1977: "MIS Problems and Failures: A Socio-Technical Perspective Part I: The Causes" by Robert P. Bostrom and J. Stephen Heinen.

Bostrom and Heinen’s lessons remain timely, even though the information technologies we deal with today were never even anticipated in 1977. This is because Bostrom and Heinen’s paper was not about information technology. Rather, it was about the management of information technology and the uses of information technology for managerial and organizational purposes. Their 1977 paper still explains management-of-IT-in-organizational-settings phenomena, even in 1999. If Bostrom and Heinen’s paper had experienced a lead time of a year or two, its timeliness was not hurt.

1993: "CASE Tools as Organizational Change: Investigating Incremental and Radical Changes in Systems Development" by Wanda Orlikowski.

In my reading of it, this paper is not about CASE technology per se; It is about the management of CASE technology. Consider the abstract: "The paper thus has important implications for research and practice. Specifically, the framework and findings suggest that in order to account for the experiences and outcomes associated with CASE tools, researchers should consider the social context of systems development, the intentions and actions of key players, and the implementation process followed by the organization. Similarly, the paper suggests that practitioners will be better able to manage their organizations’ experiences with CASE tools, if they understand that such implementations involve a process of organizational change over time, and not merely the installation of a new technology." Replace "CASE tools" with another technology ("ERP" would be a tempting choice), and the lessons in Wanda Orlikowski’s paper (pertaining to "the social context of systems development, the intentions and actions of key players, and the implementation process followed by the organization") remain constant. Today, CASE tools are hardly a new technology. However, Wanda Orlikowski’s research remains timely. If MIS Quarterly had published this paper in 1994 or 1995, instead of 1993, it would have retained all its significance and timeliness.

1996: "Productivity, Business Profitability, and Consumer Surplus: Three Different Measures of Information Technology Value" by Lorin M. Hitt and Erik Brynjolfsson.

In the conclusion section of their paper, Hitt and Brynjolfsson state: "Of equal importance, we separated the issue of IT value into three dimensions: the effect of IT on productivity, the effect of IT on business profitability, and the effect of IT on consumer surplus. Our empirical examination confirmed that, like any multidimensional object, IT’s value can look different depending on the vantage point chosen. While we found evidence that IT may be increasing productivity and consumer surplus but not necessarily leading to supranormal business profits, we also showed that there is no inherent contradiction in the idea that IT can create value but destroy profits." If MIS Quarterly had published this paper in 1997 or 1998, instead of 1996, the research notion of separating IT value into three dimensions would hardly have lost any of its relevance.

The second key factor in determining whether a particular lead time for the publication of research papers is reasonable or excessive pertains to whether the research is about developing theory or about working with facts within the framework of an already existing, accepted, and predominant theory. Thomas Kuhn, writing about research in the natural sciences in his classic book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1996), distinguishes between "normal science" and "revolutionary science." In normal science, not only as a theory already been developed, but there is often one theory that predominates and drives all research in the field; such research is not about developing new theory, but about the activity of articulating or refining the already accepted theory, the activity of determining significant facts within the framework of the theory, and the activity of matching facts with the theory. In revolutionary science, the predominant theory is in the process of being overthrown, and new theory is being developed to succeed it. In these views on the natural sciences, Kuhn notes that the vast majority of research activity is normal science, not evolutionary science. However, in a field such as information systems, which lies at the intersection of the interactions between the social and the technological, the vast majority of the research is about developing needed theory, not simply working with facts within the framework of an existing, accepted, and predominant theory.

The review process for information systems research, therefore, is considerably more complicated than determining whether some newly discovered facts are reported correctly or whether such facts fit within an already existing, accepted, and predominant theory. Instead, it also requires assessing the merits of the theory being developed – a task more demanding than the verification of facts within the framework of an already existing, accepted, and predominant theory. In my experience as a senior editor, I have often witnessed the review process provide the occasion for the associate editor and reviewers to shed their ascribed roles as evaluators and transform themselves into collaborators with the authors of the submitted research paper. The associate editor, reviewers, and authors then engage themselves in working together to develop a theory over the course of several revise-and-resubmit revision cycles of the review process. The result is not simply a theory whose merits the reviewers have approved, but a theory that was largely not even present in the first version of the paper submitted to the review process. Therefore, where a research paper is about developing theory in contrast to reporting facts, a review process requiring several iterations and lasting quite longer than just a month is not only reasonable, but required. The point is that significant theory is developed in the review process. Significant research is not published overnight.

I would like to make three additional points.

First, a technology perspective has a place in an information systems journal, where it exists in an overall balance with managerial and organizational perspectives. Maintaining and safeguarding such a balance -- for instance, by blending the different perspectives under a heading of "the management of information technology" or "the use of information technology for managerial and organizational purposes" -- can be important not only for distinguishing the sort of research that we do, but also for displaying collegiality and respect to those whose favored perspective is different from our own. Furthermore, such a balance is important for putting the meaning of "systems" back into the term, "information systems." An information system includes both a technological subsystem and a social subsystem. In the study of an information system, neither the social subsystem nor the technological subsystem can be studied in isolation. Given their interactive and transformational effects on one another, the technological subsystem and the social subsystem both need to be accounted for.

Second, MIS Quarterly is but one possible outlet for publishing one’s research. A diversity of outlets can surely be recognized. There is no question that journals with editorial objectives different from MIS Quarterly's may choose to publish research focusing on technology itself. There is a place for journals that publish, in rapid fashion, papers whose topics and findings run the risk of becoming outdated quickly. A healthy environment is diverse; it would not be desirable for every publication outlet to have the same editorial objectives.

Third, for a special issue or themed issue of MIS Quarterly a lead time of a year or two can also sometimes be appropriate for the reason that this helps to encourage people to undertake (i.e., start) research in a new area and, in this way, serves to "push" the field in a new, needed direction. It can also promote inclusiveness because scholars who are not yet involved in this area would receive plenty of notice and time to get involved and to develop a paper for the issue (thus potentially dampening the competitive advantage of those already in the area).

A "lead time" of a year or even two for a paper to be published in a journal is not brief, but if the time is spent wisely by the people involved (the authors, the reviewers, and the editors), the result can be articles with enduring practice-oriented and theory-oriented lessons about information technology -- lessons that would still be relevant and applicable even when the specific technologies studied have themselves been superseded by newer technologies.

References

Bostrom, R.and Heinen, J. MIS Problems and Failures: A Socio-Technical Perspective, Part 1: The Causes, MIS Quarterly (1:1), September 1977, pp. 17-32.

DeSanctis, G. Shifting Foundations in Group Support Systems Research, in Group Support Systems: New Perspectives, Len Jessup and Joe Valacich (eds.), 1993, pp. 97-111.

Hitt, L. and Brynjolfsson, E. Productivity, Business Profitability, and Consumer Surplus: Three Different Measures of Information Technology Value, MIS Quarterly (20:2), June 1996, pp. 121-142.

Kuhn, T. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Ed.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1996.

Orlikowski, W. CASE Tools as Organizational Change: Investigating Incremental and Radical Changes in Systems Development, MIS Quarterly (17:3), September 1993, pp. 309-340.