New Approaches to Studying Information Technology: Escaping the Organizational Straightjacket

Introduction The information systems (IS) field has historically limited itself to the design, use and implementation of information technology (IT) in organizations. Consequently, it is no surprise that the IS field has become constrained by this "organizational straitjacket" since its inception. Dickson (1981, p. 20) acknowledges that "much of the [management information systems] MIS research that has been performed has been done in an organizational setting." Markus (1999) was the first to highlight the tendency of the field to be constrained by its roots in organizational science. The IS field, she warns, is at a crossroads and in order to avoid possible extinction, needs to go beyond its traditional areas of study by revisiting its mission and its customers. Markus notes that the core concerns of the IS field are no longer limited to the needs of the IS department and the organization that it serves. IT is so prevalent today that its benefits and dangers are felt beyond organizational or disciplinary boundaries. Galliers (2003) emphasizes the need for a transdisciplinary approach to IS, one that is neither limited to the locus of the organization nor to the parochial needs of the IS field itself. For instance, the Declaration of Principles and the Plan of Action at the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Geneva in 2003, asserts that the benefits of IT are global and are no longer limited to organizational concerns. Conversely, the repercussions of the failures of IS are equally far-reaching. For example, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the Intelligence Community within the U.S. government blame, among other reasons, ineffective IS for not being able to avert the tragedy of September 11, 2001 (National Commission on Terrorist Attacks, 2004). The repercussions of this IS failure is felt beyond the intelligence community. This paper contends that the IS field needs to widen its focus beyond its traditional foundations in organization studies (OS) by theorizing about its core concern--information technology (IT). Based on a philosophy of technology and a philosophy of information, a framework that embraces societal concerns in studying IT is proposed. Escaping the Organizational Straightjacket The close relationship between IS and organizational studies (OS) is engendered by the OS background of many IS authors. Consequently, IS research is performed hand-inhand with OS research, even though, epistemologically, they are different (Orlikowski & Barley, 2001). Not only is the field of IS epistemologically different from OS, it is ontologically different from OS. The arguments presented by Orlikowski and Barley (2001) to support the epistemological difference between IS and OS research also support ontological differences between the two fields. In their opinion, because IS studies the development of systems and their consequences, and provides practical solutions to real-life problems, the agenda of IS research closely resembles the agenda of architecture and other design sciences rather than of OS research. OS is closer to traditional science because it provides parsimonious explanations to broad classes of organizational phenomena. As a result, OS discovers generalities, sets down general principles and identifies causal relationships. Therefore, the subject matter (ontology) studied in IS is very different from the subject matter studied in OS. A field that is ontologically and epistemologically different from another cannot hope to flourish if it remains within the constraints of the latter. That is why remaining with OS approaches places the IS field in an "organizational straightjacket." Both the epistemological and ontological differences between IS and OS support the need for a fresh look at how IT should be studied. Additionally, in the limited context of the organization, OS may study "the best way" of managing people in order to improve productivity, whereas IS studies how technology can be designed and implemented to improve organizational productivity. …