ABSTRACT:
WITH THIS ISSUE, JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS is entering the twentieth year of its publication. The past 20 years have witnessed the emergence of the information systems (IS) discipline as one of the established scholarly fields. Centering on the development, use, and impacts of organizational IS, the IS discipline has an important core competence. It has a demonstrated ability not only to use theories developed elsewhere, but to contribute its own theories, methods, and theoretically based artifacts to other fields. The well- developed system of journals and conferences for the dissemination and elaboration of scholarship is firmly in place. Consistently among top-ranked IS journals, JMIS has been privileged to be able to contribute to the growth of our discipline. Recent research shows that JMIS is the most representative of the leading journals in the field, along with Information Systems Research [1]. Indeed, JMIS has always reflected the belief that thematic and methodological diversity within a well-defined IS domain is our strength. The present issue of JMIS illustrates this point.
Major information technologies (IT) offer vital competitive opportunities to the organizations that adopt and appropriate them, combining them with other capabilities and resources at their disposal. The emerging major technologies also present vital competitive threats to the organizations that do not succeed in such adoption and appropriation. IS executives are the key actors in positioning their firms with respect to IT innovations. In the first paper of the issue, Neil C. Ramiller and E. Burton Swanson assert that such transformational technologies provide organizing visions for enterprises. These authors study the response of these executives to such emerging, and maturing, organizing visions—be they electronic commerce or customer relationship management. Looking at the major IT-based organizational innovations through the prism of the organizing visions, as these evolve through the ascent to the inevitable decline, Ramiller and Swanson are able to analyze the sense-making processes of IS executives with respect to such innovations, set the agenda for further research, and offer guidelines for executive practice.
The theme of strategic deployment of IT is continued by Ken Peffers, Charles E. Gengler, and Tuure Tuunanen. Critical success factors (CSF) methodology has been long established in strategic IS planning to derive the IS initiatives of a firm from its long-term objectives. The authors make the case for extending the CSF methodology into critical success chains that explicitly link the attributes of corporate IS, CSFs, and specific corporate goals. A broadly participative methodology, the use of critical success chains combines the bottom-up processes involving the users of technology with the generally top-down CSF methods. Analytical case studies show how the CSF- based planning is expanded in the process.
Retention of valued IS professionals has been a continuing objective of their employers. A novel and theoretically rich perspective on the issue is offered by Robert A. Josefek Jr. and Robert J. Kauffman. Using the human capital theory of economics, these authors analyze the various pressures on the professionals to separate and the consequent probability of separation. Based on this, Josefek and Kauffman propose a method that would allow employers to assess the effects of a projected retention intervention before such an intervention is actually made. The work is important for the IS workforce management and initiates a new stream of research into this management.
Disciplined software development and adaptation in organizations is necessary to realize IT-linked initiatives. Based on a field study, Bill C. Hardgrave, Fred D. Davis, and Cynthia K. Riemenschneider show that the system developers’ intentions to follow methodologies are not based on the organizational mandate to do so. Such an intention is rather an outcome of several antecedents, most of which have not been recognized by prior work. Rooted in the technology-acceptance and diffusion-of-innovations models, the present approach leads to a richer understating of how commitments to software-development methodologies are formed.
Software piracy is a well-known problem, manifesting itself also in the workplace, with the resulting organizational, as well as individual, responsibility. On an extensive theoretical base, A. Graham Peace, Dennis F. Galletta, and James Y.L. Thong build and validate a piracy model. Echoing the conclusions of the preceding paper, the authors show that the organizational mandates and disincentives are crucial, yet not sufficient. The work has implications both for the companies using software and for the software producers establishing its prices.
A comprehensive model of IT-enabled knowledge management is presented by Heeseok Lee and Byounggu Choi. The model presents a socio-technical approach to knowledge management enablers, which integrates the IT perspective with the social perspective of culture (with the relevant components of collaboration, trust, and learning), organizational structure, and skilled people who create and share knowledge. The model includes the processes through which explicit and tacit forms of knowledge are created and transformed, and relates these to organizational performance via organizational creativity. This model will be no doubt elaborated and refined through further research it will stimulate.
Workflow systems have become a common tool for coordinating organizational and interorganizational operations. Complex work processes entailed in the delivery of information-intensive products bring complexity to workflow design. Hajo A. Reijers, Selma Limam, and Wil M.P. van der Aalst present a method called product- based workflow design, which serves to derive workflow design from the product specifications under certain design criteria. The work is rooted in formal methods, and a prototype tool is exercised to validate the approach in the field.
Surinder Singh Kahai and Randolph B. Cooper employ media richness theory to study the impacts of two aspects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) systems on the quality of the decisions reached with the use of these systems. In a laboratory experiments with three kinds of CMC systems, the authors establish the comparative advantages and drawbacks of richer and leaner media. The work both integrates and extends a large body of prior research on the subject.
