A Personal Perspective on a Conceptual Foundation for Information Systems

In this paper, I propose a conceptual foundation for information systems based on three propositions: P1: Information systems improve an entity’s ability to attain its goals P2: Information systems improve the ability of entities to cooperate on shared goals P3: Information systems transform entities in intended and unintended ways. I apply an evolutionary-historical analysis, a variation of historical analysis, to the emergence of humans’ major information processing capabilities to trace the development of information systems to establish the propositions. I identify some research questions directly arising from the three propositions and advance a case that these propositions are potentially a sufficient conceptual foundation for IS research

Africa’s Contributions to Information Systems

Africans created the world’s first major information systems, gesturing and language. Now days, Africa is once again showing leadership in the area of frugal IS

Emergent Cultural Contradictions from Overlapping Cultural Levels in Information Systems Development

Research exploring cultural influence on information system development (ISD) projects tends to focus on a single level of influence (e.g., organizational culture) or cultural incompatibility between one or two cultural levels that are assumed to be discretely separate and static (e.g., national and organizational culture). In contrast, our research conceptualizes culture as dynamic and emergent, with varying levels of overlapping cultures that occur simultaneously in ISD projects (e.g., organizational and occupational culture overlaps). The case study method is used to examine two strategic projects in a single organization in South Africa. The findings describe how the overlap of different cultural levels gives rise to cultural contradictions in ISD projects. Understanding the relevance of the multiple cultures that exist in ISD projects offers further opportunity for refining explanations of cultural contradictions. Cultural contradictions that emerge from cultural overlaps during ISD are conceptualized as five distinct types: Vision Contradictions, Priority Contradictions, Process Contradictions, Role Contradictions, and Technology Contradictions. Despite variation in the context of each project, there is similarity in the nature and effect of emergent cultural contradictions. The paper concludes with suggestions for addressing cultural contradictions in, and influences on, ISD projects

Integrating Explanatory/Predictive and Prescriptive Science in Information Systems Research

The scholarly information systems (IS) field has a dual role. As an explanatory and predictive science, the field contributes to explaining the pervasive IS that shape the digital age and sometimes also makes predictions about those phenomena. As a prescriptive science, it participates in creating IS-related innovations by identifying means-ends relationships. The two can beneficially interact, such as when explanatory theory provides the basis for generating prescriptions or when applicable knowledge produces explanatory insights. In this commentary, we contribute to integrating these two roles by proposing a framework to help IS researchers navigate the field’s duality to extend the cumulative scholarly knowledge that it creates in terms of justified explanations and predictions and justified prescriptions. The process we describe builds on ongoing, dynamic, iterative, and interrelated research cycles. We identify a set of integrative research practices that occur at the interface between explanatory and predictive science and prescriptive science—the explanation-prescription nexus. We derive guidelines for IS research

A Knowledge-centric Examination of Signaling and Screening Activities in the Negotiation for Information Systems Consulting Services

In many professional exchanges, information asymmetry is bilateral, which means that both parties hold information that the other party lacks and, as a result, both parties have the means to be opportunistic. To counter this asymmetry, both parties signal and screen information as they negotiate a consulting engagement. In this paper, we report on how a professional service provider and recipient typically use signaling and screening. The findings highlight that both parties signal and screen and withhold information and that the extent of project knowledge (tacit or explicit) affects how they do so. Tacit knowledge-centric projects have more signaling and screening events than explicit knowledge-centric projects but many of these signals actually increase the amount of information asymmetry

The IS History Initiative: Looking Forward by Looking Back

After officially appointing an AIS historian and forming the AIS history task force at the beginning of 2013, the AIS supported a set of systematic efforts, named IS history initiative, to preserve and represent the IS field’s history. From the perspective of the first AIS historian, I provide some background for the IS history initiative. Then I outline a detailed strategic plan and current status of its implementation. Ultimately, the IS history initiative has three goals: (1) to collect, represent, and preserve the IS field’s history; (2) to interpret, write, disseminate, and review the IS field’s history; and (3) to discover/identify IS genealogy, roots, sources, and facets that deserve to be examined from a historical point of view. Correspondingly, the strategic plan contains three parts. Each part has several specific tasks, many of which were already completed at the time of this writing, and several are either in progress or are planned for future efforts. This paper overviews both current efforts and guiding future efforts related to preserving and representing IS history

Effective Use of Information Systems for Emergency Management: a Representation Theory Perspective

Effective Use Theory (EUT) has emerged as a promising native Information Systems (IS) theory to understand a central phenomenon of interest to the discipline: the effective use of information systems. While EUT is widely accepted in operational control and management control contexts, its validity in chaotic environments has yet to be demonstrated. To contribute to the research program in EUT, scholars called for contextualizing and assessing EUT in chaotic environment, such as emergencies or crises events. This research seeks to apply EUT to understand the effective use of emergency information systems (EMIS). Seeking a grand theory of effective use in EMIS helps the onset of a structured research program and the development of a cumulative research tradition. That fosters EMIS as a would-be reference discipline for cross-disciplinary scholarship in emergency management. Moreover, assessing EUT in the edge context of emergencies, contributes to theory development by problematizing on assumptions that scholars have been considering unproblematic

What is information? Toward a theory of information as objective and veridical

Information systems are a strong and ever-growing discipline of enormous relevance to today’s informated world, and yet, as recent reviews have shown, there is still not an agreed and explicit conceptualization or definition of information. After an evaluative review of a range of theories of information, this paper develops and defends a particular theory, one that sees information as both objective and veridical. By objective, we mean that the information carried by signs and messages exists independently of its receivers or observers. The information carried by a sign exists even if the sign is not actually observed. By veridical, we mean that information must be true or correct in order to be information – information is truth-constituted. False information is not information, but misinformation or disinformation. The paper develops this theory and then discusses four contentious issues – information as objective rather than subjective; information as true or correct; information and knowledge; and information and the ambiguity of meaning. It concludes with a discussion of the practical implications of the theory