ANALYZING THE NATURE OFKNOWLEDGE IN THE IS FIELD

摘要

The history of the IS field is no more than fifty years. This can be considered relatively new compared to morerndeveloped disciplines such as the social sciences or the natural sciences. However, the field of IS has long beenrncriticized based on the nature of knowledge in its domain. Moreover, the diversity and pluralism ofrnmethodologies adopted by researchers and lack of a coherent body of knowledge in the IS field invitesrnadditional criticism. This brings to the fore the important question about organization of knowledge in the fieldrnof information systems whether it can be considered as coherent, scientific or cumulative (considered generallyrnas important factors in judging the soundness of a discipline and categorizing it as an independent academicrndiscipline). The other related question is whether there could be alternative or possibly better ways for arndiscipline to organize knowledge in forms other than theories. We believe that criticisms of the IS field for lackrnof well-established theories or multiplicity of views of IS researchers appear to be misplaced. In this paper, wernrespond to some of these criticisms. Our suggestion is that diversity of views or lack of established theories inrnthe field should not be used as the basis for criticizing the IS field as a core body of knowledge. Such criticismsrnshould rather focus on judging whether knowledge accumulated over time in the IS field has a scientificrncharacter. We contend that the IS field is still evolving while other disciplines such as the social sciences orrnthe natural sciences have matured over the last couple of centuries. In view of the still emerging nature of thernIS field, we adopt the premise that comparison of the state of knowledge in the IS field with that in otherrnestablished disciplines does not seem logical and this, in itself highlights the weakness in the argument of therncritics of the IS field. Since the nature or the way knowledge is organized in a field is usually an importantrncriterion for assessing the academic character of the field, an alternative framework for organizing knowledgernin the IS field is suggested that can help accord the status of an academic discipline to IS field.