A profile of information systems research in the Mediterranean region

Abstract

Drawing data from the Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS), we build a profile of Mediterranean information systems (IS) research and compare the emerging research landscape with recent reviews in European and international contexts. We report on research topics addressed, research methodologies employed, local empirical contexts and the composition of the related community of authors. On the basis of this data, we problematize on the meaningfulness and nature of a regional profile for IS research. Together with the six papers selected for this special issue, we aspire to contribute to the broader discourse on the diversity of IS research orientation, methodologies and agendas across different parts of the world.

Keywords:

• IS research topics
• IS research methods
• Mediterranean region
• IS research community
• regional IS research agenda

Introduction

What, if anything, can we learn by focusing on regional information systems (IS) research? Over time, this question has been shared by several colleagues working on contextual and cultural issues, as well as in regional contexts reported as under-represented in mainstream IS research (e.g., Avgerou, 2002; Lyytinen et al, 2007). The Mediterranean Sea, as it links and separates more than twenty countries and three continents constitutes a particularly interesting such context, where cultural diversity is prominent despite the geographical proximity. The late Claudio Ciborra articulated the need for a ‘Mediterranean antenna’ for the IS community to explore the contextual richness of the region (as cited in Braa et al, 2005). This vision inspired the set up of the Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS), inaugurated in 2006, to provide a forum for IS research, relevant to the socio-economic and cultural particularities of the region (Poulymenakou et al, 2009). To enhance further the visibility of IS research and IS researchers in the Mediterranean region, an open call for papers for the present special issue has been announced in European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) in 2009 by the organizers of the 4th MCIS Conference in Athens. This aim fits well with the scope of EJIS as an international journal at the global level, committed to addressing the worldwide diversity in IS research, in recognition of the fact that such diversity matters (Rowe, 2010).

Geographically, and in line with MCIS, we adopt a broad definition of the Mediterranean region to include, in addition to all littoral countries of the Mediterranean Sea, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, the Palestinian Authority, Portugal and all countries in the Balkans. This definition has been adopted in the analysis of Mediterranean IS research presented in this paper.

Because MCIS represents selective Mediterranean IS Research, we believe it provides a representative ‘sampling frame’ of the regional research genre. A review of IS research published in MCIS between 2006 and 2010 (359 papers) provides an excellent surrogate for a review of Mediterranean IS Research. The MCIS collection serves as a proxy for the work carried out in and on the Mediterranean region by IS researchers. While MCIS is not the only publication outlet for Mediterranean research, as shown by data in this review, MCIS is a leading hub for Mediterranean IS research in terms of volume of output (number of papers) and attendance numbers. Moreover, IS publications on and from the Mediterranean region are generally scarce in academic journals. Notably, in MIS Quarterly and Information System Research there have been only two such publications since 2006 (Avgerou & McGrath, 2007 and Fuentelsaz et al, 2012), the period covered in our review. On the conferences front, some other initiatives are underway in the region in recent years (e.g., EMCIS, or the francophone AIM conference). Many countries in the region also hold national conferences on informatics and/or IS. While all the above constitute potential sources for mapping the profile of Mediterranean IS research, their heterogeneity in terms of scope and intensity of academic focus, as well as other constraints (e.g., language, access to papers), have led us to restrict our search to MCIS proceedings. This corpus of work, hereafter referred to as Med IS research, draws insights on the identity and trends of research carried out in this region and of interest to this region.

In the following sections, we review the topics, methods and contexts of research presented over the first 5 years of the MCIS conference (2006–2010). Following the presentation of our method of analysis of papers published in the MCIS proceedings, we move on to review the research topics and approaches in these publications. We compare our findings to topics and approaches of papers in the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) and the EJIS, two outlets whose catchment areas arguably include that of MCIS. Of interest to us is to explore potential regional specificities of Med IS research. We also provide a profile of the author community contributing to the conference, and a review of contexts and industry sectors where research is being carried out. On the basis of our findings, we cast a critical eye on the meaningfulness of creating a regional profile for IS research. We conclude with an overview of the papers included in this special issue.

Method of work

In order to examine Med IS research output, access to the full-text papers of MCIS proceedings (2006–2010) has been acquired either through the hard-copy version of the proceedings or through the AIS electronic library (aisel.aisnet.org). For each paper, the following information has been recorded: title, abstract, date of MCIS conference presented, country of authors (as shown in their affiliation) and keywords.

Then, with the support of a team of research students, further information has been extracted from the manuscripts on the research topics investigated, the research approach adopted and the research context. Classification schemes used in previous reviews of IS research were adopted where appropriate, to allow for comparisons. A review of the full text of all 359 articles published in the 2006–2010 period in MCIS was necessary as some of the papers were not very clear in format and writing style, particularly in the case of research in progress work. To ensure consistency in the classification process, two coordination sessions took place in advance to give detailed guidance to the research students involved in the classification task, while the results were reviewed and revised as needed by the special issue editors.

The resulting classification of MCIS papers is organized according to the following dimensions:

Research Topic: Each paper was categorized according to two different research topic classification schemes: the one used by Dwivedi & Kuljis (2008), as adapted from Palvia & Pinjani (2007), that consists of 33 research areas; and the one used by Galliers & Whitley (2007), as adapted from Banker & Kauffman (2004), that is at a higher level of abstraction and consists of nine broader research areas.

Empirical/ Non-Empirical, Quantitative/ Qualitative research, Research Method and Unit of Analysis: Papers were classified in terms of research approach/method along these dimensions, in a manner similar to a number of earlier studies (Chen & Hirschheim, 2004; Avison et al, 2008; Dwivedi & Kuljis, 2008). Research-in-progress papers were typically classified as non-empirical, unless they presented (preliminary) findings.

