Henry C. Lucas is Editor-in-Chief of AIS publications. This opinion article is the first in a series on the state of the information field that CAIS plans to publish. The article evaluates the current state of the information systems field and then discusses what AIS members can do to help themselves and what AIS can do to help the field

Lucas, Henry C.

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Communications of the Association for Information SystemsVolume 1 Article 5January 1999The State of the Information Systems FieldHenry C. LucasUniversity of Maryland, hlucas@rhsmith.umd.eduFollow this and additional works at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/caisThis material is brought to you by the AIS Journals at AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). It has been accepted for inclusion in Communications of theAssociation for Information Systems by an authorized administrator of AIS Electronic Library (AISeL). For more information, please contactelibrary@aisnet.org.Recommended CitationLucas, Henry C. (1999) "The State of the Information Systems Field," Communications of the Association for Information Systems: Vol. 1, Article 5.DOI: 10.17705/1CAIS.00105Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol1/iss1/5Communications of AIS Volume 1, Article 5Opinion: The State of the Information Systems Field by Lucas 1Volume 1 Article 5January 1999THE STATE OF THE INFORMATION SYSTEMS FIELDHenry C. LucasEditor-In-Chief AIS PublicationsNew York Universityhlucas@stern.nyu.eduOPINIONCommunications of AIS Volume 1, Article 5Opinion: The State of the Information Systems Field by Lucas 2What is the state of the Information Systems Field? What can we do tohelp ourselves?   What can AIS do to help the field?I started teaching information systems in 1970 at a time in which programswere scarce, and faculties with more than two or three people in the field wererare. We had few senior faculty to help set direction in the field, and there wereno journals devoted to information systems.We did have a compelling need and interest on the part of students, bothundergraduate and MBA, to learn something about technology before beginningtheir careers.  By many indicators, our field has made tremendous progress, butit seems to be a continual struggle for survival.There have been examples of IS courses being cut in the core of MBAprograms.  Is this because information systems are not important?  Is it becausewe have failed to create highly popular core courses?  Or is it because the "core"of an MBA program is a very political entity.  It is not clear that an IS course isbeing cut (when it does happen) because of a careful look at what students need,or whether it is because IS faculty are often weak politically and have few voteswhen the faculty approves core courses. I suspect a combination of these factorsis at work.Another problem is a disturbing belief that has spread among somebusiness school deans.  The underlying question is, "Why won't IS go the way ofOperations Research?  IS will migrate to the disciplines, so the Marketingdepartment will teach about IS in marketing, Finance will teach financialinformation systems, etc.  This, after all, is what has become of OR in a numberof schools."To those of us in the field, this viewpoint is pretty naive, but maybe that isour fault for not having been more successful in educating deans (a toughCommunications of AIS Volume 1, Article 5Opinion: The State of the Information Systems Field by Lucas 3assignment).  My estimate is that the merged entities of Citibank and Travelers,and B of A and NationsBank, will each have combined annual IS budgets of $4billion before any savings from their mergers.  That means, for a bit anyway, wehave two companies spending at a rate of a grand total of $8 billion a year. Iwould be surprised if the world has spent $8 billion in total on operationsresearch since it was invented during WWII!  OR never became a pervasive partof knowledge workers' tasks; it has had nothing like the impact of informationtechnology.OR has made a lot of contributions in certain industries, but I remember inthe 60s and early 70s when every company had an OR or ManagementSciences Department.  Try to find very many of these today.  At their maximum,one of these departments would have had a small fraction of the number ofworkers in IS.  OR solved some interesting problems, for example, intransportation. SABRE Decision Technologies is one of the best-known ORgroups in the country.  However, it is information technology in the form ofSABRE that solved the reservations problem created by jet travel and it is IT thatkeeps a rather creaky air traffic control system functioning, not OR.To a large extent, IS faculty in business schools have failed to makefaculty in other disciplines aware of our own discipline, and in all fairness, thereare many non-IS faculty who just aren't interested in anything but their own fields.This failing has created problems for our young faculty when it comes time for atenure review.  Today, it is hard for faculty to get tenure in business schools ingeneral.  The state of our research is not as advanced as more traditional fieldslike Economics and Finance, but it is important to remember our discipline datesonly to the 1960s.  I would be happy to show most, but not all, of the articles inour journals like Information Systems Research and MIS Quarterly to colleaguesin other departments and say we think these are as good as the publications intheir fields.Communications of AIS Volume 1, Article 5Opinion: The State of the Information Systems Field by Lucas 4We have three particular problems in research.  The first is our size.  Anorganization like AIS has between 1200 and 1500 members; if that representshalf the people in our field, there are only 3000 or so of us.  The vast majority ofschools are not "publish or perish" (though more move into this column everyday), so we do not have a very large critical mass of researchers.Our second problem is something that I have always liked about our field:diversity.  