Information Systems is Not a Reference Discipline (And What We Can Do About It)

A number of recent papers have proclaimed that the IS field has approached the status of a reference discipline. The paper draws on citation data from 33 IS and non-IS journals over 12 years to test this assertion. Analysis of this data suggests that the IS field has left a modest imprint on other sub-fields of management. Based on this evidence, the paper concludes that IS is not yet a reference discipline, but has the potential to become one. We propose number of measures to enhance the external influence of the field that may, in time, lead to it becoming a true reference discipline

Keynote: past, present and future of engineering education

Comunicação apresentada em 41st SEFI Conference, 16-20 September 2013, Leuven, BelgiumConference Topic: Lessons from the past; Engineering education research; integration of research in engineering educatio

Requirement Model of School Management System for Adult Commercial Secondary School in Somalia (ACSSMS)

To develop a system, it is necessary for the system's analyst to provide a model. In order to produce this model, the analyst must identify the user’s requirement first. Requirement model is one of the techniques used to model out the user’s requirement for a specific system before the development of that system. In other words, requirement model gives a view of the user’s requirement for a particular system. The purpose of this study is to create a requirement model as a basis to develop school management system for Adult Commercial Secondary School in Somalia. So, during this study, the UML graphical notation was used to model out the requirement model of the proposed school management system, and the requirement model was designed and presented using different UML tools (e.g., use case diagram, use case specifications, activity diagram, sequence diagram, collaboration diagram and class diagram), and supporting textual information. Also, a small prototype was then developed and presented in this study, which covers some of the main functional requirements, so as to assist the school in managing their daily operations effectively and more efficiently. Thus, this study is believed to be a step forward and very crucial guidance for Adult School in Somalia to be able to give this model to system developers to build the proposed school management system

The Balancing Act Of Developing An Undergraduate Mis Program

This paper reports on the developmental process of an undergraduate program for Management Information Systems at the School of Business of University of Nicosia which is a private University in Cyprus. The paper examines how, beyond the challenges widely documented in the literature, the team in charge of curriculum development had to balance out requests by a Visiting Team of academics appointed by ECPU -a national quality assurance body supervising private Universities- with the insights and guidelines of an Advisory Body composed of volunteering representatives of major business organizations in Cyprus, whilst keeping under consideration financial restrictions as well as constraints imposed by the regulatory framework of the University. The developed curriculum addresses these issues and provides flexibility for future growth in accordance with ever evolving challenges of this field

A Framework for Information Systems Metaresearch: The Quest for Identity

Information systems (IS) research has a rich history of self-referential research efforts, i.e., those in which the object under study happens to be IS research itself. The nature of such inquiry has always been an ontological pursuit of the identity of IS research. In the current paper, we adopt a positivistic approach to what exactly is the identity of IS research. We extrapolate the IS discipline as an organization using concepts from organizational identity, and incorporate the quest for identity as a form of social identity, thus bringing it within the theoretical realm of the social identity theory. We posit that the best way to seek out this ontological pursuit is by looking at the observations of IS research from its highest level of abstraction–that is, from a metaresearch perspective. We examine the literature and identify major recurrent themes that discuss the identity of IS research–those that focus on the essence, the sustainability, indeed, the very future of IS research. We develop a framework based on this overarching quest for identity as a unifying theme that integrates the diverse streams as dimensions of achieving identity. These metaresearch streams include rigor, relevance, diversity and the essential core. We also look at current trends in IS research and highlight how they appear to correlate well with this research framework

Muddling Along to Moving Beyond in IS Research: Getting from Good to Great

In this article, I argue that the IS field seems to be doing well when evaluated with sociometric techniques. However, while the progress of our field is commendable, we might have reached diminishing returns in the way we conduct research with our current modus operandi. Given that we are dealing with the most important phenomena of our time, I believe that it is time to become more ambitious and expand our impact to other domains and disciplines by creating more enduring and impactful research. I argue that four key dimensions on which we should place emphasis include: our institutionalization of a certain genre of research, monistic theorizing of our phenomena, the focus on questions for which data is easier to access, and our unwillingness to deeply engage with reference discipline theories. Addressing these through individual and collective efforts can help us expand the frontiers of our knowledge product and create broader value

EVALUATING DIAGNOSES , TREATMENT AND INFERENCE ACTIVITIES IN THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS PROFESSION

Information systems (IS) is a field that influnces and is influnced by the work of many different academics and practitioners. The influnce of IS to other areas of knowledge (i.e. management) has led some people to argu in favor and against the idea that IS has become a reference field of knowledge. Focusing on either knowledge elements or knowledge activities of a reference field leaves out consideration of relationships and interactions through time between both. \ Following Abbott´s sociology of professional knowledge, this paper proposes a triad of analytical categories: ˜Diagnoses´, ˜Treatments´ and ˜Inferences´ to examine and advance a more comprehensive understanding of the development of IS. Our analysis, based on a pilot survey of five IS journals, suggests that the key focus of IS activity has been on refining methodologies (treatments). The field has been less explicit and inclusive in generating and disseminating diagnoses and inferences. \ Those people working in the field can and should make available untapped stocks of knowledge in relation to these two elements whilst attempting to expand the jurisdiction (ownership) of IS over different problems. They can do so by relating more strongly methodologies to how IS problems can be defined and theorized upon. As this is work in progress, we propose a number of implications that we intend to explore in further research.