Country Context, Industry Sector and Research Funding: Country Context was completed only in cases where empirical research explicitly identified the countries in which it has been conducted, whereas Industry Sector was noted for all papers where research explicitly concerned an industry sector. The third variable was used to record information in cases where there was clear indication that the research reported was supported by European or national funding bodies. These variables have been introduced to explore regional and contextual characteristics of Med IS research, in conjunction with the constitution of the related author community, as reflected in author affiliations and the extent of academic cross-country collaboration.

Research topics in MCIS

Published reviews of IS research output reveal the considerable variety of topics covered by IS researchers. IS, as a multidisciplinary domain, addresses both contextual (social, strategic, organizational, etc.) issues of technology as well as system and technology development itself. A review of the 100 most frequently used keyword terms in MCIS papers corroborates this profile. Figure 1 provides a pictorial representation of frequencies of appearance of particular keyword terms (in alphabetical order) in the form of a tag cloud, where text size indicates frequency of use. Unsurprisingly for an IS conference, the terms ‘information’, ‘systems’, ‘management’ and ‘business’ are the most frequently used. Thereafter, two different groups of keywords appear, reflecting on the one hand contextual aspects of interest (e.g., organizational, social, knowledge, learning, collaboration, communication, innovation, culture, adoption, process, outsourcing, trust) and on the other system development and technological issues addressed (e.g., design, software, technology, development, network, architecture, interoperability, etc.). A further category of frequently used keyword terms reflects special interests: some reveal an industry focus (e.g., healthcare, hotel, public, retailing), whereas others reveal a specific technology focus (ERP, mobile, mining, multimedia, recommender, RFID, semantic, web).

Figure 1 Tag-cloud derived from MCIS papers keywords.

For a more systematic and in-depth review of the topics of interest to Med IS research community, we have adopted two recent classification schemes used to review the profile of IS research thus also creating a basis for comparisons of findings. The first scheme, comprising 33 research topics, has been used by Dwivedi & Kuljis (2008) to construct the profile of research published in the EJIS 1997–2007 (hereafter referred to as the EJIS topic list). This has been based on the classification of Palvia & Pinjani (2007), in their review of Information and Management (I&M) publications between 1998 and 2005 (hereafter referred to as the I&M topic list). Following this scheme, we have classified each MCIS paper according to the research topic that was most prominent in the publication. While both EJIS and I&M reviews have allowed multiple-topic assignment in their classifications, our approach was to find for each paper the closest match. The rationale was to identify the main focus of research interest in MCIS published works and, through this, trace potential differentiations in the priorities set in the Mediterranean research agendas. The results are presented in Table 1.

Table 1 MCIS topic frequency trends (2006–2010)

Topic	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	Total	Percentage
IS development/methods and tools	6	8	18	9	10	51	14.2
IS usage	8	5	4	16	11	44	12.3
IS research	10	3	2	5	3	23	6.4
IS implementation	4	1	2	7	6	20	5.6
Electronic commerce/Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)	2	1	1	11	4	19	5.3
Internet	1	2	2	12	2	19	5.3
Artificial intelligence/expert systems/neural networks/knowledge mgmt	1	1	1	9	6	18	5.0
Organizational design/BPR/workflow systems/issues	2	1	3	5	5	16	4.5
Resource management/IS management issues	2	1	1	6	6	16	4.5
Innovation		1	1	5	6	13	3.6
Media and communications				9	4	13	3.6
Supply chain management (SCM)/ERP	1	1	1	7	3	13	3.6
Decision support systems	2	2	1	1	4	10	2.8
IS planning	1		1	5	3	10	2.8
Outsourcing	2	1	2	2	3	10	2.8
Software/programming language	2	1	4	3		10	2.8
Databases/DBMS			1	3	4	8	2.2
IS security				7	1	8	2.2
IS education				7		7	1.9
IS evaluation			1	2	3	7	1.9
Multimedia	2			3	2	7	1.9
IT value				2	2	4	1.1
Internal/external environment			1	2		3	0.8
IS function application				2	1	3	0.8
Customer relationship management				2		2	0.6
IS staffing					2	2	0.6
Global information technology				1		1	0.3
Group decision support systems				1		1	0.3
Hardware			1			1	0.3
Total	46	30	48	144	91	359

The two most prominent topics in MCIS are IS development and IS usage, which together account for 26.5% of the papers presented over the years. Next in terms of frequency are IS implementation and IS research. These four topics together account for 40% of the conference papers; the result is not surprising since they are significantly more generic than the other topic categories in the I&M and EJIS lists. Going down the topic list, we find Electronic commerce, Internet and Knowledge Management as the most frequent technology-focused topics. The two most frequent non-technological topics in MCIS cover organizational and IS management issues, which together account for 9% of all papers.

IS development tops the list of topics in MCIS, while it also features highly in previous topic reviews. It is fourth in I&M (Palvia & Pinjani, 2007), second in EJIS (Dwivedi & Kuljis, 2008) and first in the Information Systems Journal (Avison et al, 2008). This shows that Med IS research core interests are in line with those in top IS outlets. IS development in Med IS research encompasses requirement analysis, modeling and programming practices, new services (particularly web and mobile), standards, architectures, and interoperability, and a considerable amount of work on design (particularly participatory and contextual approaches).

