[AISWorld] ICIS panel -- advance call for questions

[Carte, Traci A.]

Wynne Chin, Dorothy Leidner, George Marcoulides, Michael Myers, and I are participating in a panel at ICIS this year entitled "Rigor-Mortis: The knowing-doing gap in research methods and what we should do about it." I am writing to solicit questions for the panel. Have you had any recent experiences as an author or reviewer at an MIS journal (or with an MIS paper at a non-MIS journal) where you felt the research methods portion of the paper/review was not handled correctly - i.e., either too much or too little rigor was sought? We are interested in the issues you face. Please send a brief description of the issue  to me directly (tcarte at ou.edu<mailto:tcarte at ou.edu>) - not the list.

I also encourage you to attend our panel. Details are below along with the panel abstract.

Thanks,
Traci
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Traci Carte
Associate Professor of MIS
University of Oklahoma
Norman, OK 73019
(405)325-0741
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Rigor-Mortis: The knowing-doing gap in research methods and what we should do about it

Panel
Tuesday, December 18
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM; Salon 8B

Introduction
The knowledge base for conducting both qualitative and quantitative research in information systems (IS) is continually expanding, and novel tools are routinely emerging aimed at making the application of new techniques easy. This coevolution of knowledge and tools represents a bit of a quagmire for researchers: developing deep analytical expertise and maintaining it represents a huge time commitment; conversely, new analytical tools make it increasing easy to apply new techniques -- perhaps without fully understanding them. Some in our field have anecdotally noted that this proliferation of tools and methods has resulted in it becoming increasingly difficult to publish in our top journals without the inclusion of ever more complex analyses. Moreover, we are contributing to this problem through the proliferation of methodological papers in our top journals which reviewers seize upon, and authors are left trying to fully comply with techniques that are potentially neither easily understood nor necessary. This knowing-doing gap in research methods - i.e., the disconnect between our analytical know-how and know-why - may be especially problematic for students and new faculty who are trying to develop IS-domain expertise while simultaneously trying to master methods. As such our push for more complexity in methods may be contributing to our field "eat[ing] its young".

This panel will focus on how/should our field be navigating this proliferation of methods in such a way as to simultaneously maintain our domain-specific expertise while also maintaining legitimacy/currency in methods. We have assembled expert panelists who have successfully navigated the methodological requirements of publishing quantitative and qualitative research in our top journals. Panelists will discuss:

1.       Have we gone too far in our methods expectations? Are we sacrificing relevance for rigor?

2.       What should the expectations be? How do we meet those expectations (e.g., PhD education, continuing education, etc)?

3.       How can/should methodological expertise be assembled and/or leveraged?

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