Evolutionary psychology holds great promise as one of the possible pillars on which information systems theorizing can take place. Arguably, evolutionary psychology can provide the key to many counterintuitive predictions of behavior toward technology, because many of the evolved instincts that influence our behavior are below our level of conscious awareness; often those instincts lead to behavioral responses that are not self-evident. This paper provides a discussion of information systems theorizing based on evolutionary psychology, centered on key human evolution and evolutionary genetics concepts and notions. It is argued here that there is often a need to integrate evolutionary and non-evolutionary theories, and four important preconditions for the successful integration of evolutionary and non-evolutionary theories are discussed. An example of integration of evolutionary and non-evolutionary theories is provided. The example focuses on one evolutionary information systems theory--media naturalness theory--previously developed as an alternative to media richness theory, and one non-evolutionary information systems theory, channel expansion theory.
Imagine yourself spending years conducting a research project and having it published as an article in a refereed journal, only to see a plagiarized copy of the article later published in another journal. Then imagine yourself being left to fight for your rights alone, and eventually finding out that it would be very difficult to hold the plagiarist accountable for what he or she did. The recent decision by the Association of Information Systems to create a standing committee on member misconduct suggests that while this type of situation may sound outrageous, it is likely to become uncomfortably frequent in the information systems research community if proper measures are not taken by a community-backed organization. In this article, we discuss factors that can drive plagiarism, as well as potential measures to prevent it. Our goal is to discuss alternative ways in which plagiarism can be prevented and dealt with when it arises. We hope to start a debate that provides the basis on which broader mechanisms to deal with plagiarism can be established, which we envision as being associated with and complementary to the committee created by the Association for Information Systems.