Sidestepping the IT Artifact, Scrapping the IS Silo, and Laying Claim to Systems in Organizations

The IT artifact and debates about the core of the IS field received a lot of attention in the last several years. This paper is a response to Benbasat and Zmud\u27s June 2003 MISQ paper The Identity Crisis within the IS Discipline: Defining and Communicating the Discipline\u27s Core Properties, which argues that the IT artifact and its immediate nomological net constitutes a natural ensemble of entities, structures, and processes that serves to bind together the IS subdisciplines and to communicate the distinctive nature of the IS discipline. This paper starts by examining the meaning of IT artifact and concluding that this term is too unclear to serve as a basic concept for delineating the field. Next it examines and disputes aspects of Benbasat and Zmud\u27s prescription for being more faithful to the discipline\u27s core. It suggests that their vision of tighter focus on variables intimately related to the IT artifact creates problems and provides few of the benefits of an alternative vision centered on systems in organizations. This alternative vision provides an understandable umbrella for most existing IS research and treats the discipline\u27s diversity as a strength rather a weakness. It provides a rationale for building on current knowledge and expertise, exploiting the discipline\u27s areas of competitive advantage in academia and business, defusing the IS discipline\u27s identity crisis, and helping increase its long-term contributions to academia, business, and society

The IS Core - V: Defining the IS Core

Information Systems and other academic fileds struggle with what is termed an identity crisis. For Information Systems, an ongoing debate focuses on defining the field narrowly versus broadly. Defining the field narrowly, as called for by Benbesat and Zmud\u27s nomological core [2003] is compelling because it distinctly defines what is IS research and what is not. Those who find the distinctness of IS lacking may find this a pragmatic solution. However, the narrow definition excludes a large portion of the IS community and their research. Alter\u27s [2003] Systems in Organizations proposal broadly defines the IS discipline in an inclusive way that embraces our historic diversity and makes IS distinct too

Introduction to the Debate on the Core of the Information Systems Field

This editorial introduces the debate between Alter and Benbasat and Zmud about whether IT artifacts or systems in organization are the appropriate model for a core for IS. It also describes the articles on the dedbate by 10 authors and gives some opinions of the editor on the subject

Nothing Is More Practical than a Good Theory … except possibly a Good Paradigm or Framework or Model or Metaphor

This research questions the frequently repeated, taken-for-granted aphorism that “there is nothing more practical than a good theory.” It seeks to demonstrate that there is no reason to believe that theory is more practical than good paradigms, frameworks, models, metaphors or good versions of other conceptual artifacts. It identifies different types of conceptual artifacts along with nine criteria for evaluating conceptual artifacts. It validates four premises related conceptual artifacts by examining different types of conceptual artifacts associated with work system theory (WST)

The IS Core - XI: Sorting out Issues about the Core, Scope, and Identity of the IS Field

Debates about the core and the scope of the IS field and about whether the core and scope are related to a crisis in the field have smoldered for many years. This article is a response to ten articles submitted by members of the CAIS Editorial Board who accepted an invitation to contribute to a debate about the core and scope of the IS field. Those articles were written as responses to Benbasat and Zmud’s [2003] article “The Identity Crisis Within the IS Discipline: Defining and Communicating the Discipline’s Core Properties” and my rebuttal [Alter 2003b] entitled “Sidestepping the IT Artifact, Scrapping the IS Silo, and Laying Claim to “Systems in Organizations.” The present article is organized around excerpts related to the major topics the ten articles address as a group: What are the core and scope of the IS field? Is “the IT artifact” a meaningful concept? Whatever the core might be today, could tomorrow bring something different? Who is the customer of IS research? Do we believe the IS discipline is having an identity crisis? How do institutional issues shape the IS field? What if we followed Benbasat and Zmud’s suggestions? The conclusion attempts to sort out various views of the core, scope, and (possible) crisis of the IS field by identifying major products and major customers of the academic IS field and asking which customers are interested in which products. If a crisis exists, it is about the perceptions of certain customers, but not others, and may be only tangentially related to issues about the core or scope of the IS field. On the other hand, the core and scope of the IS field do have implications for the value of the products it produces and for its long-term ability to serve all of its major customers

The IS Core - XI: Sorting Out the Issues About the Core, Scope, and Identity of the IS Field