IS usage, which tops the I&M list, features second in our list, while it is not as frequent in the other two lists (EJIS and ISJ). IS implementation is also in the top five of the MCIS list, even though it does not feature in the top ten of previous reviews. Increased attention on IS usage may be explained as a need to discuss specificities of this issue within the Mediterranean context. The popularity of IS implementation as research topic may be attributed to the inclusive nature of the conference, where technology-related research is being offered more space, as papers often report findings on the implementation of technological solutions in particular settings. IS usage covers both behavioral (particularly intention to use and acceptance) and social/context (particularly diffusion and digital divide) oriented research. Several papers focus on innovative technologies, especially mobile, grid, interaction devices and open source. Of interest is the intensive focus on two sectors: e-government (particularly procurement) and e-health. IS implementation papers most frequently focus on ERP, data migration and service-oriented architecture issues at the organizational level, and interoperability, e-government and e-health at the extra-organizational level.

IS research features highly in the topic frequency list, reflecting the open and inclusive nature of MCIS conferences, which often host exploratory work on new topics, theories, technologies or perspectives.

For the remaining topics, we see no significant differences between the MCIS list and the other two lists, with the exception of IS management. This topic is significantly less frequent in MCIS (4.5%) compared with both EJIS (20%) and I&M (11%), a fact that can be attributed to a shift in emphasis toward IS usage and extra-organizational issues.

The second scheme used for classifying the MCIS papers has been based on the Galliers & Whitley (2007) review of ECIS conferences. Their classification scheme, adapted from Banker & Kauffman (2004), is at a higher level of abstraction comprising nine research areas: social, IS organization and strategy, system development, decision support systems, technology, IS research issues, economics of IS and IT, human–computer systems design, and electronic markets. Following Galliers & Whitley, title, keywords and content have been used to map MCIS papers onto the nine research areas. The results are presented in Table 2.

Table 2 Percentages of papers in each research topic, by year

	Social (%)	IS organizational and strategic issues (%)	System development (%)	DSS (%)	Technology (%)	Research issues (%)	Economic (%)	Human (%)	Electronic markets (%)
2006	6.5	17.4	15.2	4.3	8.7	15.2	2.2	26.1	4.3
2007	16.7	6.7	30.0	6.7	3.3	6.7	3.3	16.7	10.0
2008	8.3	20.8	37.5	2.1	12.5	6.3	2.1	8.3	2.1
2009	16.0	23.6	11.8	3.5	11.8	4.9	4.9	16.7	6.9
2010	12.1	29.7	16.5	6.6	6.6	5.5	1.1	16.5	5.5
Total	12.8	22.6	18.4	4.5	9.5	6.7	3	16.7	5.8

Similar to ECIS, IS organizational and strategic issues and system development combined account for slightly over 40% of the total papers. The IS organization and strategy research area shows a steady growth but remains less populated compared with ECIS. Conversely, in MCIS, we see more papers related to the IT artifact, system development and human–computer interaction issues. Another difference with ECIS is observed in the frequency of the human category, which in MCIS accounts for almost 17% of the papers, compared with 4% in ECIS. This finding is consistent with the high frequency of IS usage papers according to the first classification scheme and can be attributed to the growing attention in the global IS agenda on issues of IS acceptance, adoption and use, which is also manifest in MCIS papers. It is worth noting that the social category is comparably popular to ECIS; publications in this category in MCIS focus mainly on e-government and public sector research, e-health and research on societal issues such as digital divide and social networking.

Our experience with classifying MCIS papers revealed intrinsic constraints of both schemes. First, emergent IS topics attracting significant research interest do not feature in the first classification scheme, despite its detailed categories. For example, we noted ICT policy, Web 2.0, e-government, e-health and e-learning. A second constraint is the persistent ambiguity in the earlier classifications regarding the exact contents of each category, which can be attributed to the evolving agenda of IS research in recent years, as technology areas and theory lenses multiply. For example, grouping knowledge management together with AI and neural networks in line with the first classification scheme is problematic; the former topic is studied mainly from an IS implementation or organizational perspective, whereas the latter remain predominantly technological topics.

Research approaches

We now turn to the research approaches adopted by the Mediterranean IS community. More specifically the research paradigms, that is, empirical vs non-empirical and quantitative vs qualitative, the unit of analysis and the adopted research methods. Wherever possible, comparisons are made to similar reviews of EJIS, ISJ and I&M papers.

The results presented in Table 3 show that the majority of MCIS papers (68%) present empirical work, a lower percentage compared with EJIS publications (80%). This may be expected as a conference like MCIS, contrary to a journal, hosts also research in progress papers, which often describe a research framework or model to be empirically validated in the future. Most of these papers have often been classified as non-empirical in this review, as the empirical context was not being adequately described.

Table 3 Research paradigm, empirical vs non-empirical and qualitative vs quantitative of the MCIS papers per year of publication

Year	Empirical vs non-empirical		Total	Quantitative vs qualitative			Total
	Empirical	NE		Quantitative	Qualitative	Mixed/Other
2006	27	19	46	3	34	9	46
2007	21	9	30	7	20	3	30
2008	31	17	48	9	34	5	48
2009	100	44	144	34	76	34	144
2010	65	26	91	30	39	22	91
Total	244	115	359	83	203	73	359
%	68	32		23.1	56.5	20.3

More than 50% of papers in MCIS employ qualitative research methods, while the proportion of papers based on quantitative methods has been on the rise in the more recent years of the conference. Compared with EJIS, mixed method papers appear to have a significantly higher percentage in MCIS. This is because several papers include an exploratory qualitative study complemented by further quantitative work, while other papers, particularly those concerned with system development issues, comprise both qualitative elements in the elicitation of requirements and quantitative elements concerning system evaluation.

