In an important ISR research commentary, Orlikowski and Iacono [2001] argue that the IS field does not deeply engage in its core subject matter, “the IT artifact. ” Although agreeing with their analysis and their conclusions concerning the unfortunate lack of engagement with the IT artifact, this article questions their premise that the IT artifact should be viewed as the core of the IS field. After defining the term “work system ” and summarizing previously published frameworks for understanding a work system in operation and a work system life cycle, this article presents 18 reasons why IT-reliant work systems should replace “the IT artifact ” as the core of the IS field. Taken in combination, the 18 reasons express a belief that today’s IS field is inherently work system-centric, rather than IT-centric even though IT artifacts are present wherever the IS discipline is genuinely relevant. The specific reasons involve important topics including IS success, IS costs, IS risks, IS life cycles, methods for analyzing systems, communication with business professionals, organizing and codifying knowledge about systems in organizations, and maximizing the value of IS research.

Although organizational innovation with information technology is often carefully considered, bandwagon phenomena indicate that much innovative behavior may nevertheless be of the “me too” variety. In this essay, we explore such differences in innovative behavior. Adopting a perspective that is both institutional and cognitive, we introduce the notion of mindful innovation with IT. A mindful firm attends to an IT innovation with reasoning 1 Jane Webster was the accepting senior editor for this paper. Swanson & Ramiller/Innovating Mindfully with IT RESEARCH ARTICLE grounded in its own organizational facts and specifics. We contrast this with mindless innovation, where a firm’s actions betray an absence of such attention and grounding. We develop these concepts by drawing on the recent appearance of the idea of mindfulness in the organizational literature, and adapting it for application to IT innovation. We then bring mindfulness and mindlessness together in a larger theoretical synthesis in which these apparent opposites are seen to interact in ways that help to shape the overall landscape of opportunity for organizational innovation with IT. We conclude by suggesting several promising new research directions.

This article is the first of two whose goal is to advance the discussion of IS risk by addressing limitations of the current IS risk literature. These limitations include: • inconsistent or unclear definitions of risk, • limited applicability of risk models, • frequent omission of the temporal nature of risk, and • lack of an easily communicated organizing framework for risk factors. This article presents a general, but broadly adaptable model of system-related risk. The companion article, Volume 14, Article 2[Sherer and Alter, 2004] focuses on IS risk factors and how these factors can be organized. This article starts by identifying criteria for a general, but broadly applicable risk model. It compares alternative conceptualizations of risk and provides clarifications of the definitions of risk and of different treatments of goals, expectations, and baselines for assessing risk. It presents several of the risk models in the IS literature and discusses the temporal nature of risk. Based on that background it presents a general and broadly adaptable model of risk that encompasses: • goals and expectations, • risk factors and other sources of uncertainty, • the operation of the system or project whose risks are being managed, • the risk management effort, • the possible outcomes and their probabilities, • impacts on other systems,

Although called systems, information systems in organizations are often viewed as tools that “users ” use. IS success is often gauged as though it were about acceptance and usage of a tool. System development is often conceived as building computerized tools that satisfy information requirements of idealized business processes. Frequent IS disappointments and occasional failures are often attributed to inadequate user involvement, and even users involved in the projects often admit difficulty contributing fully to these technical discussions. This paper argues that the current balance between tool thinking and systems thinking in IS practice and research is slanted toward tool thinking, and that the IS discipline has done far too little to exploit the system nature of systems in organizations. Progress in that direction would fully recognize the sociotechnical nature of systems in organizations, thereby encouraging richer systems thinking than is possible in practice or in research when largely social entities and largely technical entities are treated separately. A long-term effort toward richer systems thinking in the IS field is the attempt to develop the work system method, a systems analysis method for business professionals. To date, this effort has generated innovations that may have valuable implications for systems analysis, IS pedagogy, and the development of a body of knowledge for the IS field. Many research issues for the future have also emerged.

