In this editorial, I am going to discuss the challenges as I see them to Information Systems (IS). The European Journal of Information Systems has decided to publish a debate on these challenges, starting in its next issue when Richard Baskerville (incoming Editor-in-Chief for the journal in 2008) and I (outgoing Editor-in-Chief for the journal in 2007) will introduce the debate with a joint editorial to be called
‘Changing the challenge: To challenge makes you larger, and being challenged makes you small’
The word change you will observe is common to both editorial titles.
‘How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb? Change, Change!’
I must admit I like change (just as well!). The titles of all my single-editor Editorials contain the word change (see listing of the previous nine below).
As well as writing editorials, I have spoken at a variety of meetings and conferences over the last 3 years, either about publishing in journals or about the state of IS or both. It is clear to me that there are challenges to IS, and that it is time to address them – it is time to change.
There are five challenges that I have identified. Although I shall set them out separately below, they are of course interrelated. In no particular order then:
1. Nobody seems to know who we are outside the IS Community
When IS attracts public attention it is usually for some negative reason, some failure or some error of significance. Expert opinion if sought usually comes from the Computer Science Community, which tends to place emphasis on technology, which if used correctly is the saviour. Clearly technology was not used correctly if something went wrong. Rarely are social factors given much credence other than that people can be a bit tiresome.
So why are IS experts not called upon? I have heard that it is because IS groups usually reside in a hostile environment, a Business School or a Computer Science Department. So IS is not seen to be distinct. I tentatively suggest, however, that some assertiveness might be beneficial, and as I mentioned in my plenary at the 2006 UKAIS Annual Conference, coming together as a community would give strength. I argued that far from needing to argue as to whether we have an identity, we should relish being in at the birth of a subject when the relatively interesting discoveries are usually made. And IS is clearly important to Society, if not a major problem due to general ignorance about the relationship between technology and software and both when used in action by humans. Discovery should be exciting given there is so much to find out.
2. Demand from students to study IS is generally dropping, and it is particularly rapid in the U.S.A.
This might just be a fashion thing, management courses are heavily subscribed to, and when there is a glut of such graduates, there will be a swing back to IS and computing. But perhaps more significantly, if we dealt with the first challenge, maybe the second would not exist.
3. Research publications in IS do not appear to be publishing the right sort or content of research
I have heard this observation many times; in fact, I echoed them myself in the special contents editorial of issue 16.1 when I asked:
‘Ray Paul's European Journal of Information Systems Editor's view: These papers in this special section also provide an impetus to potential further research on this topic. Is IS scholarly activity different in different regions of the world, and if so, why would this be? Does the increasing drive to assess, quality assure, benchmark, appraise, evaluate etc drive all scholarly publication into a narrow insular academic straightjacket, or can the diversity of views and approaches be maintained or even increased for the health of IS as a subject which is looking at a real world application of IS in a commercially driven market currently driven by change and choice? Will the Academic Academy be working in a fantasy IS world increasingly divorced from practice? The European Journal of Information Systems welcomes contributions to a discussion of the relevance of IS scholarship to practice.’
I for one do not see how the study of IS can exist if it is totally unconnected to practical problems.
4. Journal League Tables
Academic tenure and promotion combined with the current fashion for performance management are creating a fantasy world of research journal league tables where increasing pressure is being exerted to publish in fewer and fewer journals. Apart from the narrow focus that concentrating on a few journals brings, there is the problem of dealing with excessive numbers of submissions. I gave a presentation as a member of the ‘How to publish in Top Journals’ panel at ECIS 2007, held at St. Gallen, in which I made the following points. Because the demand to publish in the two journals ranked highest in league tables is so great, a fairly extensive reviewing/debating process takes place over months or several years in order to select the best papers. This reviewing process can produce more text than the original paper. And the final text may have little resemblance to the original paper submitted. So who are the authors? They surely must be the combination of the submitting authors and the reviewing team. This makes judgements about tenure and promotion based on such publications somewhat dubious. Or is the process a right of passage, an initiation test, an exclusive club?