Debates about the core and the scope of the IS field and about whether the core and scope are related to a crisis in the field have smoldered for many years. This article is a response to ten articles submitted by members of the CAIS Editorial Board who accepted an invitation to contribute to a debate about the core and scope of the IS field. Those articles were written as responses to Benbasat and Zmud\u27s [2003] article The Identity Crisis Within the IS Discipline: Defining and Communicating the Discipline\u27s Core Properties and my rebuttal [Alter 2003b] entitled Sidestepping the IT Artifact, Scrapping the IS Silo, and Laying Claim to Systems in Organizations. The present article is organized around excerpts from the ten articles related to the major topics they address as a group: -What are the core and scope of the IS field? -Is the IT artifact a meaningful concept? -Who is the customer of IS research? -Do we believe the IS discipline is having an identity crisis? -How do institutional issues shape the IS field? -What if we followed Benbasat and Zmud\u27s suggestions? The conclusion attempts to sort out various views of the core, scope, and (possible) crisis of the IS field by identifying major products and major customers of the academic IS field and asking which customers are interested in which products. If a crisis exists, it is about the perceptions of certain customers, but not others, and may be only tangentially related to issues about the core or scope of the IS field. On the other hand, the core and scope of the IS field do have implications for the value of the products it produces and for its long-term ability to serve all of its major customers

The IS Core - VIII: Defining the Core Properties of the IS Disciplines: Not Yet, Not Now

I believe that a lively and vigorous debate about the nature of the IS discipline is important. We need an open and constructive debate about the identity of the IS field and its subject matter. For this reason I welcome Benbasat and Zmud\u27s June 2003 article in MIS Quarterly in which they suggested that the core of IS research should be the IT artifact. I also welcome Alter\u27s response in this issue of Communications of the AIS, in which he argues that the core of IS research should be systems in organizations . However, both articles take one point for granted: that the IS discipline is ready and able to define a core. In this article I take issue with this fundamental assumption. I believe the attempt to narrow the field to a core is misguided, at least at this point in time. The argument of this paper is that the field of information systems is nowhere near ready to define a core in information systems

The IS Core-I: Economic and Systems Engineering Approaches to IS Identity

This article presents an economic basis for declaring Information Systems and Information Technology to be both cognitively and socio-politically legitimate and to show that learning [Benbasat and Zmud, 2003] has been achieved The large scale complexity and diversity of today\u27s information systems are discussed within the context of a software engineering (SE) model and the higher-level view of the product that SE provides. The history and scope of investments in computing, and the practices of software engineering demonstrate that we are not a New Collective suffering from an identity crisis. We are a heterogeneous group looking at a wide diversity of Information Systems, some of which challenge the way we think about organizational boundaries and show that artifacts are not adequate to define IT

The Concept of “IT Artifact” Has Outlived Its Usefulness and Should Be Retired Now

Vastly inconsistent definitions of the term “the IT artifact” in leading journals and conferences demonstrate why it no longer means anything in particular and should be retired from the active IS lexicon. Examples from the literature show why artifact-cousins, such as the IS artifact, sociotechnical artifact, social artifact, and ensemble artifact should be used with great care, if not retired as well. Any void created by these retirements could be filled through the following approaches: 1) relabeling with simple terms that are immediately understandable, 2) adopting guidelines for making sense of the whole X-artifact family, and 3) sidestepping the IT artifact and focusing directly on IT-enabled work systems in organizations

Nothing is more practical than a good conceptual artifact... which may be a theory, framework, model, metaphor, paradigm or perhaps some other abstraction

This research commentary proposes a way to make progress in the IS discipline’s inconclusive discussion about the nature and role of theory. In some ways, the creation and testing of theory seems to be the primary goal of IS research. Despite that, there are persistent questions whether theory has become a fetish in the IS discipline and whether the routinized production and testing of mid-range theories is little more than an uninspired script that reduces the value and interest of IS research. This paper reframes the discussion around the idea of ‘conceptual artifact’ that has been discussed widely in educational psychology for over a decade. Conceptual artifacts are abstract knowledge objects that can be produced, tested and improved. This paper recognizes the value of both abstract knowledge (conceptual artifacts) and non-abstract knowledge. It explains that theorizing produces, evaluates or improves useful conceptual artifacts that may or may not be theories. It validates four premises related to conceptual artifacts by showing that theorizing related to work system theory created or used many different types of conceptual artifacts. It identifies nine criteria for evaluating conceptual artifacts and shows that some of them differ from typical criteria for evaluating Gregor Type IV theories. As a whole, it argues that that privileging theory over other types of conceptual artifacts may not be beneficial in pursuing the research questions that the IS discipline needs to study