Benbasat & Zmud IS Research MISQ 2003

Summary

The authors claim that the field of IS, as of 2003, suffers from a lack of focus even though it has tried hard since its beginnings in the 1970s to develop a coherent identity. While acknowledging and even embracing the fact that the IS draws from many different disciplines (organizational science, computer science, economics, engineering, information science, etc. (p. 185)), they worry that research is being published that, while being presented as IS research, is really peripheral to the field. Such research makes the boundaries of the field ambiguous. What is at stake is the cognitive legitimacy of the field: "if influential stakeholders are unable to comprehend the nature, importance, and distinctiveness of the role being served by the IS discipline, these stakeholders are unlikely to acknowledge the legitimacy of the organizational field" (p. 185). The principal stakeholder is the IT practitioner (p. 192).

The article goes on to say that this lack of focus can be addressed by acknowledging the core properties of IS, and proposes two models which encapsulate these properties. The first model set the stage for the second: at the core is the IT artifact, which supports some kind of task, which is in turn part of a structure (organizational structure?), which itself exists within a context (p. 186). The second model describes a nomological ¹ net which relates IT capabilities (managerial, methodological and technological) to the IT artifact, to IT practices, to human use of the artifact, and the impact of that usage (p. 187). IS research should be intimately related to the IT artifact, and should attempt to improve the understanding of the relationships within this nomological net (p. 192).

The authors describe papers which do not fall within the boundaries of the IS field, and classify them as suffering from either errors of exclusion and errors of inclusion. Work which suffers from errors of exclusion fail to include both the IT artifact and at least one of the relationships from the nomological net (p. 188); such work weakens the boundaries between IS and other fields (p. 189). Research which suffers from errors of inclusion involves "examination of constructs best left to scholars in other disciplines" (p. 190): this means studying too much beyond what is necessary to understand relationships within the nomological net. Errors of inclusion blur the focus on the "enabling role of IT (and associated IT activities)" (p. 191) and steal energy away from making original contributions within the IS field.

Critique

This is a well written plea to the IS community which reminds me of Webster & Watson's [1] in that its goal is to strengthen the field of IS by focusing the attention of researchers on the needs of the field. Where Webster & Watson ask researchers to look at other, more mature fields, and to see and acknowledge the importance of literature reviews in propelling and focusing research, Benbasat & Zmud ask a more fundamental question: just what is it that we're doing here, anyway?

Their models for "What is IS research?" seem heavily based on socio-technical systems theory: the interaction between humans and organizations and technology. The crucial point they make is that the primary purpose of IS is to study IT as an enabling agent; what we study are the relationships between the IT artifact, the organization (possibly society) and the individuals within it, and how each of them can be changed to improve the others.

References

1. ( Summary)

   Webster, J; Watson, RT; "Analyzing the Past to Prepare for the Future: Writing a Literature Review", MIS Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2002) pp. 13-23.

Footnotes