Abstract
There has been growing interest in theory building in Information Systems (IS) research. We extend this literature by examining theory building perspectives. We define a perspective as a researcher’s choice of the types of concepts and relationships used to construct a theory, and we examine three perspectives – process, variance, and systems. We contribute by clarifying these perspectives and explaining how they can be used more flexibly in future research. We illustrate the value of this more flexible approach by showing how researchers can use different theoretical perspectives to critique and extend an existing theoretical model (in our case, the IS Success Model). Overall, we suggest a shift from the traditional process-variance dichotomy to a broader view defined by conceptual latitude (the types of concepts and relationships available) and conceptual fit (the types of concepts and relationships appropriate for a given study). We explain why this shift should help researchers as they engage in the knowledge generation process.
Acknowledgements
For helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper, we thank the EJIS review team, Omar El Sawy, Guy Gable, Shirley Gregor, Pertti Jarvinen, Allen Lee, Lynne Markus, Gaetan Mourmant, Frantz Rowe, Peter Seddon, Mikko Siponen, Iris Vessey, Isabelle Walsh, and participants in seminars at HEC Montréal, the University of British Columbia, Washington State University, and the University of Queensland. The first author thanks the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Australian Research Council (FT130100942) for support.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Andrew Burton-Jones
Andrew Burton-Jones is Professor of Business Information Systems at the University of Queensland. He has served on the editorial boards of outlets such as the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Information Systems Research, and MIS Quarterly. Prior to his academic career, he was an IT/management consultant.
Ephraim R McLean
Ephraim McLean is Regents’ Professor, George E. Smith Eminent Scholar’s Chair in Information Systems, Department of Computer Information Systems, J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University. He is a LEO Award winner and has served in many leadership roles in the IS discipline over the past 50 years.
Emmanuel Monod
Emmanuel Monod, Ph.D., is full professor at Shanghai JiaoTong University, Antai College of Management. He was AE for ISR, CAIS, JAIS. He published in Information and Organization, ISJ, EJIS, CAIS, EMJ. He is currently editorial board member of ISJ, Database, ITP, and board member of TTC, PTC and Management Education division of the Academy of Management.