With respect to research methods, MCIS publications have been classified following the Dwivedi & Kuljis (2008) classification scheme, who have adapted the Palvia & Pinjani (2007)I&M list. We have added three categories in that list to cater for cases of MCIS papers that did not fit well under one of the existing categories. The Design/ System development/ Application category has been added, in line with Chen & Hirschheim (2004) as well as Chau et al (2005), to address the numerous cases of papers using systems design or development techniques as their main research method. The Hybrid category has been added as many papers employed a mixed methodological approach, while Multiple Case Studies has been added to differentiate papers where case studies are presented in a comparative or synthesis mode.

The resulting classification (Table 4) shows clear methodological pluralism in MCIS publications. Case studies are the most popular research method (20%). This is comparable to the 22.2% in EJIS (Dwivedi & Kuljis, 2008) and 22.9% at ISJ (Avison et al, 2008). Surveys account for 11.4% of MCIS publications, which is lower than the 16.6% of EJIS and significantly lower than the 41.5% of I&M. This result is consistent with the high frequency of qualitative research works in the conference. MCIS also features a high percentage of framework and conceptual papers (14.8%) and several hybrid papers. In contrast to other publication outlets (such as EJIS, ISJ and I&M), MCIS features 7.5% of papers with system design or application development as their main research method.

Table 4 Research methods in MCIS papers

Research method/Year	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	Total	Percentage
Case study	15	7	10	28	12	72	20.1
Framework/conceptual model	7	2	10	22	12	53	14.8
Survey	2	4	5	17	13	41	11.4
Hybrid	1	1	2	15	12	31	8.6
Design/system development/application	6	3	1	11	5	26	7.2
Literature analysis		2	3	11	8	24	6.7
Interview	4	1	3	4	4	16	4.5
Qualitative research	3	5	2	3	3	16	4.5
Other method	2	2	3	6	1	14	3.9
Field study	2			7	2	11	3.1
Multiple case studies	3	1	2	2	2	10	2.8
Mathematical model		1	1	6	1	9	2.5
Library research	1			2	4	7	1.9
Laboratory experiments		1		2	4	7	1.9
Speculation/commentary			1	1	4	6	1.7
Field experiments				3	3	6	1.7
Action research			4			4	1.1
Secondary data analysis			1	1	1	3	0.8
Content analysis				3		3	0.8
Total	46	30	48	144	91	359	100.0

The unit of analysis (Table 5) frequency is quite evenly distributed among the theories/technology, organization/firm and individual users categories. These, together, account for almost 60% of MCIS publications. The same categories are the three most frequent also in EJIS (Dwivedi & Kuljis, 2008), although there, the organization/firm unit of analysis stands far apart the rest, with a 56.4%.

Table 5 Unit of analysis

Unit	Frequency	Percentage
Theories/technology	78	21.7
Organization/firm	76	21.2
Individual users	58	16.2
Industry	26	7.2
Country	25	7.0
Other	23	6.4
Stakeholders	21	5.8
SMEs	14	3.9
Group/team	13	3.6
Developers	13	3.6
Individual consumers	12	3.3
Total	359	100

The author community

The establishment of MCIS recognized a pragmatic concern about the under-representation of non-American IS researchers in major publication outlets (Lyytinen et al, 2007; Galliers et al, 2008). Indicative is the 11% contribution of Mediterranean papers to the first 10 years of the ECIS conference noted by Galliers & Whitley (2007, p. 33), even though the conference has been organized four times in Southern Europe in the time frame of their review. Even though there is no detailed country count for all papers, Mediterranean researchers and institutions are not among the ‘top’ published in EJIS in the period 1997–2007 (Dwivedi & Kuljis, 2008). Conversely, MCIS can be considered successful in providing access and visibility for Mediterranean IS researchers. The 359 papers published up to 2010, and reviewed in this article, comprise a total of 809 author names (1004 including MCIS 2011 – see Table 6). This number includes a limited amount of duplicate counts corresponding to authors who have published multiple papers in the course of the conference. Overall, 607 (60%) author affiliations in MCIS are from institutions within the Mediterranean region. Close to half of all author affiliations (45.8%) and 76% of Mediterranean affiliations are from South Europe, making this sub-regional community the most prominent in the conference. The Middle East sub-region has been represented by one in ten authors (11.3%) over the years, while very few (3.4%) North Africa-affiliated IS researchers have thus far participated, and in only two of the conferences (Tunisia and Greece). Almost four out of ten authors (39.5%) come from non-Mediterranean academic institutions. Taking also into account the 2011 data for MCIS in Cyprus, we see a clear trend of growth in the participation of non-Mediterranean authors in the conference. The countries most strongly represented are the U.K., Germany and Switzerland from Europe, and the U.S. and Australia from the rest of the world, which is in line with the relative size and strength of the academic IS communities in these national contexts.