I do not find that the ranked list of journals consistently contain papers whose quality relative to papers in other journals matches such a ranking. I do not think such league tables are very meaningful except for making tenure and promotion purposes easier if somewhat dubious. For me it is similar to the idea of a league table of cheese, where everyone would want to eat only cheddar or whatever the top-ranked cheese was. I love many types of cheese and when asked my favourite, it depends on the surroundings, my mood, my hunger, etc. I certainly do not wish to be offered only the top cheese every time. The journals have distinctive offerings, and quality depends on fitness of purpose, the problems the reader faces when doing any reading, etc.
In the debate, we already have some papers on league tables lined up, so it will be interesting to see how this debate pans out.
5. What is an Information System?
It could be a surprise that what an IS is is not established. On the other hand, since many people are studying IS from a variety of perspectives, maybe it should be no surprise that there are a variety of definitions.
But then, how would Society know what IS is and what it can do if there is no clear understanding?
In spite of my suspicion that seeking one meaning is like the search for the Holy Grail, I have volunteered with Philip Powell and Richard Vidgen from Bath University to come up with a proposal for the newly constituted Conference of IS Professors in the U.K. Such a proposal would be used to promote IS publicly. We have not come up with such a proposal, although I have had some discussion with Richard. I offer my view, which undoubtedly reflects this discussion, to start the debate. All ambiguities, omissions and errors are of course mine.
In the next issue and editorial, we take these challenges further and offer a programme of debate, which we anticipate will be active for a year (six issues) at least. The papers published will be appropriately labelled as ‘Opinion Pieces’ or ‘Research Opinion Papers’ or whatever is appropriate, as well as our Editorials. Although this distinguishes such papers from refereed research papers, I do not expect the quality to be any lower, and I expect the readability and general interest to be much higher. Review will be by the editors plus whoever they feel the need to call on.
My definition of an IS
We can usefully start by distinguishing IS from Information Technology (IT) with which it is commonly confused. IT is a collection of devices, software and accessories, which when combined might provide a part or all of the delivery mechanism for any IS that uses this mechanism. An appropriate delivery mechanism could be anything between pen-and-paper to a fully integrated collection of distributed computer systems, data capture points, interactivity capability, software applications, etc.
The IS is what emerges from the usage that is made of the IT delivery system by the users (whose strengths are that they are human beings not machines). This usage will be made up of two parts:
First the formal processes, which are currently usually assumed to be pre-determinable with respect to the decisions about what IT to use. However, these processes will then need to change quite quickly in two ways: first whenever the system is found not to work as anticipated and second so that the IS can appropriately be adapted to the changing world around it, in particular its host organisation. This adaptation can be easily seen to be necessary when one considers that an IS is a model (at some level of abstraction and approximation) of the business. If the model does not keep up with changes in the business, then its value rapidly becomes more historical.
Second the informal processes, which are what the human beings who use the IT and the formal processes create or invent in order to ensure that useful work is done.
So the IS is continuously being created or emerging from the adaptive usage made by the users of the IT in combination with the formal and informal processes so as to make things work. So at any point in time the IT could be changed, the formal processes be redefined and then in usage the users will adapt or create informal processes to make the usage work. Then only at this point can we associate meaning to the IS, which is that which has emerged from the adaptive usage of the available IT and associated processes. In discussions with Richard Baskerville at ECIS 2007, he emphasised the need for me to reinforce these points. So here is another attempt by me:
The IS is not the IT and the formal processes being used.
The IS is not the people using the IT and the formal and informal processes.
The IS is what emerges from the usage and adaptation of the IT and the formal and informal processes by all of its users.
Note therefore that the IS is constantly adapting to need as the users change their usage and the IT is updated or extended.
The change editorials
Paul RJ (2003a) Time, changes and paradoxes. European Journal of Information Systems12, 77.
Paul RJ (2003b) More changes and responses. European Journal of Information Systems12, 167.
Paul RJ (2004a) Time, experience and change. European Journal of Information Systems13, 93–94.
Paul RJ (2004b) Time, change and beliefs. European Journal of Information Systems13, 165.
Paul RJ (2004c) Time, change and EJIS. European Journal of Information Systems13, 245–246.
Paul RJ (2006a) Changing issues: sixes and specials. European Journal of Information Systems15, 1–3.
Paul RJ (2006b) Views, change and changing views. European Journal of Information Systems15, 239–240.
Paul RJ (2006c) Making the changes. European Journal of Information Systems15, 525–526.
Paul RJ (2007) Change strikes back. European Journal of Information Systems16, 1–2.
Related Research Data
