Kjærgaard, Annemette (Department of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School) Vendelø, Morten Thanning (Department of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School)
Abstract
Information Systems scholars continuously debate about the nature of the IS discipline. Recently a series of articles have discussed whether the IS field has reached the status of a reference discipline. We address this issue by examining the application of the theory of sensemaking in IS research. Our findings show that the prospects for IS as a reference discipline are not promising. Based on these findings we suggest that IS scholars hallucinate when they a) assume that to become a 'real' academic discipline, IS has to become a reference discipline, and b) believe that IS will become a reference discipline in time. Hence, we describe the IS reference discipline discussion as a misconception, which should be abandoned in the pursuit of a stronger IS discipline. Academic legitimacy, information systems research, reference disciplines, theory application, theory of sensemaking
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Copenhagen Business School, Department of Informatics in its series Working Papers with number
2007-4.