Creating and Sustaining a Global Community of Scholars.

Author List: Watson, Richard;

MIS Quarterly, 1994, Volume 18, Issue 3, Page 225-231.

Against the backdrop of a brief history of communities of scholars, the shortcomings of the current intellectual infrastructure are discussed in this paper. This system is deeply rooted in printed matter, the postal system, and physical knowledge stores. As a result of the deficiencies of this infrastructure, many scholars, practitioners, and students have limited opportunities to participate in creating and sharing in formation. The Internet is put forward as the foundation of a new intellectual infrastructure that will overcome many of the problems of the old system. The significant benefits to be gained from redesigning the intellectual infrastructure are discussed. Some of the possible implications for universities and scholarly careers are considered. We have an opportunity to transform the basic infrastructure of the MIS community. By changing the way we store, process, and distribute information, we can create a broader, more collaborative, and more productive community of MIS scholars, students, and practitioners. This paper first briefly traces the history of scholarly communities and examines their development of an infrastructure for knowledge creation and distribution. After the shortcomings of our present infrastructure are addressed, some of the possibilities and the consequences of creating an MIS electronic community are discussed. In particular, the redesign opportunities made possible by the Internet (Kehoe, 1993) are investigated.

Keywords: Community of scholars; history; knowledge distribution

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List of Topics

#16	0.307	infrastructure information flexibility new paper technology building infrastructures flexible development human creating provide despite challenge possible resources specific advances developing
#45	0.137	community communities online members participants wikipedia social member knowledge content discussion collaboration attachment communication law virtual membership structures forms activities
#169	0.089	research journals journal information systems articles academic published business mis faculty discipline analysis publication management tenure authors publications disciplines years
#127	0.079	systems information research theory implications practice discussed findings field paper practitioners role general important key grounded researchers domain new identified
#63	0.067	mis problems article systems management edp managers organizations ;br> data survey application examines need experiences recent organization reports departments oriented
#227	0.056	commitment need practitioners studies potential role consider difficult models result importance influence researchers established conduct investigated establishing appear clearly determining