The information systems field started with the expectation that information and technology will significantly shape the nature of work. The topic provides ample scope for significant scholarly inquiry. Work content, process, and organization are now different from what they were in the 1960s and 1970s, which provided a foundation for theories and understanding. Although investigations about the changing nature of work have been made for years, this special section recognizes that the time of reckoning has come again. There is a growing need for deeper understanding of information, technology, and work. The specific contributions of this special section are at the heart of new frontiers of research in information, technology, and work. We observe a continued need to study their relationships, and to separate short-term and long-term effects. We expect continued surprises and conclude that patience is required to achieve increased understanding in this important domain.
The article offers information on the development and the changes of the editorship of the journal "Information Systems Research (IRS) in the U.S. It states that E. Burton Swanson is the first appointed editor-in-chief of the journal in 1987, where editorial policy and accomplishments are being highlights. Moreover, the second editorship is passed to John Leslie King in 1992 and resolve two major issues such as work submission of top researchers in the field and quality of work being published. Furthermore, the third editorship is passed down to Izak Benbasat in 1999, where he established a Senior Editor Board.
This article discusses several published reports within the issue including one by James Backhouse, Carol Hsu and Leiser Silva on standards in information systems and one by Lynne Markus, Charles Steinfield, Rolf Wigand and Gabe Minton on information systems in the U.S. residential mortgage industry.
The short history of Information Systems suggests persistent anxiety about the field's purported lack of academic legitimacy. A common refrain in the anxiety discourse is that legitimacy can be obtained only by creating a strong theoretic core for the field. This essay takes exception with this view, attributing the anxiety to the field's relative youth, its focus on technology in a technophobic institutional environment, and academic ethno-centrism within and without the field. While developing stronger theory might be helpful, it is more important that the IS field pushes back against the hegemony of IS critics outside the field whose arguments masquerade as concerns about academic quality. The anxiety discourse should be replaced by the IS field's aggressive pursuit of new instructional and research opportunities that cross traditional institutional barriers and the pursuit of excellence on academic criteria deemed important by the field itself.
The article discusses the paper "A Representational Scheme for Analyzing Information Technology and Organizational Dependency," by John Tillquist, John Leslie King, and Carson Woo.
Innovation in information technology is well established in developed nations; newly industrializing and developing nations have been creating governmental interventions to accelerate IT innovation within their borders. The lack of coherent policy advice for creating government policy for IT innovation signals a shortfall in research understanding of the role of government institutions, and institutions more broadly, in IT innovation. This paper makes three points. First, long-established intellectual perspectives on innovation from neoclassical economics and organization theory are inadequate to explain the dynamics of actual innovative change in the IT domain. A broader view adopted from economic history and the new institutionalism in sociology provides a stronger base for understanding the role of institutions in IT innovation. Second, institutional intervention in IT innovation can be constructed at the intersection of the influence and regulatory powers of institutions and the ideologies of supply-push and demand-pull models of innovation. Examples of such analysis are provided. Third, institutional policy formation regarding IT innovation is facilitated by an understanding of the multifaceted role of institutions in the innovative process, and on the contingencies governing any given institution/innovation mix.