this IS research

Our top journal is called MIS Quarterly, not Causality Quarterly. Or is it? How should we go about building and testing causal explanations in our research and how do different approaches to causality complement each other? We invited Sunil Mithas, Ling Xue, Nina Huang, and Andrew Burton-Jones as our guests. They recently published an editorial on this topic and we use this opportunity to pick the...

Can we theorize with the best scholars sociology has to offer? Perhaps we are not quite as bad with jargon monoxide as they are. We do pay more attention to technology than they do. On the other hand, our chase of new technology and our publish or perish paradigm are stopping us from even trying to do the big, timeless stuff. So if you are interested in our lengthy rant about jargon, social theory...

Nick is annoyed with accepting cookies on websites and wonders if the transactional "notice and choice" approach really does anything to benefit the world. So what's the alternative? We asked the expert Kirsten Martin to join our podcast again and chat with us about this. We ask whether there really is a "privacy paradox", how fields such as information systems, engineering, law, and ethics and ot...

Did you know you have to search engine-optimize your papers? Makes sense now that you know it, doesn't it. We wish we would have known years ago. We sift through some of the most recent papers on how to write good papers and contrast them with our own experiences. Turns out we all wish we could change the title of our papers in hindsight. As usual, the references to readings we mention are listed...

It's late at night. Only because Jan has been asked to talk about something he knows very little about so we asked someone at the other side of the planet for help – the wonderful Shirley Gregor. With her on the show, it is finally time to talk about design science, clichés and stereotypes. We wonder whether more people write about doing design science than actually do design science, how scholarl...

Journals are really all about their editors. So when journals are bad, it really means editors were bad. But what do we mean by that and what should editors do instead? Of course, as usual we have our own views. So tune in and listen as we share our stories of "the worst things an editor can do." As usual, the references to readings we mention are listed on http://www.janrecker.com/this-is-researc...

This IS research is back for its fourth season. We start off by discussing the journal space for information systems researchers. What are our top journals, what are differences between them and how should authors decide where to submit their work? Tune in to find out. As usual, the references to readings we mention are listed on http://www.janrecker.com/this-is-research-podcast/.

Andrew van de Ven passed away but there are other scholars out there that push the idea of engaged scholarship further. One of these is Michael Rosemann from Australia. He joins us to share his thoughts about whether papers or researchers should be relevant, why impact can be an intrinsic motivation, and why our research artifacts should not only be valid and reliable but also beautiful. As usual,...

We venture into unknown territories. We team up with our friends Alex and Philipp from the German podcast "Desk Reject: der PhD Cast", which comes out of the Vienna University of Economics and Business and is run by PhD students Sophie Quach, Dieter Gutschi, Philipp Benedikt Becker, and Alexander Staub. If you understand German – or aspire to learn it – you should follow their podcast. Together, w...

June is here and a new paper is out that argues that empirical patterns are publishable in our top journals. Really? Really. In this episode, Jan plays the interviewer and Nick is the interviewee in what is essentially a Q&A session about computationally intensive theory construction, which Nick argues will be a key part of the future of information systems research. As usual, the references to al...

Our audiences may be full of jerks and we may fail all the time – but we still love being academics. Why is that? We feel it is time to talk about some of the good things we associate with this role in our society and why being an academic and spending your life in this profession might just be a truly wonderful thing after all. As usual, the references to all readings we mention are listed on htt...

Sometimes, we simply fail. Our hypotheses may not be supported. Our ability to access data might evaporate. We may fail to convince a review panel. We may not get that grant or that job position that we were after. How do we deal with such failure when it is so regular and eminent in our work? We are trying to figure that out and also try to find some words of wisdom to pass onto others. Thankfull...

Surprise! Youngjin Yoo is back on the show, our first repeat guest. But only because we continue our recent philosophy of making impromptu changes to our planned recordings. This time we end up talking about presenting research and handling questions from the audience. Jan suggests some jerkiness can be a good thing while Nick things we should all play nice. And Youngjin? He suggests both is fine....

Jan is in Sweden and the audio quality is not great. Meanwhile, Nick is busy and he needs a dose of project management expertise. We discuss how we manage our time and our projects and how we engage in collaborations. After Recker's rules for humble-bragging failed to get much traction, we now give you the Berente rules for starting collaborations. As usual, the references to all readings we menti...

We wanted to talk about something else. But regardless, what matters is that we ended up here: what is positivism and interpretivism – and does that distinction even matter anymore to information systems research in the age of digital traces and computationally-intensive methods? And so this is how you end up with a debate about philosophy without any preparation whatsoever. As usual, the referenc...

Scholars read books. But to be able to read books, someone has to write them. And who does that anymore? We asked Jan Mendling, an information systems and computer science researcher who wrote several successful books, to tell us about the role of books, the value of books, the publishing of books – and how we can get more people like him to become involved in business-oriented information systems...

This IS research is back for a new season and Jan and Nick are eager to run their mouth again. This time, they chat about how we as a community measure and communicate research outcomes and success. Have we created a culture where we pursue click-bait research to improve our standing on some self-created ranking lists that count our productivity but not our scholarly contributions? Also, Jan admit...

It is award season and it is time to celebrate the highlights of 2021. We decided to hand out two awards, the Trailblazing Research Award, and the Innovative Research Approach Award, to recognize brilliant work done by our colleagues in 2021. Find out who got nominated and who won the awards in this final episode of this podcast before we take a small break. Happy new year everybody! In this episo...

Jan and Nick are both fan boys of grounded theory so it is about time we talk to someone who knows more about it than we do. Thankfully, Cathy Urquhart agreed to join us. With her we talk about the procedures and outcomes of grounded theorizing, what sort of contributions we can build through this approach and whether IS scholars should build grand or substantive theories. But because Cathy has be...

We talk about the dominant research method in information systems, survey research. Can you believe that still one in five papers in our main journals are based on surveys? We think survey research is past its prime – or is it? We discuss what is so good and what is so difficult about it. We try to find a future in which survey is one key part of our method portfolio and how it can continue to sta...

Imagine there was a time where the MIS Quarterly was struggling to fill its issues. Can't believe it? Well so it was in the early 2000s says our guest, Ron Weber. With him, we continue our conversation about the history of the information systems field. Ron was around when a new digital technology called E-mail got introduced in a small cluster of U.S. universities in the 1980s. We discuss about t...

So says at least Kalle Lyytinen, our guest today. He is the head of the Case mafia - or so at least Jan says - and the main referent of the infamous Erdős-Bacon-Lyytinen number – or so at least Nick says. We pick Kalle's brain a little bit to learn more about the origins of the information systems field and what is was really like in the 80s and 90s. We also talk about publishing in the old days a...

We are joined by Kirsten Martin, a technology and ethics expert. We talk about who is responsible – and who is accountable – for what algorithms do. But as usual we drift off onto tangents: we talk about how to publish on technology and ethics, why emergent scholars focus more on these topics than before, what we can do to help them, and how we engage in normative writing. As usual, the readings w...

Jan's voice is loud and clear but Nick comes up with the better phrases. Or does he? In this episode, Nick and Jan discuss the history and role of affordances theory in information systems. Are we actually contributing to this theory or are we just using it? Should we abandon it, just as we abandoned TAM? Or how can we move forward with affordances theory and what options does it allow pursuing fo...

Jan received an invite to join a paper about a new technology he has no clue about. Of course, he joins the research project. Jan and Nick use the occasion to discuss a few questions: How do we actually theorize about new technologies? Why is this so important to us in comparison to other fields? And should we principally fill gaps or solve problems?