Table 6 Distribution of authors per country, sub-region and year

MCIS country venue	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	2011	Total
	Italy	Italy	Tunisia	Greece	Israel	Cyprus	No.	Percentage
South Europe	46	45	56	202	53	58	460	45.8
Bulgaria				5	3		8	0.8
Cyprus				9	11	10	30	3.0
France	5	7	13	18	10	8	61	6.1
Greece	9	2		118	11	21	161	16.0
Italy	32	30	38	19	16	13	148	14.7
Portugal		3		11		6	20	2.0
Romania				1			1	0.1
Slovenia			2	1			3	0.3
Spain		3	3	20	2		28	2.8
Middle East (Mediterranean)	1	6	2	11	79	14	113	11.3
Israel		6	1	5	73	14	99	9.9
Lebanon			1				1	0.1
Turkey	1			6	6		13	1.3
North Africa			21	13			34	3.4
Egypt				6			6	0.6
Morocco				3			3	0.3
Tunisia			21	4			25	2.5
Other	52	16	20	98	88	123	397	39.5
U.K.	7	2	2	26	6	24	67	6.7
U.S.A.	7	5		9	22	16	59	5.9
Germany	1			17	19	15	52	5.2
Australia	3			6		12	21	2.1
Other Europe	23	8	13	28	31	42	145	14.4
Other Americas	7	1	1	3	2	8	22	2.2
Asia	4	0	4	9	8	6	31	6.2
#Authors	99	67	99	324	220	195	1004	100
#Countries	20	13	16	29	22	22

Looking at regional collaboration of Mediterranean IS researchers, Table 7 presents the number of papers with author affiliations of joint papers from more than one country. Approximately, one in ten (11.7%) of MCIS papers are the result of cross-country collaboration. Of those, about half are joint work of Mediterranean with extra-Mediterranean authors, often expatriates. Only one-fifth of cross-country collaboration papers, 2.5% of all MCIS papers, are the result of joint work among Mediterranean-affiliated authors. As MCIS presents a prime opportunity for the presentation of such work, the low percentage affirms a lack of any substantial volume of cross-country IS research in the region to date.

Table 7 Cross-country papers based on authors’ affiliation per year

	Total No. of Papers	Cross-country papers
		Mediterranean– Mediterranean	Mediterranean– Other	Other	Total	Percentage
2006	46		1	4	5	10.9
2007	30	1	1		2	6.7
2008	48	3	6		9	18.8
2009	144	2	9	4	15	10.4
2010	91	3	5	3	11	12.1
Total	359	9	22	11	42	11.7

The Mediterranean region as research context

The need for context diversity in IS research has been addressed by scholars in the field (Avgerou, 2002). Bearing in mind the prevalence of North American and North European settings as context for published IS research, it is important to explore the extent to which MCIS is indeed used as an outlet to present research on Mediterranean contexts. Of the papers presented at the conference, 106 (30% of total and 43.4% of empirical papers) have used a specific Mediterranean country as the context for their research (Table 8), representing 15 Mediterranean country contexts up to 2010. The vast majority of these works focus on a single Mediterranean country, which is expected, given the low level of cross-country author collaboration discussed earlier. South Europe accounts for three quarters of the papers with a Mediterranean empirical context, half of which focus on Greece or Italy, which is related to the organization of MCIS in these countries. Similarly, in the case of North Africa and Middle East Mediterranean regions, IS research conducted in such settings has been mainly presented at the conferences held in these regions (Tunisia and Israel). Almost all the papers with a Mediterranean context have at least one author with a Mediterranean affiliation.

Table 8 Empirical papers with a Mediterranean context

	Total empirical papers		Empirical papers with a Mediterranean context		Empirical cross-country papers with a Mediterranean context
	No.	Percentage of all MCIS	No.	Percentage of empirical	No. Mediterranean– Mediterranean	No. Mediterranean– Other
2006	27	58.7	8	29.6		1
2007	21	70.0	6	28.6
2008	31	64.6	19	61.3	4	2
2009	100	69.4	53	53.0	1	3
2010	65	71.4	20	30.8
Total	244	68.0	106	43.4	5	6

A distinguishing dimension of Med IS research is the association of regional context with the focus on a specific industry sector. Almost half of the papers (178 in total) refer to a specific industry sector in the context of their research. A total of 28 sectors have been addressed by IS research in MCIS up to 2010, a positive indicator for research diversity. Yet, five industry sectors account for more than 70% of sector-specific research (Table 9). Public administration and e-government is the focus of almost a quarter of the total papers, possibly indicating that their authors are also involved in local public sector reform and e-government projects. This may further be explained by a lack of specialized IT/IS resources in the public sectors of the region; hence these are sought for in the academic environment. This may still be a national rather than a regional phenomenon, as we can see that the MCIS 2009 conference in Greece accounts for most of these papers. Healthcare, normally part of the broader public sector in the Mediterranean context, has been counted separately and constitutes the second most studied sector in MCIS. Throughout the years, we see a steady number of papers related to healthcare projects, addressing mainly organizational issues. The education sector appears third in preference, but this result is biased by the fact that the MCIS 2009 conference featured ‘education’ as a special focus theme. The IT sector comes also high in preference, which is unsurprising, given the nature of IS studies. Tourism – a sector of high interest to the region – accounts for almost 10% of the papers. The rest of the papers with a specific industry focus span across 23 other sectors; including consumer goods/retail, advertisement/media, banking/finance, mobile/telecommunications, shipping/transport.

Table 9 Top five industry sectors in MCIS

Sector	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010	Total
						No.	Percentage
Public admin/e-government	9	1	7	17	9	43	24.2
Healthcare	6	4	3	6	9	28	15.7
Education	1	2	1	13	4	21	11.8
IT			5	8	6	19	10.7
Tourism	4	2		9	1	16	9.0
Other (23 other sectors)	1	5	10	25	10	51	28.7
Total with sectoral focus	21	14	26	78	39	178	100
As percentage of total papers	45.7	46.7	54.2	54.2	42.9	49.6

Availability of research funding is a major institutional driver for academic research in general and IS research in particular. In the case of papers published in MCIS, only 20% clearly acknowledge research funding support from European, national or other unspecified sources. The contribution of European and national funding sources is about equal, and in both cases the vast majority of papers come from Mediterranean-affiliated authors.

