Objects, concepts, and discourses: Conceptual convergences in information systems
Presenter, Dirk Hovorka, Bond University, Gold Coast
| When: |
Friday, 3 April 2009 |
| Where: |
Room 103 Colin Clark Building, UQ St Lucia Campus |
| Time: |
10.30am - 12.00pm |
| Cluster: |
Business Information Systems Cluster |
| Further information: |
Abstract: The structure and interrelationships of formal knowledge created in the scientific disciplines have long been of interest to academics. One increasingly important domain of Information Systems (IS) research is the study of the creation and evolution of knowledge. This exploratory research compares the fundamentally different results of two research papers which use Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) to examine the landscape and intellectual core respectively, of the IS field. This comparison is used to frame a new focus on the concepts and discourses to which IS can contribute. As an exploratory example, LSA was used to analyze semantic relationships in 24,810 abstracts from core business journals and begins to chart the evolution of shared concepts around which IS and other business disciplines orbit. Results of this work position IS within a „science of business? and indicate that IS research has greater conceptual similarity to the disciplines of Management, Operations, Strategy, and Marketing than previously thought, and that these disciplines are converging on a similar set of concepts and problems. This organizational-behavior-technical domain is distinct from an economics focused domain dominated by Finance and Accounting. By shifting attention from pursuit of the core of IS to a focus the discourses in which objects of study and concepts from IS can contribute, we can track the discursive dispersion of concepts through numerous business and information-intensive disciplines, and to identify research areas in which IS concepts and theories are essential for integrated understanding of problems. This convergence on similar concepts and research problems potentially leads to a more systems orientated knowledge and greater practical relevance for both IS and other business disciplines.
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