Although much as been written on "big data" and "big data analytics" and how these revolutionize how decisions are made the author has a sense of unease and feels the need to not only question the ...veracity of this claim but also question the implications of what "revolutionizing how decisions are made" means.
Full text
Available for:
NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper develops a process model of how and why complementarity and substitution form over time between contractual and relational governance in the context of information systems outsourcing. Our ...analysis identifies four distinct process patterns that explain this formation as the outcome of interaction processes between key elements of both contractual and relational governance. These patterns unveil the dynamic nature of complementarity and substitution. In particular, we show that the relationship between contractual and relational governance oscillates between complementarity and substitution. Those oscillations are triggered mainly by three types of contextual events (goal fuzziness, goal conflict, and goal misalignment). Surprisingly, substitution of informal control did not occur as an immediate reaction to external events but emerged as a consequence of preceding complementarity. Thus, our study challenges the prevailing view of an either/or dichotomy of complementarity and substitution by showing that they are causally connected over time.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, IZUM, KILJ, NMLJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Information security (InfoSec)–related behaviors have been defined in many different ways in the security literature. Indeed, the coexistence of varying terms describing IS security behaviors could ...be seen as a conceptual inconsistency. However, we believe that it could also be construed as the sign of a vivid and living field embracing dispersed objects of study without changing the disciplinary discourse itself. To test this belief, we conduct a two-part study. Study 1 analyzes the definitions of InfoSec-related behaviors in the existing security literature. The result of Study 1 uncovers the Foucauldian rules that make possible the discourse on behavioral information security, including the surface of emergence, authorities of delimitation, and the grids of specification. Study 1 also indicates that, although behavioral Information Systems Security (ISS) shares the three rules with other disciplines, it is the only field that studies the relations between them. We therefore propose a disciplinary question that reflects this idiosyncrasy. We then conduct Study 2, using Foucault’s view on preconceptual schemata as a theoretical lens, to identify understudied areas in the ISS literature. We found that the existing literature utilizes two variations of the actor and organization schemata to form or to adapt concepts, and utilize two different approaches to study these two variations, namely, an antecedents approach and a dialectics approach. It is noteworthy that the latter is important but understudied in the literature. We then draw an analogy from moral studies to develop three concepts for future ISS research, namely, Stages of Awareness Development, Security Agency, and Security Disengagement.
Full text
Available for:
NUK, OILJ, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This essay explores the fixation the field of information systems has with "theory" and my frustration with this focus, examining where this theory focus came from, why it has been so widely adopted, ...and how it has led to dysfunction. It also offers some recommended action items that the field can take to redirect its efforts in order to become more relevant, resilient, and resourceful. These actions include, broadening the aperture of what legitimate IS research should include, imploring journal editors to change the way "applied" research is handled, bringing back books as an accepted and valued publication outlet, and moving the field in the direction of engagement.
Full text
Available for:
CEKLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, SAZU, UL, UM, UPUK
Over the last two decades, agile software development (ASD) has garnered much attention in both research and practice. Several ASD methods and techniques have been developed and studied. In ...particular, researchers have provided several theoretical perspectives on ASD and contributed rich insights to the ASD practice. Still, despite calls for a more unified theoretical understanding of ASD, a theoretical core of ASD has not been identified. This paper offers a theoretical core of ASD research, clarifying what is essential and what is less essential for IS agility, hoping to spark a scholarly discussion, and provides implications of such a core for understanding method tailoring.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, FZAB, GIS, IJS, IZUM, KILJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, SAZU, SBCE, SBMB, UL, UM, UPUK
