【Speaker】ZHANG Ping, Professor in the School of Information Studies, Syracuse University

【Topic】The State of IT Artifacts in IS Research

【Time】10:50-11:50am, 2010-05-26, Wednesday

【Venue】Shunde 306, Tsinghua SEM

【Language】English

Biology of Speaker

Dr. ZHANG Ping is Professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. Her research interests include the intellectual development of information related fields; human-centeredness in ICT development, evaluation and use; affective, cognitive, motivational and behavioral aspects of individual reactions towards ICT; and the impact of ICT design and use on individuals, organizations, societies and cultures. She is co-editor (with Dennis Galletta) of two edited books on HCI and MIS of the Advances in MIS series (by M.E. Sharpe, 2006), and is co-author (with Dov Te’eni and Jane Carey) of the first HCI textbook for non-CS students (by John Wiley, 2007). Dr. Zhang has received 4 Best Paper awards, 2 nominations for best paper awards, an excellence in teaching award, and an outstanding service award. She and Dennis Galletta are founding Editors-in-Chief forAIS Transactions on Human-Computer Interaction. In addition, she is Senior Editor for theJournal of Associations for Information Systems(JAIS), former Associate Editor for theInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies(IJHCS) andCommunications of Association for Information Systems(CAIS), on the editorial board ofJournal of Management Information Systems(JMIS) andJournal of Database Management, and a guest senior editor of 7 special issues forJournal of Association for Information Systems(2004 and 2008),Journal of Management Information Systems(2005),International Journal of Human-Computer Studies(2003 and 2006),International Journal of Human Computer Interaction(2005), andBehavior & Information Technology(2004). Dr. ZHANG is the founding chair (2001-2004) of Association for Information Systems (AIS) Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction (SIGHCI). She received her PhD in Information Systems from the University of Texas at Austin, and M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Computer Science from Peking University, Beijing, China. To know more about her, visit her homepage athttp://melody.syr.edu/pzhang.

Abstract

The notion of IT artifact as the core of the IS discipline has been generally accepted by IS scholars, despite a thick gray area consisting of multiple and varied conceptualizations of IT artifacts. In this study, we do not seek to clarify this gray area, or to impose any specific worldview upon it. Rather, we strive to present an accurate representation of the current state of IT artifacts as researchers conceptualized them. We do so through content analysis of 134 research articles from the most recent proceedings of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) 2009. We consider three facets for our analysis: IT artifact conceptualization adopted from Orlikowski and Iacono’s (2001), context of a study, and granularity of IT artifact treatment. These facets inform us as to the current state of IT artifacts as the way IS scholars study them. We provide discussions about the intersections of these three facets, comparison of our analysis of IT artifacts to two other studies, and provide implications for IS scholars and the IS discipline as a whole.