JRP Submission ID#168
Title: Information Systems Research: Where is it Coming From? Where is it Going?

Category: Main Article
Submitted: May 7, 2009
Size: About 6,000 words

 

** ABSTRACT

 

The diversity of information systems programs and research has been of interest to various professions. In this paper, we explore the dual nature of information systems research that falls into the categories of either design science or behavioral science. We examined the research publications of the faculty from the twenty four IS programs accredited by ABET Inc. and analyzed the scope of their publishing venues. Our results indicate that the location of the IS program (business or non-business) influences the publication venue (behavioral science or design science). Faculty located in business schools tend to publish more business oriented research, while faculty within engineering schools tend to have a greater balance of business and design research. Our research contributes to both professional practice and scholarly research; we suggest that faculty interest could influence their choice of employment location and research venues.

 

Keywords: Information Systems, Design Science, Behavioral Science, ABET, IS Research, IS Faculty

 

** EXCERPTS

 

IS has all the characteristics of a profession. The founding disciplines of IS are business and computer science. It provides technical service by building, maintaining, and managing software systems. The symbolic systems used for discourse in the IS community revolves around mathematical and graphical modeling (DFD, ERD, and UML), programming languages, digital logic, and machine and assembly languages. Inquiry methods into IS require application of requirements analysis, empirical analysis, and experimentation techniques. . . .

 

Researchers have pointed out that IS research lies at the intersection of people, organizations and technology . . . This cardinal point of IS research makes it both an organizational and a technical discipline that is concerned with the analysis, construction, deployment, use, evaluation, evolution, and management of information system artifacts in organizational settings . . .

 

In this paper, we examine IS research that falls in the classification of design science vs. behavioral science for faculty from business and non-business oriented schools. . . .

 

Our approach is similar to topical content guides. Topical content guides have been used previously in the Information System discipline. For instance, Alavi, et al (1989) used keyword analysis of IS journal’s TOC’s as part of a larger study of IS literature. Content guides have also been used in the field of document analysis, where software algorithms analyze TOC’s of literature for the purpose of automated analysis . . .

 

While coding, coders found that the most useful keywords for content analysis in the heuristic taxonomy (design vs. behavioral) were “nouns/things” and not “verbs/actions.” . . .

 

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Reviewers familiar with these issues may kindly respond. For this submission, we need a 2-weeks' turnaround time.

 

DP
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PS 2: I am writing from Kuching, Malaysia, where I have taken up the following role (on leave from XIMB, India):

 

Professor D. P. Dash
Head, School of Business and Enterprise
Swinburne University of Technology (Sarawak Campus)
http://www.swinburne.edu.my/