Group support systems (GSS), which for many purposes may be considered a class of CMC systems, are well-known for offering the advantages of anonymous participation. But do they? Stephen C. Hayne, Carol E. Pollard, and Ronald E. Rice show that the participants in GSS brainstorming sessions are able to perform significantly better attributions of others’ comments than a chance guess would afford. Even though most of the attributions are nevertheless incorrect, the dynamics that might ensue from these attributions (should they, in fact, be made) has interesting implications, which the authors discuss and analyze.
As JMIS enters its twentieth year of publication, I would like to express my gratitude to our authors, our readers, the Editorial Board, and the journal program manager at M.E. Sharpe, Debra E. Soled. A very special thanks goes, as always, to our referees—the primary guarantors of quality. Here are the reviewers of the Journal of Management Information Systems:
William Acar
Dennis A. Adams
Niv Ahituv
Murugan Anandarajan
Hayward P. Andres
Dorine Andrews
Solomon Antony
Yoris Au
Sulin Ba
Barbro Back
Yannis Bakos
P.R. Balasubramanian
Dirk Baldwin
Reza Barkhi
Henri Barki
Genevieve Bassellier
Dinesh Batra
Irma Becerra-Fernandez
Salvatore Belardo
Skip Benamati
Michael Benaroch
François Bergeron
Anol Bhattacherjee
Sudip Bhattacherjee
Niels Bjørn-Andersen
Indranil Bose
Carol V. Brown
Robert M. Brown
Glenn Browne
Jeffrey Butterfield
Terry A. Byrd
Edward G. Cale Jr.
Judith Carlisle
Sven Carlsson
Houston H. Carr
William J. Carroll
Robert P. Cerveny
Sergio de Cesare
Namsik Chang
Debabroto Chatterjee
Patrick Chau
Anrew N.K. Chen
Hong-Mei Chen
Kuan Chen
Minder Chen
Hsing Kenneth Cheng
Robert T.H. Chi
Roger Chiang
Alina M. Chircu
William C. Chismar
Jong-min Choe
H. Michael Chung
Roger Clarke
Randolph Cooper
Paul Cule
Qizhi Dai
Ronald Dattero
Donald L. Davis
Gordon Depledge
Sarv Devaraj
Ali Dogramaci
Peter Duchessi
Adrie C.M. Dumay
Omar A. El Sawy
Hyun B. Eom
J. Alberto Espinosa
Gerald E. Evans
Ming Fan
Bijan Fazlollahi
Steven Feiner
Kirk Fiedler
Edmond P. Fitzgerald
Jerry Fjermestad
Steven W. Floyd
Edward Fox
Dennis Galletta
Edward J. Garrity
Judith Gebauer
David Gefen
Paulo B. Goes
Janis L. Gogan
Thomas Goh
Dale Goodhue
Sanjay Gosain
Martin D. Goslar
Paul Gray
Saul Greenberg
Robert K. Griffin
Michael D. Grigoriades
Mary-Liz Grise
Bin Gu
Alok Gupta
Jungpil Hahn
Barbara Haley
Ingoo Han
Il-Horn Hann
Bill C. Hardgrave
Paul Hart
Stephen Hayne
Starr Roxanne Hiltz
Rudy Hirschheim
Richard Hoffman
John A. Hoxmeier
Paul Hu
Qing Hu
Wayne Huang
Kai Lung Hui
Ard Huizing
E. Gerald Hurst
Zahir Irani
Gretchen I. Irwin
Tomas Isakowitz
Bharat A. Jain
James J. Jiang
Linda Ellis Johnson
Kailash Joshi
Nenad Jukic
Charles Kacmar
Surinder Kahai
Timo Kakola
Ajit Kambil
P.K. Kannan
Jahangir Karimi
Michael Kattan
Timothy Kayworth
Mark Keil
Robert T. Keim
Chris Kemerer
Julie E. Kendall
William J. Kettinger
Omar E.M. Khalil
Melody Y. Kiang
Rajiv Kishore
Gary Klein
Stefan Koch
Esther Koster
Marios Koufaris
Kenneth A. Kozar
Kenneth L. Kraemer
Ramayya Krishnan
Uday Kulkarni
Akhil Kumar
Ram Kumar
Mary C. Lacity
Simon S.K. Lam
Gwynne Larsen
Tor J. Larsen
Kathy S. Lassila
Heeseok Lee
Ho Geun Lee
Jungwoo Lee
Dorothy Leidner
Richard Leifer
Mary Jane Lenard
Hugo Levecq
Ting-Peng Liang
Nancy Lightner
John Lim
Kai Lim
Yihwa Irene Liou
Astrid Lipp
Paulo J.G. Lisboa
Henry C. Lucas Jr.
