[AISWorld] Bringing examples to the debate about whether the IS discipline is or is not capable of coming up with native theories.

[Steven Alter]

The  AISWorld Digest for 13 Dec. contained many responses to Nik Hassan’s
AISWorld posting on 12 Dec. that  quoted a senior IS scholar as believing
“that the IS discipline is simply not ready, not yet sufficiently developed
to come up with Native Theories."

 Various respondents questioned the value of the idea of native theory,
said that the key point was whether theories are IS/IT-specific, mentioned
the theory-as-fetish debate, requested a definition of theory, etc.  I had
sent my response as a personal email to Nik rather than to AISWorld …..  “The
idea of native IS theories is not about scientific and/or practical value.
It is about positioning and academic politics. As a field we should try to
worry less about native theories and should worry much more about whether
we are producing ideas and findings that are genuinely valuable either to
the world of practice or to others in academia.”


Here are two examples that respond to some of the points in the
discussion.  “Work system theory” (WST) - (JAIS, 2013) and “Theory of
workarounds” - (ToW) (CAIS, 2014).


WST obviously is a native IS theory because its main source was IS
textbooks that I wrote in the 1990s and experiences teaching MBA and EMBA
students using those textbooks. On the other hand, WST does not mention IS
or IT directly.  It defines the term work system, outlines elements of a
basic understanding of a WS, and describes how WSs evolve over time through
planned and unplanned change. (Knowledge about WSs applies to
sociotechnical and totally automated ISs and to projects such as IS
development because those are special cases of WS.)


How could a native IS theory not mention IS or IT directly?  The reason is
that 8 years of experience in a manufacturing software company convinced me
that greater focus on work systems would have helped our customers and
staff attain greater value from our software.


Is WST a proper theory?  Actually I always thought of it as a framework. It
had to be called a theory, however, in order to seem academically
respectable (as discussed on pp. 496-498 of a JAIS 2015 paper).


ToW is more theory-like because it tries to explain the process by which WS
participants decide to produce workarounds to any part of a WS, i.e., the
technology, information, process, etc. Once again, however, it is couched
in terms of WSs rather than in terms of IS/IT.  I think that makes sense
even as a native IS theory because that is where the phenomenon can be
explained most clearly.


I hope some group of PhD candidates will take a serious look at a bunch of
theories discussed or used in IS and will help us move beyond this
discussion of native vs. non-native, IS/IT-centric vs. non- IS/IT-centric,
proper theory vs. merely a framework or model, etc., so we can focus more
on producing valuable results, not just preference-based commentary.


Steve Alter,

Prof. Emeritus, University of San Francisco