Track Chairs
UK
Description
This track invites submissions that make a contribution to the underpinning pillars of IS research – its philosophical foundations and its research methods. We would welcome contributions to either of these areas and especially those that address their inter-relationship.
In terms of research methods, we define the domain widely to include research design, quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis, critical research, literature review methods, and mixed research methods. We would particularly like to expand the repertoire of approaches that are used in IS, potentially reflecting a wider range of philosophical positions or drawing on approaches from other disciplines such as information science, sociology, psychology, cultural studies or technology studies. Careful not to be overly driven by methodological considerations at the expense of creativity, imagination and insight, we are interested in papers that bring new insights to current methods perhaps by applying them in new areas, combining them with other methods, or constructively critiquing them.
In terms of philosophy, there are many deep questions that are highly relevant to information systems and technology, and the effects that it is having on the world today. They may concern metaphysical questions such as the philosophy of technology or of information, or realism and anti-realism. Or they may be related to epistemological questions such as the nature or relevance of research paradigms, different conceptions of causality and truth, or the nature of theory. Equally, ethical or moral questions concerning the impacts of information and technology on peoples’ lives, whether information or technologies themselves can be ethical subjects, or aesthetic questions about design, form and function, or emotionality, all fall within the philosophical concerns of the IS field.
In both domains, we would be particularly interested in papers that contextualise their arguments around current developments such as open innovation, big data and analytics, social media and online communities, and neuroIS, to name but a few.
Topics of Interests
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- What are the methodological and ethical considerations for big data and the creation, sharing and reuse of large datasets from data available in the public domain?
- Are there effective ways of using multiple methods to coordinate research streams?
- Can topics and problems that have historically been addressed through particular approaches such as experiments or surveys be re-envisioned using other techniques?
- What sorts of questions are left unanswered by our research methods? How does our concentration on the production and codification of research methods deflect our attention from the desired ends for IS research? How can we better build theory from data?
- What innovative research methods are needed to investigate novel uses of ICTs?
- How can IS research benefit from alternative approaches such as practice theory, power, the sociology of science and knowledge, or ethical theories?
- How can we approach multi-level research? What are the methodological implications of several levels of analysis in a study, from either a quantitative or qualitative perspective?
- What options are available to help researchers escape from the methodological straitjacket that prevents innovation in our research?
- What is the nature of theory within IS and how does it relate to philosophical questions such as truth and causality?
- Are the current epistemological categories of positivism, interpretivism and critical research constraining IS research and if so how can this be overcome?
- Can there be a philosophy or ethics of information and what implications would this have for the practice of IS design or research?
Associate Editors
- Laurence Brooks, Brunel U. London, UK
- Chiasson, Mike, U. of British Columbia, USA
- Panos Constantinides, Warick Business School, UK
- Robert M Davison, City University, Hong Kong
- Amany Elbanna, Royal Holloway, U. of London, UK
- Göran Goldkuhl, University of Linköping, Sweden
- Mark Johnson,Leeds U., UK
- Karlheinz Kautz, U. of Wollongong, Australia
- Allen S Lee, Virginia Commonwealth U., USA
- Julien Malaurent, ESSEC Business School, France
- Benjamin Müller, U. of Groningen, Netherlands
- Guy Pare, HEC Montreal, Canada
- Craig Standing, Edith Cowan U., Australia
- Clay Williams, Southern Illinois U. Edwardsville, USA
