, specifically, ES literature.
The strategization of information technology (IT) to attain a competitive edge is ritualistic among private institutions (Ives and Learmonth 1984; McFarlan 1984) and contributes to an extensive list of classical business applications (Clemons 1991). Notwithstanding these testimonial cases of successful MIS, the feasibility of IT-based competitive sustainability remains debatable within academia (see Mata et al. 1995; Mykytyn et al. 2002). Citing reasons such as the prevailing adoption of IT as a strategic necessity (Clemons 1986) and the possibility of generating even deadlier reactions from rivals through creative duplication (Kettinger et al. 1994; Vitale 1986), many have contested the viability of IT-derived competitiveness and emphasized that research in this domain should focus on "describing how, rather than systematically why" IT can deliver strategic benefits (Reich and Benbasat 1990, p. 326).
Unsurprisingly, in light of their copious organizational influence and the substantial implementation investments they require, ES are readily conceived by scholars as the next logical candidate for the reimbursement of competitive value (Ross and Vitale 2000). As IT-based business solutions, ES are touted as configurable software packages that purportedly enable the collation of transaction-oriented data and functional processes into a singular infrastructure (Lee and Lee 2000; Markus et al. 2000a; Markus and Tanis 2000). Nevertheless, despite the projected benefits of prepackaged ES (Markus et al. 2000b), there remain unresolved adoption hurdles. Implicit within ES packages are business principles that emulate industry best practices (Everdingen et al. 2000).
These posited business paradigms, as predefined by the vendor, serve as convenient templates for corporations to mirror competitive praxis, although in many instances the projected benefits of the implemented ES do not materialize (Markus and Tanis 2000). The failures have been attributed to a blend of socio-technical constraints surrounding ES, such as their complexities, their customization difficulties, and the presence of cultural misfits underlying their inherent business process assumptions and those of the adopting organization (Howcroft and Light 2002; Lee and Lee 2000; Soh et al. 2000).
While we do not underestimate the aforementioned technological and organizational challenges of ES implementation, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on how competitive benefits can be manifested through ES adoption, rather than the reason why they can or cannot be realized. As conceived by Rosemann (1999), the fundamental notion of ES is analogous to the developmental objective in mapping the entire array of enterprise business processes into an integrated infostructure.
From this perspective, ES are predominantly operational commodities that double up as "the key element of an infrastructure" which conveys a holistic business solution to adopters (Rosemann and Watson 2002, p. 201). Yet, despite the consensus among researchers of the strategic significance of ES, their exact business potential has not been exploited beyond the extrapolative predictions of existing MIS trends (Davenport 2000a; Hayman 2000; Markus et al. 2000b). Consequently, the question of how ES can deliver competitive qualities continues to evade answering in strategic MIS research and, specifically, ES literature.
