this IS research

Generative AI is the biggest tech issue of our time. We might be witnessing history in the making. At least, so says Hila Lifshitz-Assaf, who is not only senior editor for Organization Science but also has been studying AI and innovation for years and who is part of an inter-disciplinary team that explores the impact of generative AI on professional practices. Together, we decipher what is new and...

Trivia question: which information systems scholar was a division one tennis professional and has an award-winning MIS Quarterly paper to her name? Of course, it can only be Carolina Salge. She joins us today to talk about bots and cyborgs, how to deal with publishing pressures, and how to find a perfect co-author. Our solution is to build a Tinder platform that allows finding the perfect co-autho...

One of the biggest cases of academic misconduct in recent times has been the case involving Francesca Gino, Dan Ariely, and Max Bazerman. Is there anything we can learn from this case and how it was handled? Nick and Jan are back from the winter break and dig straight into questionable research practices, whistleblowers, senior co-authors and what we as a field should be doing to prevent fraud to...

As the year draws to a close, it is time for us to revisit some of the best IS scholarship that got published this year. Yes, time for the 3rd annual thisISresearch podcast awards. This year, it was particularly tough to choose so we just invented a new award! Tune in to find out who won the trailblazing research award, the innovative method award, and our brand-new elegant scholarship award! As u...

What is so special about digital technology? Is digital innovation about architecture or is it about data? We talk with the enigmatic Jannis Kallinikos – truly one of the great thinkers in our field. Our conversation covers the ambivalence of digital objects, the role of data as records in organizations, the role of books in expressing broader ideas in scholarship, and whether information systems...

Nick and Jan venture into new publishing territory. We talk with the fabulous D.J. Wu, one of the information systems department editors at Management Science, about journal procedures, reviewer expectations, and innovations in the review process. We discuss how our field nurtures multiple communities that all share the aim of advancing information systems knowledge and scholarship. And it's fair...

ChatGPT is back in our podcast one more time. Last time we talked about its impact on the academic enterprise. But ChatGPT is also the key digital technology issue of our time. It should be researched, of course, and we information systems researchers should jump on the opportunity to learn more about it. What are some of the questions that surround ChatGPT and similar forms of generative artifici...

Or maybe it did not. Who knows? ChatGPT is here for the world to see and not even our podcast can avoid talking about it. All the firms we know have long started exploring ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies. Will generative AI also change the academic enterprise? Some suggest it already has. We think we are at the cusp of changes, both in degree and in kind. ChatGPT may help people get s...

IS as a field has the same problem that IT departments have in organizations - we think those other people should come to us with their questions about digitalization and benefit from our decades of wisdom! But we argue that this is not going to happen. It is our job (as it is the IT manager's job) to make the case for how we can help. OK, so that's a portion of what we talk about today. We actual...

Someone asked us to do an episode on books that shifted our thinking. So here we are and we each brought two books that changed the way we look at the world when we read them. We discuss these books and what new things they told us. And of course, it's turning into a showoff about who remembers more from these books. And suffice to say: Jan loses this battle. As usual, the references to readings w...

What are the secrets to publishing qualitative papers? We have no idea but Paul Leonardi does – after all he is one of the most prolific and impactful scholars on technology and organizing of our time. We grab the opportunity and ask him for his secret tricks. Together, we reflect on fancy words, detailed method descriptions, obligatory Glaser and Strauss citations, and how many books you really n...

Summer is over, all wine is consumed, and all vegetables harvested. Time for this IS research to get back to work. We kick off the new season by talking about questionable research practices – HARKing, p-hacking, fishing for asterisks, data dredging, and so on. Nick digs out an old paper Jan wrote, and we use it to discuss the situations in which HARKing might be commonsense or outright unethical...

After talking about the big theories from the past millennium, it is time to talk about the ideas that emerged after the year 2000. From sociomaterality and two-sided markets to temporal networks, modularity, and routine dynamics – contemporary scholarship is ripe with new ideas that warrant further development, empirical exploration, and rigorous testing. It is truly a wonderful time to be an inf...

It feels like a long time ago now but one of the main reasons we started this podcast was because there was a pandemic going on that impacted our ability to manage work and private life. Is there anything we should have learned from that time? What changed since then if anything and what may still need changing? We talk about this with Wietske van Osch. She did research on the impact of the pandem...

Many people do service to their community but usually one thing at a time. Today we speak with someone who is not only president of our global association and co-chair of our main conference at the same time but also the editor-in-chief of one of our top journals, Information Systems Research. Suprateek Sarker clearly cannot say no – he even agreed to talk with us on the podcast. We discuss the ex...

We have a very special guest, Vladimir Zwass, who is both the founding and current editor-in-chief of the Journal of Management Information Systems. He founded the journal in 1984 and he has been the only editor-in-chief ever since. Also, he has no intention of handing the reins to anyone else soon. We discuss what sets JMIS apart from the other top journals in our field, what the IS world looked...

What are the big ideas and streams of thinking from before the turn of the millennium that have shaped our field and may still be relevant today? For once, we did some homework to review some of the theories from before the year 2000 that we think everyone should know about. So whether you are studying AI or algorithmic aversion, digital transformation or digital innovation, you have no business c...

Time to tie up some loose ends. We learned so much from our guests in the previous three episodes and we touched on so many topics that we feel we need to revisit some of these. So we once again discuss what we think about the new list of eleven premier journals, we discuss what good career advice looks like in different regions of IS scholarship, and we begin to wonder whether all theories are tr...

We continue our series of episodes in which we talk about several of the most important journals in our field. Today, we speak with Dorothy Leidner, editor-in-chief of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. We talk about several innovations the journal has implemented and the range of genres that are welcome. We also talk about what makes truly great papers different and what dist...

We are starting a new series of episodes in which we talk about several of the most important journals in our field. We kick things off with Andrew Burton-Jones, the editor-in-chief of the MIS Quarterly. We talk about the history and the role of the journal in our field, what initiatives are underway to move the field forward, and of course what matters when you are trying to publish in this journ...

The Association for Information Systems' College of Senior Scholars decided to expand their list of designated "premier journals" in our field from 8 to 11. What does this mean? How are these decisions being made? Who makes these decisions? We explore these questions with our good old friend Cathy Urquhart who has been a member of the task force that championed this decision. With her, we discuss...

We can talk about impactful, joyful, and meaningful research all we want, but most of us just want to get published. Literally, our careers depend on it. So how do we do it? what are little secrets that turn good research into great papers, that get you over the line from rejection candidate to conditional acceptance? We discuss some of the techniques we use ourselves, that we see others use, and...

Research is a collaborative effort. Most of the time, we are not writing papers alone but together with others. Sometimes we lead the effort, sometimes we are the second author, sometimes we only have a small role to play. Coauthoring papers often leads to tensions, frustrations and disappointments. Are there any rules about co-authorship? We think there are. We give you four rules about how to be...

Teaching is done for many of us, we've had main our conference, our papers and revisions are submitted. What's left to do? Rewind, reflect, and celebrate the great work accomplished this year. And given that n = 2 equals a tradition, we dish out awards this year just like last year. This time, we celebrate the year's most trailblazing theories, the most innovative methods, the most timely case stu...

Researchers do not care about philosophy because it adds no value to their experiment. They just go out into the world and do their work. So say some if not many scientists, but Amir Haj-Bolouri disagrees. With him we discuss whether some questions of philosophy such as ontology and epistemology even matter to information systems research, which topics and questions lend themselves to philosophica...