SIG Philosophy

Association for Information Systems (AIS)

Special Interest Group (SIG) PHILOSOPHY

Pre-ICIS 04 (Washington, DC, USA) Academic Workshop

PHILOSOPHY OF IS

Saturday december, 11th, 9 AM to 12 AM,

Grand Hyatt, Washington DC

ROOM : CONSTITUTION C

SIG Philosophy

 

                                                                                                             program

9 AM

Welcome and coffee

9 :10

Dick Boland

 

Case Western  Reserve University

USA

 

Philosophy in IS research

9:50

Danai Tsotra

Marius Janson

University of Missouri, St Louis

USA

 

Hermeneutics, Semiosis and e-commerce

 
10 :10
 
Frederico Fonseca 
James Martin
 
Penn State University, 
USA

Hermeneutic Newspeak or Fusion of Horizons? Looking for Alternatives in IS Research

 
10 :30

break

11

Jörg Becker

Karsten Klose

Björn Niehaves

University of Munster

Germany

Epistemological perspectives on pluralist research in IS

11:20

Emmanuel Monod

Paris Dauphine University

France

From the copernician revolution to the conditions of possibility in IS research

11:40

Gee Woo Bock,

Huei Huang Kuan

National University of Singapore

Singapore

Theoretical framing on motivational issues for proactive and passive human action in IS

 

 

COMMITTEE

 

Claude Banville, Université Laval, Québec

Bernd Carsten Stalh, De Montfort University, UK

Chiara Frigierio, Universita Catolica de Milano, Italy

John Haynes, University of Central Florida, USA

Rudy Hirschheim, Louisiana State University, USA

Heinz Klein, State University of New York at Binghamton, USA

Claudia Loebbecke, University of Cologne, Germany

Marco de Marco, Universita Catolica de Milano, Italy

David Paradice, Florida State University, USA

Björn Niehaves , University of Münster, Germany

Prashant Palvia, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA

Stephen Probert, Cranfield University , UK

 

CHAIRS

 

Richard Boland, Case Western Reserve (USA)

Emmanuel Monod, Paris Dauphine University (France) and Georgia State University (USA)

 

CALL FOR PAPERS

Currently we can observe a growing philosophical and epistemological debate in IS research. This debate appears to focus on epistemic issues, especially research methods and techniques without relating to the broader issues of the philosophy of science, epistemology and theory of knowledge. To overcome too narrow focus, it will be necessary to link the debates in IS research to questions about the very nature of research and science and their societal role in general. The potential role of philosophy for improving IS research can be conceived broader than just concerning issues of research methods.

A question linked to this one is the existence of a European philosophy in IS research? Are socio-technical approaches only Scandinavian and British, or are they the seeds of a European identity? Or could we consider that European philosophy has already had an influence on worldwide IS research through Habermas, Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Gadamer? Beside philosophy, a European uniqueness could also be found in epistemology. American philosophy is called “analytical philosophy,” while European philosophy is classically called “hermeneutic philosophy,” or, more precisely, European continental philosophy, because British philosophy is often considered analytical as well. But is this analytical philosophy only logical empiricism (positivism) or is it also pragmatism? How about the influence of William James, Charles Sander Pierce ,or John Dewey? And is Europe ready to claim that we are the land of interpretation? Of hermeutics? Is European IS research more interpretive than the American one? Or more qualitative?

 

A third concern is that even within the methodological discussion of IS research the connections to the broader literature on the philosophy of science are in danger of being overlooked. This raises the spectre of isolation (solipsism), because some contributions in the IS literature appear to imply that epistemology is the conceptualisation of IS research methods and practices by IS researchers themselves. The contributions from this insider view of epistemology are often very valuable, because they tend to have a good grasp of the details of IS research problems. A second view point compares the issues in IS research with those existing in other academic disciplines and in the philosophy of science in general. The two view can complement each other and would encourage debates about a wide variety of issues, which include:

 

1.     What are the key insights from interpretive sociology, symbolic interactionism and “phenomenological revolution” in human sciences for IS research?

2.     Is the classification of IS research into positivism, interpretivism and critical adequate?

3.     The status of socio-technical approaches: epistemology, research methods, or simply IS development methods? Are they really an alternative to positivism?

4.     Is ethics a full trend of research in IS? How about the positioning of Critical Social Theory towards ethics? What are the consequences in IS development?

5.     Is European research, compared to American research, more “sociological”? Qualitative? Interpretive? Longitudinal? Ideographic?

6.     How can epistemological and methodological pluralism in IS research deal with the challenges of relativism, constructivism, and conventionalism?

1.     What does the “linguistic turn” in the human sciences imply for IS research?

2.     How can IS research benefit from alternative theories of human action, meaning and culture across the human sciences, e.g. different forms of functionalism (incl. behaviourism) and intentional theories of human action?

 

instructions to authors

Manuscripts in English in any area relevant to information systems should be submitted electronically to Emmanuel Monod at monod@gsu.edu

You will normally receive an acknowledgement within a few days. Please provide email addresses for all authors. 

Papers are accepted in electronic format, with Microsoft Word being the preferred format (other formats are acceptable by prior arrangement). Files should not be security protected, and should be anonymized, e.g. in MS Word the properties, particularly author, should be blank. The editors reserve the right to make the style of presentation uniform prior to publication, whilst making every effort not to alter the content of an article. Paper submission will be acknowledged via email.

Preparation of the manuscript

Authors are urged to write as concisely as possible. Submissions should be line spaced at 1.5 with wide margins on one side of the page. A manuscript, which should not have less than 2000 words and should not exceed 4000 words. It should consist of the sections listed below.

Title page: This should include in the following order of presentation: title of paper, suggested running headline of not more than 45 characters including spaces, followed by the author's name, department, institution, city, country and number of words. A second copy of the title page should be provided without the author's details to facilitate 'blind' refereeing.

Abstract : 20 to 100 words

Keywords : a list of 5 to 10 keywords is expected

Main text: The text should begin on a new page, preceded by a short abstract, and a list of between four and six keywords should be provided for guidance. All pages should be numbered consecutively including the title page.

Author biographies: A biography for each author of about 100­-200 words should be supplied as a separate file, including email addresses of all authors. 

References

The Harvard System of referencing should be used in the text (Smith, 2003). All literature cited in the text should be arranged in alphabetical order at the end under the heading

References. The following examples illustrate the style to be followed.

Article in journal 

Keil, M., Tiwana, A. & Bush, A. (2002) Reconciling user and project manager perceptions of IT project risk: a Delphi study. Information Systems Journal, 12, 103-120. 

Book
Avison, D. & Fitzgerald, G. (2002) Information Systems Development: Methodologies, Techniques and Tools, 3rd edn. McGraw-Hill, Maidenhead.

Chapter in book

Willcocks, L. & Fitzgerald, G. (1996) IT outsourcing and the changing shape of information systems function. In: Information Management: The Organisational Dimension, Earl, M.J. (ed.), pp. 270-294. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Illustrations and tables

Tables and figures should use the Arial font (or Helvetica if you don't have Arial). They should be referred to in the text as Figures using Arabic numerals, e.g. Figure 1, Figure 2, Table 1, Table 2, etc. in order of appearance.

Copyright

Submission of a paper will be taken to imply that it presents original, unpublished work, not under consideration for publication elsewhere.