An increasing presence of practitioners with doctoral degrees in Information Systems and related disciplines holds promise to advance Information Systems research. The prospect is to gain more knowledge from the practical experience of developing, using, and managing information systems in context. To scientifically capitalise on this opportunity, this EJIS special issue introduces the research genre of “Information Systems Clinical Research”. The genre presents knowledge generated from practitioner-researcher interventions to achieve desired outcomes in information systems development, use, and management practice contexts. In this editorial, we introduce and conceptualise the genre; we present a research framework that defines its four key elements; and we discuss how to address its key challenges in research projects. As a result, we derive ten criteria for rigorous Information Systems Clinical Research and provide examples on how the articles published in the special issue have addressed these criteria. We conclude with a call to further advance clinical research as an important part of the Information Systems discipline.

Within the domain of Information Systems, assumptions around sociotechnical change cohesively build on establishing a stable and balanced relationship between the social and technical structures. When these structures become too rigid, revolutionary moments that punctuate the status quo are required for the structures to accommodate to a new situation. Approaching sociotechnical change with “punctuation of equilibrium” is becoming increasingly ineffective. In line with rising instability and rapid digital development, we argue that new sociotechnical change approaches are needed. In this paper we investigate how individual knowledge workers respond to the increasingly complex challenges they face when orchestrating social and technical structures to support efficient and creative knowledge work. We suggest a new perspective that covers an unstable equilibrium emerging from the interplay between individuals and their usage of “the collection of rigid and flexible workplace technologies”. Our study is based on data from interviews made with 40 knowledge professionals over a period of three years, inquiring into individual experiences with sociotechnical change. Our study reveals contradictory patterns of both technological-individualisation and -socialisation. A universal generative mechanism emerges when these patterns complement each other and generates continuous change that seems to diminish inertia from rigid structures while also intensifying agile responses.

Evidence-based practice in management assigns a high value to research results as a guide to practices that have been rigorously shown to be effective. To emphasize the practical relevance and outcomes for information systems research, statistical research should generally report its effect sizes. Specifying effect sizes not only reveals the utility of our results, but it also enables evidence-based practitioners to easily compare the known effects of different interventions applied in different studies. Effect size reporting has become a standard practice in many fields, however, though information systems researchers have adopted many other elements of statistical rigor, effect sizes are often overlooked. This paper surveys the current use of effect size calculations in information systems research, explains how such effects sizes are calculated, offers recommendations on when each of the different formulae is appropriate, and provides foundational work toward an index of expected effect sizes in information systems research.

Abstract Digital assets of organizations are under constant threat from a wide assortment of nefarious actors. When threats materialize, the consequences can be significant. Most large organizations invest in a dedicated information security management (ISM) function to ensure that digital assets are protected. The ISM function conducts risk assessments, develops strategy, provides policies and training to define roles and guide behavior, and implements technological controls such as firewalls, antivirus, and encryption to restrict unauthorized access. Despite these protective measures, incidents (security breaches) will occur. Alongside the security management function, many organizations also retain an incident response (IR) function to mitigate damage from an attack and promptly restore digital services. However, few organizations integrate and learn from experiences of these functions in an optimal manner that enables them to not only respond to security incidents, but also proactively maneuver the threat environment. In this article we draw on organizational learning theory to develop a conceptual framework that explains how the ISM and IR functions can be better integrated. The strong integration of ISM and IR functions, in turn, creates learning opportunities that lead to organizational security benefits including: increased awareness of security risks, compilation of threat intelligence, removal of flaws in security defenses, evaluation of security defensive logic, and enhanced security response.

