Inductive Empiricism, Theory Specialization and Scientific Idealization in IS Theory Building

This paper distinguishes and discusses three strategies for theory building in Information Systems (IS) - inductive empiricism, theory specialization and scientific idealization - and contrasts them in terms of three desiderata of theories - realism, generality and precision - and tradeoffs between them. Inductive empiricism, emphasizing realism and generality, represents the received view with the classic Grounded Theory Methodology as a prime example. The paper argues for openness to theory specialization in practical disciplines such as IS. Theory specialization implies sacrificing generality of theories for their realism and precision. The distinctive attention of the paper lies in scientific idealization, sacrificing realism of theories for their precision and generality. It has been almost completely omitted in in the literature on IS theory building. The special focus of the paper lies in IT applications as a category of IT artifacts and in design-oriented theories which provide knowledge of how to design “better” IT applications. The paper illustrates its points using TAM/UTAUT research as an example

The IS Core - VII: Towards Information Systems as a Science of Meta-Artifacts

The paper argues that we should emphasize more the nature of Information Systems as an applied, engineering-like discipline that develops various meta-artifacts to support the development of IS artifacts. Building such meta-artifacts is a complementary approach to the theory-with-practical-implications type of research. The primacy assigned to theory and research method has effectively excluded constructive research of building meta-artifacts from the major IS journals. The paper also claims that information systems as a category of IT artifacts, and especially the focus on IS development, can help to distinguish the IS discipline from its sister and reference disciplines

A Paradigmatic Analysis of Information Systems As a Design Science

The present essay discusses the ontology, epistemology, methodology and ethics of design science. It suggests that Information Systems as a design science should be based on a sound ontology, including an ontology of IT artifacts. In the case of epistemology, the essay emphasizes the irreducibility of the prescriptive knowledge of IT artifacts to theoretical descriptive knowledge. It also expresses a need for constructive research methods, which allow disciplined, rigorous and transparent building of IT artifacts as outcomes of design science research. The relationship between action research and design science research is also briefly discussed. In the case of ethics, the essay points out that Information Systems as design science cannot be valuefree

Making Sense of the History of Information Systems Research 1975-1999: A View of Highly Cited Papers

In this paper, I analyze the history of IS research through the lens of 409 highly cited papers (i.e., papers with at least 100 Reuters Thompson Web of Science citations) pub­lished between 1975 and 1999. I focus on 1) what these highly cited papers are, 2) what they study, 3) who their authors are, and 4) where they were published

Iivari’s Response to the Rejoinders on How to Improve Peer Reviewing

In this paper, I respond to the six rejoinders to my original paper. I categorize the rejoinders into three groups depending on whether they largely disagree with my suggestions, whether they mostly agree with them, or whether they suggest largely complementary ideas to my own. In line with my own paper (Iivari, 2016), I specifically focus on the concrete proposals how to improve the situation

A Planning Theory Perspective on Information System Implementation

The paper is based on the assumed affinity between planning and Information System (IS) design, which makes it warranted to transfer results arrived at in planning theory to our field of IS design and implementation, at least as first tentative hypotheses. The basic notion is that alternative procedural features of planning or IS design have a definite impact upon the implementability of plans or information/data systems. The paper puts forward and discusses ten conjectures aboout the influence often procedural features of lS design upon IS implementability

Conducting Information Systems Research the Old-Fashioned Way

This research career retrospective summarizes the intellectual contributions of the author’s academic career, covering 35 years from the early 1980’s onwards. It also attends to various incidents and conditions that shaped his research career, as well as his research strategy choices that allowed him to overcome some of the challenges imposed by these conditions. These strategic choices comprised to do small research rather than big research and to privilege international collaboration over local collaboration

Nothing is as Clear as Unclear

No abstract

Reflections on Reflective Systems Development

abstract not available

How to Improve the Quality of Peer Reviews? Three Suggestions for System-level Changes

Peer reviewing is critical in the process of legitimizing new scientific knowledge. Yet, concerns about its quality exist, especially if one considers developmental reviewing as an ideal. In this essay, I suggest three ways to improve review quality: provide reviewers with systematic feedback about their performance, reward active and good reviewers, and make reviewers more accountable by revealing their identities to the authors in certain conditions