The “identity debate” has a long tradition in information studies and it influenced the formation of the iSchools as a group. It takes on many forms and has multiple dimensions. Wanda Orlikowski and Suzanne Iacono argued for a theoretical focus on IT artifacts and laid out five relevant conceptualizations:
- Tool view (e.g., a productivity enhancer);
- Proxy view (e.g., surrogate measures such as return on investment);
- Ensemble view (e.g., technology embedded in a socio-economic system);
- Computational view (e.g., models and algorithms); and
- Nominal view (e.g., studies of broad impacts such as outsourcing).
Ron Weber posited, “the identity of a discipline is established through the contributions it makes to theory.” He went on to suggest that he could find “only one class of phenomena for which theories sourced from other disciplines seemed deficient — namely, phenomena associated with building conceptual models and designing databases.”
Izak Benbasat and Robert Zmud summarized some of this line of thought as placing claim on three necessary and sufficient criteria: a central character, distinctiveness, and temporal continuity. They argued that a dominant design for the information systems discipline “has yet to be realized” and that this hinders the field’s legitimacy. They affirmed the centrality of the IT artifact, placing the notion in a broad context including understanding capabilities and practices, human behaviors, usage, and impacts.
Robert Galliers pushed back on Benbasat and Zmud, arguing that boundaries and disciplinary cores emerge naturally as a field evolves. In IS, forces shaping this evolution include such topics as the digital divide, globalization, and IT in the developing world, resulting in a broadening of the locus of study to include societal, policy, and ethical issues. He suggested adopting a “trans-disciplinary” perspective on the field of IS. The following table adapts Galliers’ characterization for IS to the domain of the iSchools.
| Disciplinarity | Trans-disciplinarity | |
|---|---|---|
| Boundary | Organization | Society |
| Central Artifact | IT | People/Information |
| Focus | Inward | Outward |
| Scope | Narrow | Broad |
| Reference Disciplines | Org-Behavior, CS, etc. | IS, LIS, Telecommunications |
| Properties | Defined | Emergent |
| Inter-disciplinary | A threat | An opportunity |
Gerardine DeSanctis reflected on the increasing pervasiveness of information technology, observing that “knowledge and creative use are no longer the sole domain of specialists.” This has shifted the dominant functional role of information professionals from development to leadership and support, and put many in strategic business positions. As information professionals take on these new roles, technical skills must be supplemented with new competencies in human relations and organizational effectiveness. As DeSanctis observed, “the institutional paradox for IS is that the domain has become of interest to many faculty groups yet the sole purview of none.” While, perhaps, not the sole purview, this is, most certainly, the primary purview of the iSchools. Rather than focusing on a bounded “domain,” DeSanctis argued for a “focus on the questions” and observed that these have historically generated excitement and impact in IS.
Daniel Robey continued the call for a “more flexible identity for IS” that avoids “the lure of a dominant research paradigm.” He suggested a pursuit of “pragmatic legitimacy” that casts IS as a “valued partner in intellectual exchanges with our external constituents: the governing bodies, business executives, university officials, and scholars from other disciplines who are the key actors in IS’s organizational field.”
John King and Kalle Lyytinen acknowledged that the IS field lacks a theoretic core and has been “haunted by feelings of inadequacy” for 30 years. They proposed an alternative model for establishing legitimacy, grounded in three drivers:
- Salience of issues studied;
- Production of strong results; and
- Maintenance of plasticity.
They offered an alternative view of the core of the discipline as a “market of ideas” where the IS field is defined as “the study of the design and management of information and associated technologies in organized human enterprise.” Rather than accepting the argument that theory should provide the foundation, they suggest, rather, that theory “to the extent that it has a role, is in the service of producing strong results.”
King sums up this discussion of identity, observing that iSchools “straddle the academy’s ancient engagement with information and the contemporary challenges of ubiquitous information affecting all aspects of society. … The [iSchool] movement is emergent; its equilibrium can only be found in an essential tension among competing visions in a world of rapid technical and social change. [iSchool] identity is elusive and will remain so for the foreseeable future.”