The Past and Future of Information Systems PDF
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■ The past and future of information systems ■ A tribute to Niels Bjørn-Andersen BUTTERWORTH-HEINEMANN INFORMATION SYSTEMS SERIES Series Editors Professor David Avison, BA, MSc, PhD, FBCS Departement SID ESSEC Business School Avenue Bernard Hirsch BP 105 95021 Cergy-Pontoise FRANCE Email: [email protected] Professor Guy Fitzgerald, BA, MSc, MBCS Department of Information Systems and Computing Brunel University Uxbridge Middlesex UB8 3PH UK Email: [email protected] This is a new series under the Butterworth-Heinemann imprint which will provide a medium for quality publications in the information systems field. It will also provide continuity with the McGraw-Hill IS series, which has been discontinued. The new series of texts is aimed at first degree and postgraduate students, and the global research community in information systems, computer science and business management. IS is multi-disciplinary. Where formerly emphasis was placed on the technological aspects which remain significant, it now stresses the importance of, and the links to, the business environment particularly, in regard to the social and organisational aspects. If you have a book proposal for this series, please contact either of the Series Editors. ■ The past and future of information systems Edited by ■ Kim Viborg Andersen and ■ Morten Thanning Vendelø OXFORD BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK OXFORD PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann Linacre House, Jordan Hill, Oxford OX2 8DP 200 Wheeler Road, Burlington MA 01803 First published 2004 Copyright© 2004, Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved No part of this publication may he reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright holder except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, England WIT 4LP. Applications for the copyright holder’s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the publisher Permissions may be sought directly from Elsevier’s Science and Technology Rights Department in Oxford, UK: phone: (+44) (0) 1865 843830; fax: (+44) (0) 1865 853333; email: [email protected]. You may also complete your request on-line via the Elsevier homepage (http://www.elsevier.com), by selecting ‘Customer Support’ and then ‘Obtaining Permissions’ British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7506 61410 For information on all Butterworth-Heinemann publications visit our website at www.bh.com Typeset at Neuadd Bwll, Llanwrtyd Wells Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG books, Bodmin, Cornwall Contents Preface vii Gordon B. Davis 1 Introduction: adventuring into the past and the future 1 Kim Viborg Andersen and Morten Thanning Vendelø 2 Prototypes are not pilots (and vice versa): reflecting on a 25 year old idea 7 Michael J. Earl 3 Piloting socio-technical innovations 13 Helmut Krcmar and Tilo Böhmann 4 Forming a contingent, multi-disciplinary and ethical approach to IS development 29 David Avison, Richard Vidgen and Trevor Wood-Harper 5 Analysis and design of information systems: a knowledge quality perspective 43 Salvatore Belardo, Donald P. Ballou and Harold L. Pazer 6 Why stuff happens: explaining the unintended consequences of using IT 61 M. Lynne Markus and Daniel Robey 7 ERP manuscripts of accounting and information systems 95 Niels Dechow and Jan Mouritsen 8 Technology and the design of work revisited 111 Jon A. Turner 9 Are ‘human factors’ human re-visited 123 Ken D. Eason 10 ‘Human-centred’ computing: a new perspective? 137 Liam J. Bannon 11 The study of information technology in developing countries 149 Chrisanthi Avgerou vi The past and future of information systems 12 Growth-nodes in a knowledge-based Europe: a research roadmap 163 Ramon O’Callaghan 13 Knowledge-as-relation: an IT outlook on the future of academic institutions 203 Lars Mathiassen References 217 About the authors 259 About the editors 271 Index 273 Preface Gordon B. Davis ■ The academic discipline of information systems is the newest field within the broad field of management or economic sciences. This field developed almost from its very beginnings as an international community of scholars. Niels Bjørn-Andersen has played vital roles in nurturing the international discipline of information systems. I count him on the short list of the 25 most important founders of the field. It is appropriate to honour his contributions on this occasion. I have been fortunate to have been a part of many of the developments that helped the formation of an international community of information systems scholars. Niels participated in most of these developments. I will focus on some important events where I observed Niels personally or was aware of his activities. A list of some important events will position Niel’s work within the context of events in information systems in organizations. 1954 First business use of computers (in the UK and the United States) 1958 Important speculation of importance to business of computers in Harvard Business Review 1960 Founding of International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) 1965 Börje Langefors appointed in Sweden as professor in Information Processing, with special emphasis on Administrative Data Processing. 1968 First formal MIS academic degree programs in the United States (M.S. and Ph.D.) at University of Minnesota. 