Date of Award

1-1-2005

Document Type

Thesis

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Doctor of Business Administration (Information Systems)

Faculty

Faculty of Business and Law

First Supervisor

Dr Roger Sor

Abstract

The primary aim of the research was to determine if, and if so how, the topics published in information systems (IS) journal articles were related to the key issues reported to be of concern to IS managers. The secondary aim was to determine what proportions of the journal articles were investigating closely-related and distantly-related information, , " - technology (IT) phenomena. The research covered 1376 -articles published in nine highly rated journals for the seven-year period 1995-2001. The journals chosen for the research included five US-academic journals, two European academic journals, and two practitioner journals. -'The' primary data source for the managers' key issue data was the ‘Top IS Management Issues' survey responses presented in the Computer Sciences Corporation Surveys over the period 1995 to 2001. An IS topic classification scheme (taxonomy) was developed and each article abstract• was examined and allocated between one and three topic classification codes. An analysis of the level of coverage the journal articles provided for the taxonomy topics was then produced. The three most frequently occurring topics were group decision support system'(GDSS) research, MIS research methods and approaches, and systems evaluation. Over 20% of all the articles covered one of these three topics. The analysis also identified a number of specific taxonomy topics that had not been covered or only _very poorly covered. These included IT Strategy Formulation ,& Building a Responsive . , IT Infrastructure, Component-based Development (CBD)',Systems Security, System Maintenance & Migration Processes, and Wireless & Mobile Computing. An 'IT-relatedness' classification ,scheme (the 'IS conceptual net') was then developed. The analysis of the journal articles' coverage of the components of the net revealed that only about a quarter of the articles addressed topics that were directly related to an IT artefact or its first-order antecedents/effects. The taxonomy nodes and journal articles were then mapped to their related management issues. The subsequent analysis revealed that just over half of the journal articles were related to one or more of the (twenty-five) management issues. Some issues were, very well covered by the journal articles and some were very poorly, covered. The two best covered issues were each covered by more than 10% of the articles whereas the eight " .'. , worst covered issues were each covered by less than 1%. Less than half of the US - academic journal articles were issue-related whereas over two thirds of the European and three-quarters of the practitioner journal articles were issue-related. An analysis of the relationships between the annual rank orders of the management issues and the issue-related article coverage levels was carried out. The analysis revealed that the management issue rankings could not generally be used as direct (Dr lead) indicators of the number of IS research articles (to be) published on related topics. Similarly, there was evidence that IS research publications were general lead indicators of management issues. However, three, out of the twenty-five issues, did appear to show some evidence of a direct relationship. Included in the final chapter is a discussion on the significance of the research and an outline of some of the scope limitations of the research. The final chapter also identifies three groups of further research questions that arise from these scope limitations.

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