In a nutshell: features of and prospects for Med IS research

A fundamental element of this regional IS research profile based on MCIS data is the existence of a sizeable IS community with 607 contributing authors with a Mediterranean affiliation up to 2011. Another important element is the significant extent to which local context is addressed in empirical studies, contributing to the creation of a knowledge base – which documents IS phenomena in less frequently researched contexts and employing a plurality of research methods. Also distinctive for IS research in the region is the focus on specific industries such as the public sector, health, education and tourism. Considering research topics, there is increased interest for IS/application design and development issues, compared with journal outlets and ECIS (a broader conference in terms of regional coverage). By the same token, MCIS authors are more frequently addressing new technologies (e.g., Web 2.0, mobile, social and interactive media) and IT artifacts. On the organization and societal fronts of IS research, topics as ICT policy and IS in government, business processes and models are particularly popular. Similar to other publication outlets beyond the region, the Mediterranean community is also frequently concerned with research on IS usage and particularly IS adoption and innovation diffusion studies.

In the profile of Med IS research that emerges, there is scope for further diversity in the research topics and for more context-specific research. Recent socio-economic and political developments in the region, such as the financial crisis in South Europe and the ‘Arab Spring’ phenomenon in North Africa carry significant cultural and socio-organisational implications. The role of IS in these emergent contexts is a research challenge that ought to be addressed. This entails studying, for example, the role IS can play in the efficiency of government structure and services, or the role of the Internet in political processes. Further opportunities arise when IS phenomena are studied comparatively across national or sub-regional settings in the Mediterranean. Our review shows that cross-country research and collaboration is still very limited (Table 7). However, we would expect such endeavors to be fruitful, providing fresh insights in the development and adoption of IS, thus informing and enriching the extant IS research and theory.

Debating the meaningfulness of a regional IS research profile

The set-up of both this special issue and MCIS itself was aiming to bring to the fore distinctive elements of IS research in the Mediterranean region. Yet, how meaningful is it to look for regional particularities in IS research agendas, ideologies and practices nowadays? Academia in general, as well as IS academia, is experiencing an era of intense internationalization. Is it valid to look for and expect something different to emerge at a regional level? Should that be the case, the Mediterranean region is clearly an interesting part of the world to consider. When Ciborra called for an ‘antenna’ for IS research in the Mediterranean, his motivations seemed well beyond those of native origin and academic and personal social ties.

The Mediterranean Sea, the defining element of the region, does not merely divide three continents. It is the boundary, in this part of the world, between the global North and the global South, the geographical meeting point of countries with significant differences in their trajectories of socio-economic development. It is also an area uniquely dense in history, and uniquely varied in the number of strong socio-political collective identities it hosts. As historical experience shows, cultures in the region are not necessarily collaborating or even friendly to each other.

The situation resonates in our findings on the status of IS research in and on the Mediterranean region. Collaboration among academics in the area was found to be low and, beyond that, even contribution to the conference seems influenced by existing socio-political difficulties, such as chronic conflict in the Middle East, and recent developments in North Africa. Science ought to be far from any type of conflict, except perhaps for that ensuing from heated academic debate. It is also known to benefit from collaboration and from the exchange of research experiences. This is particularly important in the case of IS, an intensely contextualized discipline, that would be expected to benefit from sharing research carried out in neighboring settings. Yet, having a conference in an arbitrary area where no prior strong academic links exist does not seem to be a sufficient mobilizing agent for regional synergies according to our analysis of MCIS output.

Another contested issue nowadays is the potential of conferences for the cultivation of research areas as well as for the academic development of researchers participating in them. Internationalization of research, the emergence of digital spaces for information sharing, communication and collaboration, the increasing pressure on academics worldwide to focus their efforts on journal publications, but also financial difficulties facing academia in many parts of the world, all give substance to realistic concerns about the future role of academic conferences.

Again, this is reflected in our review. Over the years, there are significant absences in MCIS. Our data suggests that the French, Spanish and Portuguese contingents from Europe, together with all North African academics, have not thus far considered the conference as a publishing and networking opportunity. This may be attributed to the existence of strong national events, local academic institutional culture, competing allegiances and pragmatic resource constraints.

A key motivation for this paper has been the search for elements of distinctiveness in Mediterranean IS research. Papers in leading IS journals are tailored to the interests of an international and global academic audience. Even when they are based on local context, the manner they refer to it is incidental rather than constituting the substance of the work. A regional conference would be expected to serve as an opportunity to address regional context in more depth, and to offer the freedom to explore research topics of local interest. Yet, as our data show, this does not seem to be the case. The community of authors contributing to MCIS addresses the same topics that attract attention worldwide, relies on the same theories and employs particular research methods to a similar extent. If anything, our review serves as one more indication of the homogenization of IS research worldwide.

Isomorphic pressures seem to be at work here. On the one hand, they stem from the intellectual dominance exerted by more established IS communities. The neighbouring – and much more prominent in IS research terms – North European region shares a very similar profile as the comparison of MCIS and ECIS has shown. The influence of the North American IS research practice is also noticeable and further reinforced by the leading roles (e.g., track co-chairs) – and active participation in the conference – of expatriates who are senior scholars in leading North American institutions. It is also reflected in joint paper authorship, which is much more frequent between Mediterranean and extra-regional IS researchers, than within the region (Table 7). On the other hand, as a regional conference is seldom the final destination for a piece of research work, the pressure to conform to what are perceived to be the international ‘standards’ for good research practice, deemed suitable for journal articles, is high and visible in MCIS output.

