[AISWorld] Why top IS journals ignore research in one of the most valuable assets: Data Centers?

[Manuel Mora]

Colleague Chris,
Thanks for comments. I agree and disagree with them. I summarize my
responses as follows:

Agreements:
1) IS discipline emerged (from Gordon Davis' concept in the 70's) as the
discipline to study both computer technology and their organizations using
them.
2) CSc and SwE are other disciplines focused in designing basic
computational mechanisms, components and systems, but IS addresses whole
computational functionalities (called now IT services).
3) Engineering schools really prepare on technical topics and actually, CSc
was initially located in Electrical Department. SwE has recently gained its
own right to be a discipline but always was considered a branch of CSc
(similar to AI area).

Disagreements:
1) IS research design does not treat with the design of basic computational
mechanisms (in the Simon and Newell's computational paradigm) but with the
design of whole IT services. It must be taught, investigated and published.
2) IT Engineering side is about to (finally) managerial and systematic
methods, techniques and tools for designing whole IT services (and its
required engineering and managerial interrelationships). Best example of a
core discipline doing it is Systems Engineering (please visit www.incose.org
for more information). Other educational argument currently debated in USA
top institutions and NSF is about the new T-shape education.
3) My technical background is BSc on IT (1980-1984 Monterrey Tech), MSc on
AI (1987-1989, Monterrey Tech), and EngD Systems Engineering (1998-2003,
UNAM), so I have involved in IT discipline for 32 years and I have heard of
many IT in these last 30 years ! : )

Manuel

PS Apologies for missed information of me:

Manuel Mora, EngD.
ACM Senior Member (from 1998
Full-time Professor and Researcher
Information Systems Department
Autonomous University of Aguascalientes
Mexico

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http://148.211.145.149:8080/web/drmora/profile
https://scholar.google.com.mx/citations?user=97rTgbkAAAAJ&hl=es&oi=sra
http://dblp.uni-trier.de/pers/hd/t/Tavarez:Manuel_Mora?
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Manuel_Mora/publications



On Fri, Mar 4, 2016 at 2:48 PM, Christopher M. Conway <c.conway at ieseg.fr>
wrote:

>
>
> On 03/04/2016 18:40, mmora at securenym.net wrote:
> > I am afraid that AIS is not helping too much. Our behavioral colleagues
> > are welcome but AIS should be controlled by Engineering ICT people !
> Hello mmora at securenym.net,
>
> I must respectfully disagree. And will do so without the benefit of
> anonymity.
>
> I *am* an engineer. I spent twenty years running systems, programming
> systems, and doing pretty much anything you can do with systems. I even
> debugged hardware on occasion. I've probably written about 1.5 million
> lines of code, mostly in C on UNIX systems, though I've programmed and
> administered VMS, Windows, and other systems you've not heard of as
> well. I personally wrote a system which was instrumental in alerting
> airline pilots to wind shear hazards, which has saved provably hundreds
> and probably thousands of lives. Even though I wrote that system in
> 1988, it is still in use and being improved to this day. I was on one of
> the teams scattered around MIT that captured and analyzed the Morris
> worm, so I've been aware and alert to security issues for quite some time.
>
> I think I qualify as someone who is a domain expert in the technical
> side, and can speak to the proper preparation of other technical domain
> experts. My main problems in industry were the idiotic decisions made by
> people who *thought* they knew everything necessary about the technology.
>
> To answer your question "are we really preparing IT technical people
> correctly?", the answer is an emphatic "that's the wrong question".
>
> As I understand the discipline, IS is about the intersection of
> technology (specifically computers) and business. It is an inherently
> applied field, in which the social context is a key ingredient. Sure,
> yes, have the "artifact". But the artifact is valueless for the field
> without its social context.
>
> Because of this interdisciplinary nature, IS departments CANNOT train
> technical people. In order to be properly prepared technically, you need
> a great deal of mathematical theory, an understanding of how the
> hardware works, and a layer of computing theory on top of this. There's
> field which does that: it's called "computer science". Being able to use
> Excel or a point-and-click IDE or write a quick Visual Basic hack or
> able to use SPSS or SAS or even R is NOT being a domain expert.
>
> Engineering schools do a very good job of turning out good technical
> people. That's their job. Learning that field is a full-time job, which
> leaves no time for softer issues, but that's okay; the technical people
> are supposed to be domain experts in how to make computers jump. They
> rely on other people to tell them where they should jump to.
>
> That's where IS comes in. Yes, some technical understanding is
> necessary; but no one coming out with an IS degree will ever be a
> technical domain expert. Any IS person that makes technical decisions
> without the advice and consent of their technical domain experts should
> be fired. What IS personnel are, rather, is the link in between the
> technical and the business side-- the people who understand where
> computers can be profitably deployed, and how to explain to the non-IS
> business people why that's valuable, and how to explain to the technical
> people what they want. They don't understand what makes a router good,
> nor do they understand how to properly float a bond. For the former,
> they talk to technical people; for the latter, finance people. But IS
> people are the ones who understand that both are important, and how to
> make those domain experts play nicely together.
>
> I wouldn't mind seeing more technically-oriented articles in our
> journals, but they're still going to need to give context. And I
> *definitely* don't think that the people who are running things should
> only be engineers. The engineers already have a place to live, in
> computer science, and lots of nice journals and conferences where they
> can publish their work. Crossing disciplines is useful. But wiping out
> the social context in IS simply makes it an inferior copy of the
> computer science and software engineering fields.
>
> FWIW, I have some agreement. That's why I'm trying to focus more on
> sysadmins and developers in my work. But, again, writing an article
> about how anyone letting Microsoft products into the server room damages
> the quality of the computing services provided may be true, but only
> from a technical perspective. The social perspective is the only reason
> you'll find Microsoft in any server room anywhere. That's an interesting
> IS question. How to optimize the server is a computer science question.
>
> My €0.02. It's almost certainly worth what you paid for it, which is
> nothing.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Chris
>
> --
> Christopher M. Conway, Ph.D.
> IÉSEG School of Management
> Paris, France
>
> _______________________________________________
> AISWorld mailing list
> AISWorld at lists.aisnet.org
>



-- 
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Manuel Mora, EngD.
Full Professor and Researcher Level C
ACM Senior Member / SNI Level I
Department of Information Systems
Autonomous University of Aguascalientes
Ave. Universidad 940
Aguascalientes, AGS
Mexico, 20131
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