[...]... order is that of the editors, of course, but it is built less from the views of the authors than from the nature of the conversation among the authors during the commentary phase The editors synthesize the papers and commentaries into a brief conclusion at the end of the book, which is the closest the book comes to describing the state of the field We greatly appreciate the help of all the authors who... deceiving: the story is more complicated than that This effort is not the first to describe the state of the information systems field, but it is the first to do so through the diverse views of authors who disagree with each other as often as they agree The reader seeking a coherent and consistent description of the state of the IS field will be baffled: that is not to be found in this book This collection of. .. interfaces and web-based recommendation agents to facilitate business-to-consumer electronic commerce He is the past editor-in-chief of Information Systems Research and currently is a Senior Editor of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems He received his PhD (1974) in Management Information Systems from the University of Minnesota Gerardine DeSanctis was a Thomas F Keller Professor of Business... this book This collection of perspectives reveals the plurality of the field at present It might have been more honest to subtitle the book, The States of the Field , but that seemed like overreaching, even for the editors The plurality of the IS field is a central theme in much of the commentary in this collection Some authors feel there is a trade-off between plurality and intellectual focus, and... Elliot is Professor and Chair of Business Information Systems at the University of Sydney in Australia He previously served as Professor of Business and Head of the Central Coast School of eBusiness and Management at the University of Newcastle and on the Faculty of Commerce and Economics at the University of New South Wales His research work has been directed toward the development of theory in the strategic... technology rather than on the technologies (the ‘hard’ issues) themselves (It should be noted that Figures 1.1 and 1.2 represent the focus of the different disciplines, not the quantum of work conducted in or contributed by any of the disciplines.) Figure 1.3 is a comic-strip representation of the different viewpoints of the computer scientist and the IS researcher vis-à-vis the computer Whereas the computer... have the same response, but I hope some of the thoughts I have with respect to the set of articles may assist readers in finding insights that they might otherwise overlook Keeping in mind the way the field developed is helpful in understanding the discussion of the search for conceptual definition and identity I therefore begin by giving my view of the development of computer-based information systems. .. respect the views of those on the other side The discussion is appropriately heated, but the effort is to create more light than heat The general design of the book is a set of original papers, presented in chronological order of appearance, followed by a set of commentaries by most of the authors of those original papers updating their views for the purposes of this collection The decision to present the. .. guide the IS practitioner community regarding what strategies it ought to adopt to be successful in the future To this end, the current volume Information Systems: The State of the Field, edited by John King and Kalle Lyytinen—is an especially welcome addition This volume brings together a number of the most well-known researchers in the field expressing their views about the nature and future of the. .. aspects of new information technology has appeared in his books and in many academic journal articles He currently serves as Consulting Editor of the Wiley Series in Information Systems, and has served on the editorial boards of many journals including the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information and Organization, Information Systems Journal, the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, . Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Information systems : the state of the field / edited by John Leslie King, Kalle Lyytinen. p. cm. ISBN-13 97 8-0 -4 7 0-0 177 7-7 (alk. paper) ISBN-10. editor-in-chief of the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and has served as president of the Association for Information Systems. He holds a PhD in Informa- tion Systems from the London School of Economics,. on the editorial boards of many journals including the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information and Organization, Information Systems Journal, the Journal of Strategic Information