The main implications of our analysis of Med IS research, in our view, concern the distinctiveness of its regional, ‘Mediterranean’ character. This still remains to be shaped and articulated. The opportunity to ‘bring a critical eye on context’ and to diversify both style and genre of research, in line with what Rowe (2010, 2011) suggests for the ‘European’ spirit of IS research, has been largely missed thus far. On a positive note, Med IS – as reflected both in our analysis and in the papers hosted in this issue – clearly demonstrates the capability for research in the region to reach to the international level. Empirical papers in particular provide insightful and diverse descriptions and analyses of the contextual richness in Mediterranean settings, offering opportunities for international comparisons and learning. Similar research efforts may encourage in the future the emergence of new themes and constructs, challenge extant theories and introduce novel narratives or more reflexive works. The challenge for our Mediterranean IS community to produce but also to accommodate such work remains open.

Papers in this special issue

The compilation of this special issue follows an open call for papers soliciting IS research in the Mediterranean region, which was announced in tandem with the call for papers for MCIS 2009 in Athens. Thirty-two papers have been submitted. Following two double-blind review rounds, with the editors of this special issue acting as associate editors for all submissions, the final set of six papers has been compiled. Four of these were revised versions of papers presented at the conference, and two papers were new submissions.

The papers included in this special issue serve two purposes. First, they provide exemplars of research conducted by IS scholars based in the Mediterranean region. The academic affiliations of authors of the six papers include France, Greece, Israel, Italy and Lebanon, thus covering two of the three Mediterranean sub-regions. One-third of the papers in this issue come from the Middle East sub-region, which, as already discussed, is generally under-represented in Med IS research. Second, three of the papers provide exemplars of IS research conducted on Mediterranean settings. Research reported here has been conducted in Italy, Lebanon and Turkey offering EJIS readers insights on local contexts that are addressed significantly less frequently in IS publication outlets compared with North American and North European ones. This is particularly true for Lebanon and Turkey as discussed in our analysis of Mediterranean research contexts. The subject matter of the papers in this issue suggests that the topic diversity and the methodological pluralism of the IS research agenda globally is also manifested in the Mediterranean region.

The paper by Bijan Azad and Nelson King (Institutionalised Computer Workaround Practices in a Mediterranean Country: An Examination of Two Organizations) falls under the second most frequent Med IS research topic: IS use. The authors study a relatively under-researched area of IS use practices, computer workarounds. These are system use practices beyond those specified in the system's design, often in conflict with official procedures and yet persistent and prevalent in operational day-to-day work with the system. They explore how such practices are enacted from an institutional perspective looking at environmental influences, material constraints and the decoupling of actions from official rules and designed system uses in order to provide a richer understanding for their persistence and resilience. Methodologically, this research exemplifies the most popular research method in Med IS: case study. Specifically, the empirical work comprises two exploratory case studies in public service organizations in a Levantine Mediterranean context. The unit of analysis for this work is individual user groups – the third most frequent option for Med IS. The findings shed light into the notion of ‘essential workarounds’ as the result of both top-down and bottom-up influencing conditions, the institutional nature of workarounds and the framing of these practices not as acts of resistance but as sense making devices that render both rules and systems workable.

Ali Yala and Qing Hu (The Impact of IT–Business Alignment on Firm Performance in a Developing Country Setting: Exploring Moderating Roles of Environmental Uncertainty and Strategic Orientation) work on a relatively under-represented topic in Med IS research, IS planning. They build on an extensive body of extant literature, which looks at the link between IT and business strategic alignment with organizational performance. They augment the related literature, suggesting contingencies on the positive effects of strategic alignment on performance by hypothesizing that uncertainty in the firm's competitive environment and the type of IT strategic orientation adopted by the firm moderate the relationship. An original contribution of this research is that the issue is explored in the context of a developing economy, namely Turkey. Their research is survey-based, the third most frequent Med IS research method, at the organizational level, which is the second most common unit of analysis for Med IS research. Drawing on 169 survey responses by Turkish firms, they confirm that in this particular context their analysis yields a similar positive effect of alignment on performance established by prior research for developed economies. Further, the study results indicate a positive effect of IT business strategic alignment when firms perceived their competitive environment as highly uncertain. The type of strategic orientation of the firm has not been shown to have a particularly significant moderating effect on the alignment–performance relationship.

Lapo Mola and Andrea Carugati (Escaping ‘Localisms’ in IT Sourcing: Tracing Changes in Institutional Logics in an Italian Firm) study an Italian medium-sized firm for 15 years, tracing the IT sourcing paths it follows, that is, the unfolding of sourcing related decisions, over time. Outsourcing is relatively under-researched in Med IS (ranked 15th), yet the topic has been attracting considerable attention over the years at the global level. The authors take the theoretical perspective of institutional logics, that is, the manner in which institutional pressures shape shared understandings over legitimate goals and their pursuit, and examine how these change over time in the case of IT sourcing decisions. Their methodological approach of a longitudinal case study – with the organization as the unit of analysis – fits well with the process-oriented view they advocate for obtaining a deeper understanding of reasons for changes to sourcing practices. Their key finding is that IT hiring practices and the cultivation of IT management capabilities within the firm are key factors influencing changes in IT sourcing practices. The study also provides insights on the particularities of the Italian context regarding IT sourcing practices.

