Can the field of MIS be disciplined?
Communications of the ACM
A review of MIS research and disciplinary development
Journal of Management Information Systems
Visualizing a discipline: an author co-citation analysis of information science, 1972–1995
Journal of the American Society for Information Science
Empirical research in information systems: the practice of relevance
MIS Quarterly - Special issue on intensive research in information systems
Rigor vs. relevance revisited: response to Benbasat and Zmud
MIS Quarterly - Special issue on intensive research in information systems
A Research Perspective for Information Systems and Example of Emerging Area of Research
Information Systems Frontiers
Information Systems Research
Citation rates and perceptions of scientific contribution
Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology
Research in Information Systems: An Empirical Study of Diversity in the Discipline and Its Journals
Journal of Management Information Systems
MIS Quarterly
Sharing knowledge on IS education
ACM Inroads
Information systems strategy: Past, present, future?
The Journal of Strategic Information Systems
Editor's comments: does MIS have native theories?
MIS Quarterly
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Drawing on sociology of science foundations, we argue that, in order to survive and prosper, healthy applied disciplines must meet the dual demands of academic and practitioner audiences by demonstrating both focus and diversity in their research. First, we use this concomitant modality to explain why previous studies into the structure of the Information Systems discipline have reported contradictory results, with some finding a focused field while others conclude that the field is diverse. In support of our argument, we then present the results of a longitudinal, author co-citation analysis, looking across the full range of journals in which IS research is published. Our results suggest that the IS field has sustained a focus on research within three subfields over a 20-year period from 1986 to 2005: (1) a thematic miscellany of research on development, implementation, and use of systems in various application domains; (2) IS strategy and business outcomes; and (3) group work and decision support. At the same time, the field has demonstrated considerable diversity within and around these core subfields, with researchers responding flexibly to the rapidly changing field by investigating these areas with new paradigms and in new contexts, and by exploring new topics including inter-business and Internet applications, computer-supported collaborative work, virtual teams, and knowledge management. Finally, we demonstrate that, over the 20-year period from 1986 to 2005, the discipline has shifted from fragmented adhocracy to a polycentric state, which is particularly appropriate to an applied discipline such as IS that must address the dual demands of focus and diversity in a rapidly changing technological context.