The Ongoing Quest for the it Artifact: Looking Back, Moving Forward

Abstract

More than 10 years ago, Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) examined the conceptualization of Information Technology (IT) in Information Systems Research (ISR) articles published in the 1990s. Their main conclusion was that the majority of these articles did not properly conceptualize the IT artifact. They recommended that IS researchers start to theorize about the IT artifact and employ rich conceptualizations of IT. The Orlikowski and Iacono paper provides a strong anchor point from which to analyze the evolution of the IS discipline. In order to obtain an up-to-date image of contemporary IS research, and to assess how the IS field has evolved since the 1990s, we carried out a similar analysis on a more recent and broader set of articles, that is, the full set (N = 644) of papers published between 2006 and 2009 by six top North American (ISR, MISQ, JAIS) and European (JIT, ISJ, EJIS) journals. The statistics in our results reveal no drastic advance in terms of deeper engagement with the IT artifact; more than 39% of the articles in our set are virtually mute about the artifact, and less than 16% employ an ensemble view of IT. Moreover, we note differences among the North American and European journals. Implications of the findings for two perspectives central to the IS research legitimacy debate are discussed.

Going back to basics in design science: from the information technology artifact to the information systems artifact

“…This paper responds to the need to better define the IT artifact. For some, servicing this need means ‘incorporating more comprehensive and multi‐faceted conceptualizations of the IT artifact’ (Akhlaghpour et al ., , p. 151). For others, broadening the meaning of the concept (IT artifact) creates confusion.…”

Fit in Cloud Sourcing Arrangements: An Ontological Perspective

“…It has been more than a decade since Orlikowski and Lacono [48] found that most of the published studies in the IS field tended to overlook the conceptual significance of the IT artifact by using too simplistic measures, disconnecting it from social settings, black-boxing it, or even excluding it entirely. Recent reviews of the IT artifact's role propose that the field did not witness much improvement [69]. Our research was intended to shed light on the cloud ecosystem artifact in order to gain insights into the fit of cloud sourcing arrangements.…”

Philosophy and information systems: where are we and where should we go?

“…Answers to these questions on the philosophy of information (Floridi, 2002(Floridi, , 2011 and technology (Feenberg, 1991(Feenberg, , 2010bIhde, 1990Ihde, , 1993 are being provided by scholars outside of IS. The ongoing struggle to define the IT artefact (Akhlaghpour, Wu, Lapointe, & Pinsonneault, 2013;Alter, 2015;Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001) is, in fact, a struggle that metaphysics offers several opportunities, despite the dearth of such studies in IS.…”