A predominant understanding in information systems research (ISR) is that technology has institutionalizing, routinizing, and socializing effects in its interaction with users in the human enterprise. Subscribing to these effects from an organizational point of view no longer provides a full understanding of the more complex dynamics in the 21st century workplace inhabited by a vast amount of different technologies with different purposes. Through a critical realist analysis, focusing on patterns in socio-technical structures and more specific actions and outcomes afforded by the recent and forceful adoption of unified communication and collaboration platforms (UCC), the authors see a new, powerful socio-technical mechanism of individualization that is profoundly changing these socio-technical dynamics. Through 18 interviews with knowledge professionals, the study finds that the mechanisms of individualization reduce the influence of the organization as an institutionalizing and socializing socio-technical system. As an example, the power of individualization creates new parallel structures of small networks of close colleagues. Thus, this research sees new structural patterns and dynamics emerging, forming a much more complex, yet self-organizing socio-technical system. The authors suggest expanding the socio-technical understanding of the present techno-organizational reality by taking into account the socio-technical mechanisms that produce certain outcomes. By understanding the fundamental mechanisms at work, they provide those with a fuller understanding of how these mechanisms can enable, while simultaneously crippling, each other. This fuller understanding also aids the pursuit of providing workplaces that achieve both humanistic and economic objectives.

Much research has focused on understanding design science research and providing guidelines for its successful execution. However, there is still a need for more work on the raison d’être of design science research, which is the development of artefacts that can be applied to solve real-world problems. The value of design science research thus far has been to provide practically applicable solutions, as well as a contribution to knowledge. This paper proposes aesthetics, in addition to truth and utility, as a way to advance this raison d’être. We identify the design science triad of analytics, synthetics, and aesthetics and justify why the aesthetics quality attribute should be appreciated. We then identify twelve quality criteria for articulating and assessing aesthetics in design science research. Doing so enables us to both recognise and achieve artful design so that rigour, utility, and aesthetic value can collectively justify a valuable design science research contribution.

Evaluation of design artefacts and design theories is a key activity in Design Science Research (DSR), as it provides feedback for further development and (if done correctly) assures the rigour of the research. However, the extant DSR literature provides insufficient guidance on evaluation to enable Design Science Researchers to effectively design and incorporate evaluation activities into a DSR project that can achieve DSR goals and objectives. To address this research gap, this research paper develops, explicates, and provides evidence for the utility of a Framework for Evaluation in Design Science (FEDS) together with a process to guide design science researchers in developing a strategy for evaluating the artefacts they develop within a DSR project. A FEDS strategy considers why, when, how, and what to evaluate. FEDS includes a two-dimensional characterisation of DSR evaluation episodes (particular evaluations), with one dimension being the functional purpose of the evaluation (formative or summative) and the other dimension being the paradigm of the evaluation (artificial or naturalistic). The FEDS evaluation design process is comprised of four steps: (1) explicate the goals of the evaluation, (2) choose the evaluation strategy or strategies, (3) determine the properties to evaluate, and (4) design the individual evaluation episode(s). The paper illustrates the framework with two examples and provides evidence of its utility via a naturalistic, summative evaluation through its use on an actual DSR project.

Only a few studies have analyzed the indirect effect that different levels of requirements uncertainty have on the effects of established flexible development techniques. Whereas much of what we know relates to the development of commercial off-the-shelf software (COTS), in this empirical study, we investigate contract software development projects undertaken for a specific contractor / customer. We analyze how requirements uncertainty moderates the effects of (1) sequential development, (2) investment in architectural design, and (3) intensity of early feedback on the performance of contract software development projects. We confirm that requirements uncertainty negatively moderates the effects of sequential development and of investment in architectural design. For flexible development approaches, the value of investment in architectural design falls with increasing uncertainty. Early feedback throughout the development process is helpful at any level of requirements uncertainty, potentially dependent on the business relationship between the customer and the software project team.

As we approach our 22nd volume, the European Journal of Information Systems is a mature and successful scholarly outlet. The identity crises have waned. The scholarly readers seem to be comfortable...

Evolution is what happens when you are not watching. An example is the personal computer. Computing for many individual persons has evolved from the ‘standalone desktop PC’ to a ‘networked PC’ to a...