The challenge of defining the domain and core concepts of the IS field is a perennial topic at major IS conferences. This paper describes the architecture of Sysperanto, a model-based ontology of the IS field. Sysperanto is being developed as part of an ongoing effort to create methods that typical business professionals can use to analyze systems and system-related projects for themselves at whatever level of depth is appropriate. The name Sysperanto is meant as a metaphor combining generality (covering the IS field), vocabulary (identification of terms), and structure (internally consistent organization) to create an ontology more powerful and useful than a list of keywords or propositions. Sysperanto’s architecture provides an organizing framework for codifying the disparate and inconsistent propositions, methods, and findings that constitute the current state of IS knowledge and, in combination, form a major obstacle to knowledge accumulation and use in the IS field. Instead of yet another discussion of whether the IS field lacks a conceptual core and what might be the consequences of such a shortcoming, this paper proposes an architecture and preliminary details of a plausible set of core concepts for the IS field. It starts by summarizing Sysperanto’s

This paper builds on ideas in a recent paper which argued that the core subject matter of the IS field should not be “the IT artifact ” (as suggested by Orlikowski and Iacono [1]), but rather IT-intensive work systems. This paper extends the ideas in the previous paper by exploring whether pervasive real time IT might be a disruptive technology [2] for the IS field, implying that the long term vibrancy and impact of the field depends on a change in focus and scope that emphasizes some version of work system concepts. This paper defines the term “work system ” and explains that information systems, projects, value chains, and supply chains are all special cases that should inherit work system terminology, generalizations, and success factors. It summarizes six real world examples to demonstrate different types of overlap between work systems and information systems that support them. Comparison of these systems shows that many of today’s more interesting information systems reflect a trend toward pervasive real time IT, i.e., increasingly commonplace application of IT to automate work practices or support and control them in real time. As this trend continues, the overlap between information systems and the work systems they support will increase, leading to a situation in which studying just the information system but not the work system it supports will have less and less significance. The paper concludes by arguing that the IS field needs to encompass work systems that do more than processing information. Expansion in this direction has implications for analyzing systems, conceptualizing system life cycles, communicating with business professionals, interpreting and performing research, and establishing different relationships with other academic fields such as organization behavior and operations management. 1.

Abstract not found

The initially revolutionary DSS agenda is now ancient history. This paper argues that “decision support ” provides a richer basis than “DSS ” in both practice and research. Using a loan-processing example involving two banks it shows how work system concepts might be applied to understand decision support in real world settings, and how decision support can come from many sources other than technical artifacts such as DSS. Shifting the focus from “DSS as artifact ” to “decision support within a work system” reduces the chances of being misled by techno-hype, vendor sales pitches, and incomplete understanding of determinants of success in organizations.

Despite the availability of elaborate methods for defining data and business processes, huge amounts of time and effort are wasted on system projects that produce disappointing results. An important contributing factor is the significant difficulty business and IT professionals experience when they try to describe, evaluate, and/or analyze systems in organizations even at a cursory level. Between 1997 and 2003, the author's information system courses for evening MBAs and EMBAs have required students to write two group papers that present a business-oriented analysis of a real world system in an organization and propose preliminary recommendations for improvements. If these working students are representative of the types of business professionals who are involved in systems in organizations, it is plausible that the major types of pitfalls demonstrated by their papers are representative of the pitfalls that contribute to disappointing results with systems. An examination of 202 group papers submitted by evening MBA and EMBA students between 1997 and 2003 revealed pitfalls in the following categories: difficulty defining systems in organizations, difficulty identifying the information in information systems, aversion to using measures of performance, reluctance to mention organizational and personal issues, susceptibility to techno-hype and jargon, inadequate critical thinking, and difficulty applying abstractions and formal methods. This paper illustrates these problems through examples from 25 of the student papers. Assuming that typical business professionals encounter the same types of pitfalls, both MBA programs and analysis and design methods should provide concepts and techniques that help in identifying and minimizing the related problems. © Steven Alter

Abstract not found