Information Systems - The State of the Field

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useful way to define the field. It includes the IS function and IS management as well as IT artifacts. The article provides a basis for discourse about the field, and it did generate discussion. It was followed by a number of articles and commentaries, some that supported their ideas and some that did not.

The collection of articles in this book includes some of the articles that sparked new interest in the issues related to the identity of the field. There are also new articles written especially for the book. The authors of the original articles explain their ideas further and respond to comments. The articles selected for this book do not merely talk about the original articles; they also point to new ways of thinking about the issue of identity and boundary. For example, the article by Gerardine DeSanctis suggests the lens of community of practice as a useful, different way of looking at the development of the IS field. Her untimely death prevented her from amplifying her ideas.

There has been vigorous debate in the field about research methods. My own development as a scholar was influenced by the debate, because my view from my training was positivist. The debate in the field began with discussion of positivist versus post-positivist interpretive research. That debate has largely been resolved with substantial acceptance of either method if the method is most appropriate and done well. The exploration of appropriate research has continued. One very important emerging issue is the place of research that designs, builds and tests system ideas, often termed design science. This type of research is common in computer science and engineering, but there has been some lack of clarity as to how it fits research concepts for systems in organizations. A classic article by Sal March and Gerald Smith, written while they were at Minnesota, changed my thinking about design science. A more recent article on the subject and a new essay are included in the book. To be able to justify design science research in a community of scholars is vital, and the two articles in the book are important to all IS scholars.

The discussion of the core of the field (those concepts, properties and processes that are unique or for which the field provides unique understanding) is very useful. While not yet resolved in a nice, tidy way, the articles will help the process of articulating the important elements of the field. Why does an organization need information system specialists? The same question can be applied to all organization functions. Why do organizations have accounting or marketing or finance functions? Every person in the organization needs to know something about these functions but, for example, it would be chaos to have end-user accounting and no accounting function. Likewise, the information systems function has unique roles and unique

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capabilities that are necessary for organizations. Some of these may be defined as core properties of the field, some are associated with the activities of the function, and some are associated with the applications of information and communications technology in work systems. Framed in this way, the boundaries of the field will always be fluid because IT-enabled systems are changing and expanding in scope. Each new application system presents a shared research space. The function employing the system is interested in the value and use of the application, but information systems is also interested because the design properties, operational properties, value obtained and impact on jobs and people are important to the design knowledge of the IS function and important to the operations and maintenance knowledge needed to support the systems. This view may be extended. As Galliers points out in his trans-disciplinary view of the field, the central role of technology-enabled systems offers an opportunity for IS to incorporate a broad, societal perspective in the design of systems and not be bounded by narrow, technology perspectives.

The discussion about the IS field has a full range of expectations from optimistic to pessimistic. The selection of articles contains the full range. I tend to be an optimist. I believe we are part of an incredibly important field that is at the center of some of the most significant past changes in organizations and that similar changes will continue into the future. In their Introduction, King and Lyytinen pose a question about the future in a somewhat awkward way. They ask ‘will the IS field not be okay?’ and give their answer as ‘perhaps’; in other words, they express a cautionary view that perhaps the IS field will not be okay. My own view is more positive and optimistic; I believe that most probably the IS field will be okay.

In summary, this book of reprinted articles and original pieces is a significant contribution to the field. It brings together material to focus the discussions of the field on essential issues. There is much to be done to improve our understanding and sharpen our explanations, and all this is likely to be challenging and interesting. Clarity will not come in a moment; it takes time and effort. This set of papers helped me, and I believe it will help others.

Gordon B. Davis

Honeywell Professor of Management

Information Systems (Emeritus)

University of Minnesota

Series Preface

The information systems community has grown considerably in the twenty years that we have been publishing the Wiley Series in Information Systems. We are pleased to be a part of the growth of the field, and believe that this series has played, and continues to play, an important role in the intellectual development of the discipline. The primary objective of the series is to publish intellectually insightful works which reflect the best of the research in the information systems community. Books in the Series should help advanced students—particularly those at the graduate level—understand the myriad issues surrounding the broad area of management of IS. Additionally, these works should help guide the IS practitioner community regarding what strategies it ought to adopt to be successful in the future.

To this end, the current volume—Information Systems: The State of the Field, edited by John King and Kalle Lyytinen—is an especially welcome addition. This volume brings together a number of the most well-known researchers in the field expressing their views about the nature and future of the IS discipline. The book is based on a collection of seminal articles discussing the underlying assumptions of the IS discipline. The collection provides a fascinating view of the diversity present among the most senior scholars in the field. What makes the book especially interesting is that the editors asked the authors of these articles to write new papers based on what they learned after their earlier articles were published. In effect, the book offers a unique opportunity to see how these authors’ thinking about the IS field changed over time. These commentary pieces present a diverse set of opinions and beliefs which should help the field grow and evolve in the future. It is refreshingly well-argued and insightful. There is no question that this book, with its impressive collection of readings, should be on the bookshelves of every serious student of the field. We are delighted to have it as part of our Wiley Series in Information Systems.

Rudy Hirschheim

Introduction

John Leslie King and Kalle Lyytinen

This book is a harvest of perspectives on the growth of the information systems field over the past quarter-century. At first glance, that seems like a straightforward description of how the book was created and what it contains, but appearances can be deceiving: the story is more complicated than that. This effort is not the first to describe the state of the information systems field, but it is the first to do so through the diverse views of authors who disagree with each other as often as they agree. The reader seeking a coherent and consistent description of the state of the IS field will be baffled: that is not to be found in this book. This collection of perspectives reveals the plurality of the field at present. It might have been more honest to subtitle the book, ‘The States of the Field’, but that seemed like overreaching, even for the editors.

