Changes in MIS research: status and themes from 1989 to 2000

In terms of the time frame, this study extends the period (1952–1988) of the Management of Information Systems (MIS) study by Dickson and DeSanctis (D&D) from 1989 to 2000. Thus, the purpose of this study is the same as that of the D&D's study, that is, to survey the literature in the area of MIS in order to identify past research themes and trends and point to future research directions. An integral part of this study is to compare the current findings with those of D&D's study, thereby highlighting research patterns or trends in the MIS area. The evidence uncovered by this study indicates that the MIS activities were dominated by descriptive, prescriptive and hermeneutic studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, whereas in recent years there has been a great increase in empirical research. The major findings may be summarised as follows: (1) research themes such as administration of computer centres, information systems (IS) control, hardware resource management, IS security and data resource management have gradually diminished; (2) research themes, including IS planning, IS evaluation and the successful transfer of IS technology into the organisation, have matured during recent years; (3) there have been an increasing number of empirical studies in 1990s in the area of MIS with an emphasis on themes such as software resource management, IS evaluation, information technology (IT) strategic planning and general IS/IT management and (4) in addition to the two main journals, MIS Quarterly and Communications of the ACM, Information Systems Research and Journal of Management Information Systems play a significant role in the publication of the MIS empirical research results. Overall, there was a conspicuous change in the pattern of research themes and trends from the period (1952–1988) covered by the D&D's study to the period (1989–2000) under this study. This change spurred by new technologies such as intranet and internet in hardware and software and enterprise resources planning (ERP), knowledge management, supply-chain management in software warrants a revision of Barki et al.'s classification scheme for research in the MIS area.