Mariana Sigala (The Impact of Geocollaborative Portals on Group Decision Making for Trip Planning) researches an emergent Web 2.0 phenomenon, geocollaborative portals, that is, sites that offer access to distributed geographical information and applications. Topic-wise, the research falls under the ‘Internet’ category; yet, as new phenomena in this category multiply, we argue that it falls short of providing a good classification of research on the Internet nowadays. Web 2.0 is hereby proposed as a candidate new entry for IS research topic listings. The study comprises a laboratory experiment – a rarely employed research method in Med IS according to our data. The experimental task, collaborative trip planning in Yahoo trip planner, was used to assess the effects of portal enabled collaboration on collaborative decision making. The most fitting category for the unit of analysis for this study, using the existing classification scheme, would be ‘individual users’ despite the fact that this misses the point of collectiveness, which is central to the paper's argument. Since such phenomena are increasingly addressed in IS research, probably a separate category for ‘collectives’ of individuals should be added to the standard list hereon. Effectiveness (encompassing group communication, intensity of comments, idea quality, decision quality and confidence and support for group tasks) has come out as the single most important factor for perceived collaboration success.

One more paper in this special issue that focuses on Web 2.0 phenomena is that of Daphne Raban (Conversation as a Source of Satisfaction and Continuance in a Question and Answer Site). The author researches user satisfaction from Web 2.0 information services. In unit of analysis terms, this paper falls under the ‘individual consumers’ category, the least frequent in Med IS research to date. Using data from the Google Answers service while it was in operation, she develops a factor model for antecedents of customer satisfaction and continuance (returning use) for the information service (Q&A), based on expectation-confirmation theory. The variables are populated with data drawn exclusively from the site. The classification of this paper in terms of methodological approach shows one more shortcoming of the existing list of research methods. From the options available, ‘secondary data analysis’ is the closest fit. However, as Web 2.0 services offer new alternative sources for research data, we suggest that this should be reflected as a separate research method category. The major positive effects found in this research are between price paid for the service and response time, number of comments (conversation) and customer satisfaction, and customer satisfaction and repeated use of the service.

Finally, Jean-Eric Pelet and Panagiota Papadopoulou (The Effects of Colours of E-Commerce Sites on Consumer Mood, Memorization and Buying Intention) study the effects of colors used in the interface design of commercial web sites. Treating the users as consumers, they conceptualize effects by combining traditional and emerging constructs from the marketing literature, namely consumer buying intention with consumer mood and memorization. The paper falls under the ‘hybrid’ category as it employs a combination of research methods. Their preliminary qualitative study revealed colour as the most important characteristic of e-commerce sites in users’ perceptions. Their subsequent laboratory experiment yields evidence of positive effects of low colour contrast on free recall of web site information as well as on buying intention, and negative effects of increased brightness levels on users’ mood and buying intentions. Buying intention is also influenced positively by free recall and negatively by negative mood.

We hope that you will enjoy reading this special issue and be drawn to the interesting results from research, which addresses local and regional context specificities, explores emergent research themes and showcases work carried out by colleagues in the Mediterranean region.

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge the valuable insights and support of EJIS Editors, Hans van der Heijden, Richard Baskerville and Frantz Rowe in particular. We would also like to recognize the excellent collaboration with the reviewers and the authors of the special issue. For the reconstruction of the MCIS context, we have had valuable exchanges with several colleagues. We owe special thanks (in alphabetical order) to Mohktar Amami, Chrisanthi Avgerou, Izak Benbasat, Gian Marco Campagnolo, Georgios Doukidis, Phillip Ein-Dor, Gianni Jacuzzi, Angelika Kokkinaki, Giovan Francesco Lanzara, Claudia Loebbecke, Marco de Marco, Antony Stylianou and Dov Te’eni. Special credit is owed to the Ph.D. candidates of the ELTRUN research group in our department who tackled competently the demanding task of preparing the data set of the MCIS conference proceedings. Last but not least, we would like to acknowledge – post-mortem – Claudio Ciborra, who drew attention to the issue of a regional research outlook and inspired efforts to bring together people engaging in IS research in the Mediterranean region.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Nancy Pouloudi

About the authors

Athanasia (Nancy) Pouloudi is an Associate Professor and co-ordinator of the ISTLab/IRIS (Interdisciplinary Research on the Information Society) research group in the Department of Management Science and Technology at the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB), Greece. She holds a first degree in Informatics (AUEB, Greece), and M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Information Systems (London School of Economics, U.K.). Her research focuses on organizational and social issues in information systems adoption, favoring an interpretive research approach. She has served as Associate Editor for EJIS (2002–2011) and held organizational roles in recent ECIS and MCIS conferences. She presently serves as Region 2 Representative of the Association for Information Systems.

Angeliki Poulymenakou

Angeliki Poulymenakou is an Associate Professor of Information Systems and co-ordinator of the ISTLab/OIS (Organisational Information Systems) research group at the Department of Management Science and Technology of the Athens University of Economics and Business. Previously she has served as Lecturer in Information Systems at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She holds a first degree in Mathematics (University of Athens), and an M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Information Systems from the London School of Economics. She has published on knowledge acquisition and management, IS failures, BPR and ERP, organizational networks and collaboration, and on e-learning design and evaluation. She was program chair and proceedings co-editor for the MCIS 2009 conference in Athens.

Katerina Pramatari

Katerina Pramatari is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management Science and Technology of Athens University of Economics and Business and scientific coordinator of the ELTRUN/SCORE research group. She holds a B.Sc. in Informatics and M.Sc. in IS from AUEB and a Ph.D. in IS and Supply Chain Management from the same University. She has worked as systems analyst for P&G Europe and marketing assistant for P&G Greece, as well as in the setup of B2B ventures. She has published more than 90 papers in scientific journals, peer-reviewed academic conferences and book chapters. Her research interests are in electronic services, e-business, supply chain collaboration and IS.