The plurality of the IS field is a central theme in much of the commentary in this collection. Some authors feel there is a trade-off between plurality and intellectual focus, and that a willingness to incorporate too many different interests in the center of the field dilutes the field’s focus and effect. Others feel that the plurality of the field is what makes it exciting and strong, and that the field is, if anything, insufficiently diverse in intellectual perspectives, methods and intentions. Yet, most of those whose opinions align with these caricatures would object that their views are not exactly as stated, and that they, in fact, understand and respect the views of those on the other side. The discussion is appropriately heated, but the effort is to create more light than heat.

The general design of the book is a set of original papers, presented in chronological order of appearance, followed by a set of commentaries by most of the authors of those original papers updating their views for the purposes of this collection. The decision to present the papers in chronological order of appearance was primarily a matter of convenience, but it was also a consequence of the fact that we were

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unable to devise a suitable alternative order. This does not imply that there is no order to the discussion: on the contrary, the authors make clear in all these papers that they see an intellectual tradition of discussion about these topics dating from the earliest days of the field. The problem in coming up with a sensible order other than chronological is that any such order would impose on the papers a precedence entirely of the editors’ choosing, and one that would almost certainly receive no greater agreement among the authors than the perspectives expressed. Moreover, the chronological order of the original papers does demonstrate that the discussion has been evolving in the literature, even if not in a completely coordinated manner. Many of these papers were being written contemporaneously, and the latency inherent in review and publication disrupted the ability of the authors to discuss the issues with each other in the manner of a normal conversation. The original readings presented here are an approximate trace of the key issues, over time, as seen from the personal perspectives of authors who read and think about each other’s work when they get a chance to see it.

The order of the commentaries could not be chronological—they all came to the editors at about the same time. It would have been easy to assemble the commentaries in order of the appearance of the original papers, but the content of the commentaries suggested an ordering that could be used to package the material. This order is that of the editors, of course, but it is built less from the views of the authors than from the nature of the conversation among the authors during the commentary phase. The editors synthesize the papers and commentaries into a brief conclusion at the end of the book, which is the closest the book comes to describing the state of the field.

We greatly appreciate the help of all the authors who participated in this endeavor. This book has been a community effort, in which the editors were merely the coordinators of assembly and production. (That said, the admonition that the editors are responsible for errors and omissions still applies.) In addition, a debt of gratitude is due to many people in the IS field and in related fields whose thoughts and insights have guided the authors whose work appears in this volume. None of the authors represented here claims to have an exhaustive understanding of this complicated topic, and there is a great deal more that might have been included in this volume with good effect. The choice of what to include in no way marginalizes other important contributions, and the editors stand ready to nod sympathetically at claims that other works should have been included. It should also be said that some of the brightest lights in the IS field spend all their time making direct research contributions, and none discussing the work of the field itself. In any case, as this set of

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readings makes clear, the discussion is far from finished. Even if all the authors represented here retire from the discussion, recent history suggests that a similar book of entirely new papers cannot be long in coming.

We also thank the editors of this book series, Dick Boland and Rudi Hirscheim, for being assertive and brave; Anneli Anderson, Sarah Booth, Sarah Corney, Matt Duncan, and Rachel Goodyear from John Wiley & Sons for their support and guidance; Gordon Davis for his leadership in our field and his willingness to write a preface for this book; Nikhil Srinivasan for helping to pull the pieces together and managing the nightmare of normalizing n + 1 different formats of source text; Kathleen King for her editorial assistance and indexing; and finally, but with most affection, our families for patience as we dealt with yet another of our seemingly interminable projects.

At this point, we shift to the personal voice. This book is dedicated to our dear colleague Gerardine DeSanctis, who died on 16 August 2005, as this book was being finished. To those who knew Gerry, the simple language of the dedication page contains all there is to say. But many who see this book will not have had the privilege of knowing her, so we take this opportunity to address the legacy she left us. Gerry was a prolific and influential scholar and teacher. As part of her legacy, she wrote one of the papers that appears in this volume. As with the other authors of papers that appear in this volume, Gerry was asked to write a commentary. However, unlike our practice with the other original paper authors, we sent Gerry all of the commentaries we had received, and asked her to write a master commentary that integrated the key concepts contained in the commentaries, and by extension, the original papers on which those commentaries were based. We did this because of our deep respect for her insight and judgment. Gerry agreed to do this, and we eagerly awaited her insights. After a short time, she notified us that she could not complete the assignment due to her health problems. Her notification was exactly one week before she passed away. What can we say in response to this?

As a modest beginning, we say that Gerry was willing, quite literally on her deathbed, to contribute to our field. She knew the importance of place, and she was willing to take her place in the vanguard of the field’s thinking, irrespective of her physical condition. She lost that bet, but it was a bet worth making. This is not a tale of naïve heroics. Gerry battled the disease that eventually took her for many years, and she knew well its crooked course. She was an idealist, but above all, she was a pragmatic idealist. In her effort to provide a meta-commentary for this book, she hoped to help us make sense out of a dilemma that is central to our sense of ourselves. She did not have the time to do that, but we do. We cannot offer in this book what

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Gerry would have said in her commentary, but we can provide through her example a commitment to the challenge she was willing to engage. The larger story to come from Gerry’s role in this book, and her role in our field from beginning to end, is the observation that we are all engaged in an endeavor that we shall not live to see the end of. As St James said, our lives are but a vapor that appears for a little while (James 4:14). The glory of our mission, if we see it right, must transcend us. It is not about us. It is about the idea of what we might be.

Original Papers