We have researchers who draw on a lot of other disciplines to studyproblems.  The diversity means that we can look at problems from a variety ofviewpoints.  However, this diversity tends to make the field look disorganized,and it sometimes leads to research that does not contribute very much.Unfortunately, some of our colleagues are fairly narrow in their tastes forresearch, and can write quite negative promotion and tenure letters for peoplewith other interest areas.Third, the dominant paradigm for research in business schools comesfrom Economics and Finance.  In most business schools, the majority of MBAsare majoring in Finance (50 to 70%), so Finance faculties tend to be large andinfluential.  There are IS researchers who do the same kind of model-buildingand testing that one finds in Economics and Finance, but they are by no meansin the majority in the IS field.  Sometimes the criticism one hears of IS research isbecause it follows a different paradigm, rather than it lacks rigor.We are all trying to promote our field because we think it is critical.Information systems have brought and are bringing incredible changes tonations, governments, organizations and people.  IS programs are vital topreparing students to understand and participate in these changes as a newcentury begins.There is a simple strategy that can help advance our field, and that is toconstantly strive for quality in all that we do.  I have participated in enoughCommunications of AIS Volume 1, Article 5Opinion: The State of the Information Systems Field by Lucas 5promotion and tenure decisions across different disciplines to learn that most ofour colleagues would rather see a candidate with a smaller number ofoutstanding publications than a long list of average papers.  Quality in researchmeans that we look for interesting topics, try to build on past research, and areconcerned with rigor in the design and execution of the research.  Quality inteaching means that we put extra effort into our courses, because we want to dothe best job possible for our students.  If we can excite students about oursubject matter, then we will draw more and more people to our classes, and inmost schools, teaching load is pretty highly correlated with faculty positions.I have high expectations for AIS and for the Communications and Journalof AIS. I think both of these exciting, new publications will contribute to efforts toimprove the quality of research and teaching in information systems. Our plansare for CAIS to improve communications in our field and stimulate thedevelopment and sharing of teaching materials.  The Journal is designed toencourage, disseminate and showcase our very best research efforts.  I hopeyou will contribute to these journals through submissions, readership, citations,and recommending AIS publications to others.Note: This opinion paper was received on November 3, 1998. It was published on January 4,1999 as one of the inaugural papers for CAIS.ABOUT THE AUTHORHenry C. Lucas is Professor of Information Systems at New YorkUniversity's Stern School of Business. He was Vice President of Publications ofAIS from 1995 to 1998 and is currently the Editor in Chief of AIS publications.Copyright © 1999, by the Association for Information Systems. Permission to make digitalor hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without feeprovided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and thatcopies bear this notice and full citation on the first page. Copyright for components of this workowned by others than the Association for Information Systems ust be honored. Abstracting withcredit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers, or to redistribute to listsrequires prior specific permission and/or fee. Request permission to publish from: AISAdministrative Office, P.O. Box 2712 Atlanta, GA, 30301-2712 Attn: Reprints or via e-mail fromais@gsu.edu.Communications of AIS Volume 1, Article 5Opinion: The State of the Information Systems Field by Lucas 6                                                        EDITOR                                            Paul GrayClaremont Graduate UniversityAIS SENIOR  EDITORIAL BOARDHenry C. Lucas, Jr.Editor-in-ChiefNew York UniversityPaul Gray                                Editor,CAIS                                ClaremontGraduate UniversityPhillip Ein-DorEditor, JAISTel-Aviv UniversityEdward A. StohrEditor-at-LargeNew York UniversityBlake Ives                               Editor,Electronic PublicationsLouisiana State   UniversityReagan RamsowerEditor, ISWorld NetBaylor UniversityCAIS ADVISORY BOARDGordon DavisUniversity of MinnesotaRichard MasonSouthern Methodist UniversityJay NunamakerUniversity of ArizonaHenk SolDelft  UniversityRalph SpragueUniversityof HawaiiCAIS EDITORIAL BOARDSteve AlterUniversity of SanFranciscoBarbara BasheinCalifornia StateUniversityTung BuiUniversity of HawaiiChrister CarlssonAbo Academy, FinlandH. Michael ChungCalifornia State UniversityOmar El SawyUniversity of SouthernCaliforniaJane FedorowiczBentley CollegeBrent GallupeQueens University, CanadaSy GoodmanUniversity of ArizonaChris HollandManchester BusinessSchool, UKJaak JurisonFordham UniversityGeorge KasperVirginia CommonwealthUniversityJerry LuftmanStevens Institute ofTechnologyMunir MandviwallaTemple UniversityM.Lynne MarkusClaremont GraduateUniversityDon McCubbreyUniversity of DenverMichael MyersUniversity of Auckland,New ZealandSeev NeumannTel Aviv University,IsraelHung Kook ParkSangmyung University,KoreaDan PowerUniversity of Northern IowaMaung SeinAgder College, NorwayMargaret TanNational University ofSingapore, SingaporeDoug VogelCity University of HongKong, ChinaHugh WatsonUniversity of GeorgiaDick WelkeGeorgia State UniversityRolf WigandSyracuse UniversityPhil YettonUniversity of New SouthWales, AustraliaADMINISTRATIVE PERSONNELEph McLeanAIS, Executive DirectorGeorgia State UniversityColleen BauderSubscriptions ManagerGeorgia State UniversityReagan RamsowerPublisher, CAISBaylor University

The State of the Information Systems Field

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