Information Systems Research Relevant Theory and Informed Practice

Information Systems Research: Relevant Theory and Informed Practice comprises the edited proceedings of the WG8.2 conference, "Relevant Theory and Informed Practice: Looking Forward from a 20-Year Perspective on IS Research," which was sponsored by IFIP and held in Manchester, England, in July 2004. The conference attracted a record number of high-quality manuscripts, all of which were subjected to a rigorous reviewing process in which four to eight track chairs, associate editors, and reviewers thoughtfully scrutinized papers by the highly regarded as well as the newcomers. No person or idea was considered sacrosanct and no paper made it through this process unscathed. All authors were asked to revise the accepted papers, some more than once; thus, good papers got better. With only 29 percent of the papers accepted, these proceedings are significantly more selective than is typical of many conference proceedings.
This volume is organized in 7 sections, with 33 full research papers providing panoramic views and reflections on the Information Systems (IS) discipline followed by papers featuring critical interpretive studies, action research, theoretical perspectives on IS research, and the methods and politics of IS development. Also included are 6 panel descriptions and a new category of "bright idea" position papers, 11 in all, wherein main points are summarized in a pithy and provocative fashion.

Young Turks, Old Guardsmen, and the Conundrum of the Broken Mold: A Progress Report on Twenty Years of Information Systems Research.- Young Turks, Old Guardsmen, and the Conundrum of the Broken Mold: A Progress Report on Twenty Years of Information Systems Research.- Panoramas.- Doctor of Philosophy, Heal Thyself.- Information Systems in Organizations and Society: Speculating on the Next 25 Years of Research.- Information Systems Research as Design: Identity, Process, and Narrative.- Reflections on the IS Discipline.- Information Systems— a Cyborg Discipline.- Cores and Definitions: Building the Cognitive Legitimacy of the Information Systems Discipline Across the Atlantic.- Truth, Journals, and Politics: The Case of the MIS Quarterly.- Debatable Advice and Inconsistent Evidence: Methodology in Information Systems Research.- The Crisis of Relevance and the Relevance of Crisis: Renegotiating Critique in Information Systems Scholarship.- Whatever Happened to Information Systems Ethics?.- Supporting Engineering of Information Systems in Emergent Organizations.- Critical Interpretive Studies.- The Choice of Critical Information Systems Research.- The Research Approach and Methodology Used in an Interpretive Study of a Web Information System: Contextualizing Practice.- Applying Habermas’ Validity Claims as a Standard for Critical Discourse Analysis.- Conducting Critical Research in Information Systems: Can Actor-Network Theory Help?.- Conducting and Evaluating Critical Interpretive Research: Examining Criteria as a Key Component in Building a Research Tradition.- Making Contributions From Interpretive Case Studies: Examining Processes of Construction and Use.- Action Research.- Action Research: Time to Take a Turn?.- The Role of Conventional Research Methods inInformation Systems Action Research.- Themes, Iteration, and Recoverability in Action Research.- Theoretical Perspectives in IS Research.- The Use of Social Theories in 20 Years of WG 8.2 Empirical Research.- Structurantion in Research and Practice: Representing Actor Networks Their Structurated Orders and Translations.- Socio-Technical Structure: An Experiment in Integrative Theory Building.- Exposing Best Practices Through Narrative: The ERP Example.- Information Systems Research and Development by Activity Analysis and Development: Dead Horse or the Next Wave?.- Making Sense of Technological Frames: Promise, Progress, and Potential.- Reflection on Development Techniques Using the Psychology Literature: Over Two Decades of Bias and Conceptual Blocks.- Systems Development: Methods, Politics, and Users.- Enterprise System as an Orchestrator of Dynamic Capability Development: A Case Study of the IRAS and TechCo.- On Transferring a Method into a Usage Situation.- From Critical Theory into Information Systems Practice: A Case Study of a Payroll-Personnel System.- Resistance or Deviance? A High-Tech Workplace During the Bursting of the Dot-Com Bubble.- The Politics of Knowledge in Using GIS for Land Management in India.- Systems Development in the Wild: User-Led Exploration and Transformation of Organizing Visions.- Improvisation in Information Systems Development.- Panels and Position Papers.- Twenty Years of Applying Grounded Theory in Information Systems: A Coding Method, Useful Theory Generation Method, or an Orthodox Positivist Method of Data Analysis ?.- Building Capacity for E-Government: Contradictions and Synergies in the Dialectics of Action Research.- New Insights into Studying Agency and Information Technology.- Researching and Developing Work Activities in Information Systems: Experiences and the Way Forward.- Crossing Disciplinary Boundaries: Reflections on Information Systems Research in Health Care and the State of Information Systems.- The Great Quantitative/Qualitative Debate: The Past, Present, and Future of Positivism and Post-Positivism in Information Systems.- Challenges for Participatory Action Research in Industry-Funded Information Systems Projects.- Theory and Action for Emancipation: Elements of a Critical Realist Approach.- Non-Dualism and Information Systems Research.- Contextual Dependencies and Gender Strategy.- Information Technology and the Good Life.- Embracing Information as Concept and Practice.- Truth to Tell?.- How Stakeholder Analysis can be Mobilized with Actor-Network Theory to Identify Actors.- Symbolic Processes in ERP Versus Legacy System Usage.- Dynamics of Use and Supply: An Analytic Lens for Information Systems Research.- Applying Adaptive Structuration Theory to the Study of Context-Aware Applications.