In studying strategic information systems (IS) alignment, it is important to examine the associated processes over time rather than viewing alignment as an isolated event. This article focuses on how ...organizations undergo a series of interdependent changes in business strategy and IS strategy in order to increase the alignment between them. Based primarily on detailed case studies of changes over long time-periods in three organizations, the research suggests that this process of adaptation and change, which allows alignment to occur, is more complex than previously believed. While efforts to achieve alignment between IS and the business do sometimes produce alignment, they often go astray. There are three such potentially problematic trajectories—excessive transformation, paradoxical decisions, and uncertain turnarounds. This article identifies some factors explaining why organizations might pursue these problematic trajectories and offers some suggestions for avoiding them.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, CEKLJ, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This paper proposes an extension of Fletcher and Huff's (1990) argument mapping technique, which focuses on an examination of individual arguments, to depict the broader argumentative terrain of a ...theoretical discourse. To illustrate the utility of argument mapping as a literature review technique, we demonstrate an application of this approach to the domain of Technology Frames of Reference (TFR) research. We then compare the insights derived from this approach to those derived from a more traditional literature review of this domain. Findings of this comparison suggest that an argument-centred approach could contribute the following new insights into a theoretical domain: (1) provide a means of weighting contributions to a theoretical discourse by depicting these contributions in terms of levels of argumentation; (2) identify new "types" of argument-centred gaps in the literature; (3) offer a structural and progressive view of theory development in a particular domain that could be used to could be used to link and compare insights derived from competing theoretical lenses; and (4) propose a closer linkage between theory testing and theory building by focusing the testing on "arguable" aspects of a theoretical claim.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, GIS, IJS, KISLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
Trust has been considered a central aspect of successful IT outsourcing. Although a great deal of interest in trust has been described, there are very few theoretical models in the IT outsourcing ...literature to explain mutual trust, its role, and its impact in IT outsourcing. This study proposes a trust-based relationship research model to assess the perceived IT outsourcing success in terms of (1) mutual trust with its temporal dimension of initial trust and initial distrust, and (2) knowledge sharing with the moderating effect of mutual dependency. This model was then validated and applied in a study involving organizations in Korea. The data was collected and analyzed to understand initial trust, initial distrust, knowledge sharing, and mutual dependency as contributing factors to success in IT outsourcing. The results show that mutual trust between the service receiver and provider is very important for knowledge sharing and outsourcing success, and is affected by the initial perception to each other’s partner at the beginning of the outsourcing process. Interestingly, this study also shows that initial trust is considered a significant factor in the perception of mutual trust from the service receiver’s perspective, but not from the service provider’s viewpoint. The results help extend our understanding of critical success factors in outsourcing success and of different standpoints between the service receiver and provider.
Full text
Available for:
CEKLJ, EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
This paper addresses how technology-mediated mass collaboration offers a dramatically innovative alternative for producing IS research. We refer to this emerging genre as the crowdsourced research ...genre and develop a framework to structure discourse on how it may affect the production of IS research. After systematically traversing the alternative genre's landscape using the framework, we propose a research agenda of the most substantial and imminent issues for the successful development of the genre, including contributor incentives, scholarly contribution assessment, anonymity, governance, intellectual property ownership, and value propositions. In addressing this research agenda, we reflect on what might be learned from other areas in which crowdsourcing has been established with success.
Full text
Available for:
BFBNIB, CEKLJ, GIS, IJS, KISLJ, NUK, PNG, UL, UM, UPUK
The motivation of this paper is to advance the recent discussion about the identity of the Information Systems field with a social analysis of its community structures. It seeks to shed new light on ...the reasons why the field continues to debate its identity and to voice concerns about its recognition by other disciplines. For that purpose the paper adapts selected concepts from the community of practice literature for improving our understanding of the ways in which the IS research community differentiates itself into diverse constituencies, called communities of practice and knowing (CoP&K), and how these interact in the field’s complex processes of knowledge creation and dissemination. Our second purpose is to derive some tentative, actionable recommendations for the field from applying the concepts presented in the first part of the paper. The recommendations expand three fundamental ideas: (i) why a continuously updated history of the field could be an important contribution to support boundary spanning and identity formation; (ii) what the nature and role of fundamental criticism is for the IS research community and why it is necessary for the field’s future to pay more institutional attention to it; and (iii) how to improve understanding and communication within each paradigm constituency across a broad subset of different CoP&K through building a shared sense of collective historical accomplishments. The conclusions summarize the principal results which follow from our examination of the field’s community structures and insist that the CoP&K perspective concomitantly helps to better appreciate the underlying conditions from where the current IS disciplinary challenges have arisen; it also helps to suggest new priorities and possible strategies for dealing with these challenges.
Full text
Available for:
GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZRSKP
