A research agenda for information technology

Abstract

The likelihood of IT surviving as an academically sound discipline is greatly enhanced if it can establish a distinct research agenda. While it is possible to establish a research agenda in a "top-down" version, this paper presents preliminary work being done using bottom-up analysis to the on-going discussion to define the meaning of Research in the context of IT as an academic discipline. We first document the current discussions surrounding the definition of IT research. We then use that conceptual framework to classify a set of seventy master's theses from two graduate programs in IT. The titles reveal a set of topics and research directions that fit nicely into the conceptual framework provided by the IT body of knowledge, as embodied in the IT model curriculum. These theses provide specific instances that relate to the questions proposed by Reichgelt as a research agenda for Information Technology as well as the additional discussions that have followed. Moreover, one cannot distinguish the school of origin through analysis of the titles. The fact that there seems to be some consistency between the IT body of knowledge, initial theoretically motivated proposals of an IT research agenda, and the work that is actually produced in graduate programs in IT suggests that the IT research community seems to be converging around a set of specific research topics. We conclude by proposing some specific actions to accelerate this process of convergence.