Mark Lycett
Kalle Lyytinen
William McCarthy
Jane M. Mackay
Roy McKelvey
D. Harrison McKnight
Ephraim R. McLean
Poppy L. McLeod
Simha R. Magal
Mo A. Mahmood
David Maier
Ji-Ye Mao
Salvatore T. March
James R. Marsden
Thomas E. Marshall
Anne P. Massey
Charles H. Mawhinney
Jerrold H. May
Roberto J. Mejias
Steven C. Michael
Thomas Miller
Shaila Miranda
Rajesh Mirani
Ali R. Montazemi
Ramiro Montealegre
Jeanette Moody
Ajay S. Mookerjee
Scott Moore
Steven Morris
Jolene Morrison
Michael D. Myers
Kathleen Mykytyn
Peter P. Mykytyn Jr.
Barin N. Nag
Murli Nagasundaram
R. Ryan Nelson
Boon Siong Neo
Fred Niederman
Mark Nissen
Rosalie Ocker
Wonseok Oh
Bob O’Keefe
Lorne Olfman
James Oliver
Levent Orman
Richard Orwig
Carl Pacini
Jonathan W. Palmer
Raymond R. Panko
Michael Parent
Diane Parente
Jeffrey Parsons
Paul A. Pavlou
Kenneth Peffers
Norman Pendegraft
Mark Pendergast
Roger A. Pick
Leo L. Pipino
Steven Poltrock
Jean-Charles Pomerol
Gerald Post
John H. Prager
Jayesh Prasad
G. Premkumar
Sandeep Purao
S. Raghunathan
Arik Ragowsky
T.S. Ragu-Nathan
Arun Rai
Rex Kelly Rainer Jr.
K.S. Raman
B. Ramesh
Neil C. Ramiller
Richard G. Ramirez
H.R. Rao
R. Ravichandran
T. Ravichandran
Sury Ravindran
Amy W. Ray
Louis Raymond
Paul Resnick
William B. Richmond
Frederick Riggins
Suzanne Rivard
Daniel Robey
Michael B. Rogich
Young U. Ryu
Timo Saarinen
Rajiv Sabherwal
Sharon Salveter
G. Lawrence Sanders
Radhika Santhanam
Carol Saunders
Naveed Saleem
George Schell
K.D. Schenk
Judy Scott
Irmtraud S. Seeborg
Kishore Sengupta
Vikram Sethi
Dennis G. Severance
Theresa M. Shaft
Jim Sheffield
Olivia Sheng
Morgan M. Shepherd
Michael Shields
Siew Kien Sia
Atish P. Sinha
Sumit Sircar
H. Jeff Smith
Eli M. Snir
Charles A. Snyder
William E. Spangler
Rajendra P. Srivastava
Thomas F. Stafford
Sandy Staples
Eric W. Stein
Dick Stenmark
Lee Stepina
John M. Stevens
Veda Storey
Girish Subramanian
Ramesh Subramanian
Robert T. Sumichrast
Shankar Sunarajan
Arun Sundararajan
Tae Kyung Sung
Roderick I. Swaab
Edward J. Szewczak
Paul P. Tallon
Kar Yan Tam
Bernard C.Y. Tan
Mohan R. Tanniru
Alfred Taudes
Angsana A. Techatassanasoontorn
David P. Tegarden
Gary F. Templeton
James T.C. Teng
Hock-Hai Teo
Thompson Teo
Jason B. Thatcher
Matthew Thatcher
Ron Thompson
James Y.L. Thong
John Tillquist
Peter Tingling
Leon van der Torre
Jonathan K. Trower
Duane Truex
Gregory E. Truman
Ilkka Tuomi
Jon A. Turner
Brad Tuttle
Craig K. Tyran
N.S. Umanath
Rustam Vahidov
Vasja Vehovar
Boris S. Verkhovsky
Michael Wade
Steven Walczak
Bin Wang
Michael S. Wang
Shouhong Wang
Y. Richard Wang
Carol Watson
Mary Beth Watson-Manheim
Bruce W. Weber
Thomas Weber
Chih-Ping Wei
Charles E. Wells
Larry West
J. Christopher Westland
Seungjin Whang
Michael E. Whitman
George Widmeyer
Fons Wijnhoven
Charles Willow
Barbara Wixom
Kristoff K. Wolyniec
Hans Wortmann
Evangelos Yfantis
Byungjoon Yoo
Han Zhang
J. Leon Zhao
Lina Zhou
Ilze Zigurs
Moshe Zviran
At this time, I wish to acknowledge the contribution of an outgoing longtime member of the Editorial Board, Ahmed Zaki. I would like to welcome to the Board its new members, Niels Bjørn-Andersen of Copenhagen Business School and Bruce W. Weber of London Business School.
VLADIMIR ZWASS
Editor-in-Chief
REFERENCE
1. Vessey, I., Ramesh, V., and Glass, R.L. Research in information systems: An empirical study of diversity in the discipline and its journals. Journal of Management Information Systems, 19, 2 (Fall 2002), 129-174.
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