Design thinking is a conceptual frame being advanced as a paradigm for successful organizational management. It has the hallmarks of a potential management trend that could become emulated and fash...

In response to Österle et al.'s ‘Memorandum on Design Oriented Information Systems Research’, this commentary disputes, and expands the context of, several premises used to justify the main argument in the memorandum. These include: (1) claims about the evolution and role of design science research in the broader IS community and its position in the so-called ‘Anglo-Saxon community’, (2) the journal reviewing standards applied to design science research and what is perceived to be a sole focus on behavioral ‘descriptive’ research in certain IS journals. This commentary also discusses how such journals operate and set up their missions, review principles, and standards.

In this issue, EJIS is publishing ‘Memorandum on Design Oriented Information Systems Research’, an opinion that has engendered much debate in the German-speaking Information Systems (IS) community....

Contrarian research studies are those that challenge, contradict, refute, or debunk previous research findings or accepted theories. These sometimes seek to expose inconsistencies in assumptions an...

The concept of the Internet as a potential military battlefield is not particularly new. The Internet itself is rooted to the military notion of a bomb-proof defense network. Similarly, the feasibi...

In November, EJIS completed a ‘soft launch’ of our new online submission system. We expect this system to help improve our management of the submission review process and streamline the path from s...

Many of the world's information systems departments and institutes are housed in university business schools and colleges. Many of our academics are graduates of business schools. The world's busin...

To what degree do we adopt IT because it's just plain ‘fun’? Is this ‘fun’ motive seriously influenced by the opinions of those around us? From three Vienna Universities, Dickinger, Arami, and Meye...

"For better or worse: how we apply journal ranking lists." European Journal of Information Systems, 17(2), pp. 156–157

Your third 2008 issue of EJIS includes terrific research articles in the areas of strategy, systems, and technology. There are three articles that deal with information systems (IS) strategy. First...

I am delighted to bring you the fourth issue of EJIS for 2008. It is packed with useful information, powerful opinions, and exciting new research findings. While I am sure you will find the issue p...

Your new issue of EJIS opens with two opinion articles, each of which is a response to one of our previous opinion articles. First, I have invited Ray Paul to reply to the opinion article in the la...

Last year, the European Journal of Information Systems’ premier Editor-in-Chief, Ray Paul, defined a number of clear challenges for Information Systems (IS) in one of a series of editorials about c...

We review the status of European publishing in high-impact Information System (IS) journals finding that the European publication record is disappointing. We consider popular explanations to this state of affairs and find them neither credible nor useful for improving the European record. We propose several constructive reasons for this including (1) the lack of appreciation of the article genre, (2) weak publishing cultures, (3) inadequate Ph.D. preparation for article publishing, (4) weak reviewing practices, (5) poorer command of research methods, (6) poorer understanding of the reviewing protocols, and (7) institutional shaping of research funding in Europe. We formulate several recommendations to affect these causes at the individual, institutional, journal, and European community level.

This issue of the European Journal of Information Systems includes our special section on business agility as it relates to information systems. In preparing this editorial for the entire issue (th...

I am grateful for the opportunity to use this editorial to introduce myself as your newest co-editor of the European Journal of Information Systems. Rather than recite my CV, perhaps you would find...

Simple probability theory is not a good basis for security in the case of high-stakes information resources where these resources are subject to attacks upon national infrastructure or to battle space illumination. Probability theory induces us to believe that one cannot totally rule out all probabilities of an intrusion. An alternative theoretical base is possibility theory. While persistent, well-supported, and highly professional intrusion attacks will have a higher probability of success, operating instead against the possibility of intrusion places defenders in a theoretical framework more suitable for high-stakes protection. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an alternative quantitative approach to information security evaluation that is suitable for information resources that are potential targets of intensive professional attacks. This approach operates from the recognition that information resource security is only an opinion of officials responsible for security.