The concept of ‘IT artifact’ has outlived its usefulness and should be retired now

Abstract

Vastly inconsistent definitions of the term "the IT artifact" in leading journals and conferences demonstrate why it no longer means anything in particular and should be retired from the active IS lexicon. Examples from the literature show why artifact-cousins, such as the IS artifact, sociotechnical artifact, social artifact, and ensemble artifact should be used with great care, if not retired as well. Any void created by these retirements could be filled through the following approaches: (i) relabeling with simple terms that are immediately understandable; (ii) adopting guidelines for making sense of the whole X-artifact family; and (iii) sidestepping the IT artifact and focusing directly on IT-enabled work systems in organizations.While Humpty Dumpty can get away with saying that things mean whatever he chooses them to mean in Lewis Carroll's sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, that approach is not appropriate for IS researchers, especially because the IS field espouses such great concern about combining rigour, relevance and influence in the real world. The above excerpt from the Call for Papers of the IT Artifact track of ICIS 2013 says that the IT artifact is understood as any of three completely different kinds of things, technologies consisting of hardware and software, sociotechnical systems with human participants, and processes and methods. Although common words such as cell and edge can have different but easily understandable meanings in different

The Information Systems Artifact: A Conceptualization Based on General Systems Theory

“…One debate has centered on whether the IT artifact is a useful conception in the first place. Some IS scholars have argued that the IT artifact represents the essence of IS [8], while others have called for disbanding this notion [5]. As noted by Alter [5], the IT artifact has been so variedly defined, that it has lost much of its usefulness.…”

“…Some IS scholars have argued that the IT artifact represents the essence of IS [8], while others have called for disbanding this notion [5]. As noted by Alter [5], the IT artifact has been so variedly defined, that it has lost much of its usefulness. For example, he argues that the definition of the IT artifact provided at the ICIS 2013 mini-track could be inferred to mean any of "three completely different kinds of things, technologies consisting of hardware and software, sociotechnical systems with human participants, and processes and methods" (p. 47).…”

“…Part of the problem is also related to how different research/professional groups and academic communities have understood differing ontologies and epistemologies underlying the IT artifact -for example, for some the IT artifact implies only technical artifacts, while for others it also includes social artifacts [5]. Arguably, the problems with the conception of the IT artifact arise from the uniqueness of IS, as lying between "organizational sciences and technical sciences," which allows such varied definitions [28, p. 610].…”

Understanding IT Artefacts with Language

“…Artefacts always reveal a story in the course of time and show technical features, which depend on a series of practical gestures, the creator's intention and the reasons why they have been created in order to perform a function. Matook & Brown 2016;Alter 2014;2015), where scholars are still trying to define whether the concept of an IT artefact is useful for their studies. A brief survey of IS researchers shows that an IT artefact could be an application, a design tool, a model, a method, or a combination of hardware and software.…”

Towards Reconceptualizing the Core of the IS Field from a Neurobiological Perspective

“…This is a vital omission, because without defining what we are talking about, we can hardly know it" [2, p. 338]. Further, little progress has been made since the 1990s in conceptualization the central entity of the field -the IT artifact [3,4]. This state of play provides the motivation for the paper, which is to reconsider the foundation of the IS field from neurobiological perspective.…”