Information Systems TEAM LinG Information Systems The State of the Field Edited by John Leslie King University of Michigan Kalle Lyytinen Case Western Reserve University Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, England Telephone (+44) 1243 779777 Email (for orders and customer service enquiries): [email protected] Visit our Home Page on www.wiley.com All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under the terms of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP, UK, without the permission in writing of the Publisher. 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Lyytinen, Kalle, 1953– T58.6.I487 2006 658.4′038′011—dc22 2005030101 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-13 978-0-470-01777-7 ISBN-10 0-470-01777-5 Typeset in 11/12.5pt Palatino by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd, Pondicherry, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by T.J. International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall. This book is printed on acid-free paper responsibly manufactured from sustainable forestry in which at least two trees are planted for each one used for paper production Wiley Series in Information Systems CURRENT VOLUMES IN THE SERIES Currie: The Global Information Society Elliot: Electronic Commerce—BC2 Strategies and Models Galliers and Baets: Information Technology & Organizational Transformation—Innovation for the 21st Century Organization Groth: Future Organizational Design—The Scope for the IT-Based Enterprise Knights and Murray: Managers Divided: Organizational Politics and Information Technology Management Krcmar, Bjørn-Andersen & O’Callaghan: EDI in Europe: How It Works in Practice McKeen & Smith: Making IT Happen—Critical Issues in IT Management McKeen & Smith: Management Changes in IS—Successful Strategies and Appropriate Action Mingers & Willcocks: Social Theory and Philosophy for Information Systems Remenyi, Sherwood-Smith with White: Achieving Maximum Value from Information Systems—A Process Approach Renkema: The IT Value Quest—How to Capture the Business Value of IT-Based Infrastructure Silver: Systems that Support Decision Makers—Description and Analysis Timmers: Electronic Commerce—Strategies and Models for Business-to-Business Trading Walsham: Making a World of Difference—IT in a Global Context Ward & Daniel: Benefits Management: Delivering Value from IT & IS Investment Ward & Peppard: Strategic Planning for Information Systems, 3rd edition Wigand, Picot & Reichwald: Information, Organization & Management—Expanding Markets and Corporate Boundaries Willcocks & Lacity: Strategic Sourcing of Information Systems—Perspectives and Practices Willcocks & Lester: Beyond the IT Productivity Paradox Wiley Series in Information Systems Editors Richard Boland Department of Management Information and Decision Systems, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, 10900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44106-7235, USA Rudy Hirschheim Department of Information Systems and Decision Sciences, Ourso College of Business Administration, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA Advisory Board Niels Bjørn-Andersen Copenhagen Business School, Denmark D. Ross Jeffery University of New South Wales, Australia Heinz K. Klein Binghamton University, USA Frank F. Land London School of Economics, UK Enid Mumford Manchester Business School, UK Mike Newman University of Manchester, UK Daniel Robey Georgia State University, USA E. Burton Swanson University of California, USA Geoff Walsham University of Cambridge, UK Robert W. Zmud University of Oklahoma, USA To Gerry, who always looked up Contents List of Contributors xi Foreword—Gordon B. Davis xvii Series Preface—Rudy Hirschheim xxii Introduction—John Leslie King and Kalle Lyytinen xxiii Original Papers 1 1 Scoping the Discipline of Information Systems—David Avison and Steve Elliot 3 2 Desperately Seeking the ‘IT’ in IT Research: A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact—Wanda J. Orlikowski and C. Suzanne Iacono 19 3 Still Desperately Seeking the IT Artifact—Ron Weber 43 4 The Identity Crisis within the IS Discipline: Defining and Communicating the Discipline’s Core Properties—Izak Benbasat and Robert W. Zmud 55 5 Crisis in the IS Field? A Critical Reflection on the State of the Discipline—Rudy A. Hirschheim and Heinz K. Klein 71 6 Change as Crisis or Growth? Toward a Trans-disciplinary View of Information Systems as a Field of Study: A Response to Benbasat and Zmud’s Call for Returning to the IT Artifact—Robert D. Galliers 147 7 The Social Life of Information Systems Research: A Response to Benbasat and Zmud’s Call for Returning to the IT Artifact—Gerardine DeSanctis 163