1968 Establishment of organization for information system executives (CIOs); first called Society for Management Information Systems and now Society for Information Management (SIM) viii The past and future of information systems 1976 Establishment of IFIP technical committee on information systems (TC8) 1980 First International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) 1994 Formation of Association for Information Systems (AIS) as an international academic organization with an international governance structure. Merger in 2001 with ICIS as world conference for AIS. Alliances with regional conferences in Europe, Asia, and America (ECIS, PACIS, and AMCIS). Computer science emerged during the formative years of electronic computing in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Information systems came a bit later. There was an 11-year delay before the first professorship in administrative data processing and a 14-year delay before the first formal academic program in management information systems in the United States. Many academics were working on problems related to information systems in organizations; the delay was in recognizing information systems as a separate academic field. This is shown in the fact that IFIP was formed in 1968 but its Technical Committee 8 on information systems was not formed until 1976. There was a time delay between the introduction of computers into organizations for data processing and the recognition by industry that there needed to be a new organization function to manage the design, development, implementation, and operation of the systems. That industry recognition happened about the same time as the recognition by academics that there were interesting, important research issues in information systems. Many of the early academic leaders in the field of information systems had diverse backgrounds, leading to a rich academic field with a variety of underlying disciplines and research methods. Niels’ career starts as a systems analyst (1967–1969) during the period when Langefors was starting his professorship, Minnesota was formalizing information systems degree programs, and CIOs were organizing themselves. Finishing he doctorate in 1973, he rose to the challenge of developing the field. Four especially important contributions were with development of international organizations for the field: IFIP, ICIS, ECIS, and AIS. When IFIP established the technical committee (TC8) in 1976, Niels was appointed the Danish representative to TC8 and served for 17 years. He has been very active in TC8 working groups, especially WG8.2 on organizations and information systems. He sponsored and helped organize conferences for TC8 and for WG8.2. He was program chair for a conference on information systems assessment in The Netherlands in 1986 and a conference in India on information systems in developing countries in 1988. These working groups brought together scholars Preface ix from around the world. One conference that was very significant in building a community of scholars was the IFIP WG8.2 1984 Manchester Conference on information systems research methods (E. Mumford, R. Hirschheim, G. Fitzgerald, and T. Wood-Harper, eds, Research Methods in Information Systems, North Holland, Amsterdam, 1985). This conference was a landmark, and Niels was an important contributor. The reason I count this conference as very important is its role in opening up the discussion of different research paradigms. Most of the researchers in North America at that time tended to emphasize a positivist approach to research with experiments, surveys, hypothesis testing, and so forth. Many of the Europeans were doing post-positivist, interpretive research. The conference opened the minds of many of the conferees and helped open the field of information systems to a variety of research paradigms. There will be a second Manchester conference in 2004 to mark 20 years of research in the field. The second important development in the organization of an international field was the formation of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). Early researchers in information systems had disciplines to which they belonged. There was no general, well- accepted, high quality information systems conference. The first conference was held in 1980, and it rapidly developed in scope and quality. Niels brought ICIS to Europe in Copenhagen in 1990 and established ICIS as a world conference. It has been held four times outside North America in the past eight years. A major feature is a high quality, invitational doctoral consortium with a mix of doctoral students from different countries. Niels was honoured by being appointed to doctoral consortium faculty for the 1986 ICIS and chairman of the consortium faculty in 1992. Niels assisted in building a third organization, the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). Niels had sponsored activities to bring together academic researchers in Europe, such as his preparation of a directory for information systems faculty in Europe. Although ICIS was clearly a success as an international conference, Niels and others saw the need for regional conferences of similar scope. The result was the formation of ECIS. Niels was the general conference chair for ECIS in 1998. The fourth event in the organization of the field was the formation of the Association for Information Systems (AIS). From the time of the first ICIS in 1980, there had been discussion of a new international organization devoted exclusively to the academic field of information systems. The Association for Information Systems was established in 1995 with Bill King as its first president. The governance structure was designed to create a truly international organization. The position of president rotates among three regions, and all presidents have been leaders in the field. Niels was the second president (1996). AIS has
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