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Abstract
We are concerned that the IS research community is making the discipline's central identity ambiguous by, all too frequently, under-investigating phenomena intimately associated with IT-based systems and over-investigating phenomena distantly associated with IT-based systems. In this commentary, we begin by discussing why establishing an identity for the IS field is important. We then describe what such an identity may look like by proposing a core set of properties, i.e., concepts and phenomena, that define the IS field. Next, we discuss research by IS scholars that either fails to address this core set of properties (labeled as error of exclusion) or that addresses concepts/phenomena falling outside this core set (labeled as error of inclusion). We conclude by offering suggestions for redirecting IS scholarship toward the concepts and phenomena that we argue define the core of the IS discipline.
Keywords: IS discipline, IT artifact, IT nomological net, errors of exclusion, errors of inclusion
ISRL Categories: IB03, IB04
Introduction
The Information Systems (IS) scholarly community, like any new collective, has strived, since its inception in the 1970s, to develop a meaningful, resilient identity within the institutions that comprise its organizational field-namely, the organizational science and information science research communities, business and information science academic institutions, and the various organizations, industries, and professional groups that comprise the information technology (IT) industry. Such a community objective is admittedly ambitious, given the high failure rate associated with organizational foundings (Aldrich 1999). Still, we maintain that, after 30 years, insufficient progress has been made in establishing this collective identity. Further, recent events-the collapse of the dot.coms, the "e-ing" of both business and other scholarly disciplines, the recent tightening of the IT job market-seem to have raised anew concerns across the discipline that the viability and unique contributions of the IS discipline are being questioned by influential stakeholders.
IS scholars research and teach a set of diverse topics associated with information technologies, IT infrastructures and IT-enabled business solutions (i.e., information systems), and the immediate antecedents and consequences of these information systems (e.g., managing, planning, designing, building, modifying, implementing, supporting, and/or assessing IT-based systems that serve, directly or indirectly, practical purposes). The focus of this commentary is not about whether such a diversity of topics is beneficial for the IS field (Benbasat...