Search

This document provides an overview of the relationship between theory and case research methods in the field of information technology. It explains that theories are not static but evolve over time, and introduces the concept of case methods, where a case study is conducted in a specific location or setting. The document also discusses process theory, which focuses on the sequence of actions and how they relate to outcomes. It emphasizes the practical implications of process theory for practitioners in the field of information systems. [Extracted from the article]

Many key tasks in the research process for the physical sciences have been successfully automated, resulting in prototype "automated scientists" that have been effective in producing and reporting original research. The purpose of this paper is to explore (a) the possibility of automating key tasks in the scientific research process for the management and business sciences, (b) where our technology currently stands with respect to automating these processes, and (c) the implications and resulting research questions of a future of automated, or at least partially automated, management and business science. We synthesize reports fromthe mass media, academic literature, and the results of a Delphi study to provide a preview of the potential for automating technologies to affect the work of business researchers. The results indicate that many current technologies can be applied to further automate researchers' tasks, and that scientists in automation and artificial intelligence are actively working to do so. We then discuss the implications of an increasingly automated science, and present questions that should advance discourse among researchers in the management and business sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Genuine theory testing, also under the term "replication research", is rarely found in Information Systems (IS) research. Based on a replication's results, our understanding or representation of the original theory is updated. This function of replication is integral to a scientific discipline to accumulate confidence in the explanatory power of a theory and to weed out theories that did not withstand scrutiny. However, many new theories are only tested once in the original study, while subsequent studies reference it without explicitly questioning the original theory. Against this background, we examine three aspects of the current state of replication studies in IS: (1) how many explicit replication studies in key IS research outlets have been published; (2) the attitudes of senior scholars, mostly prestigious IS journals' editors, towards publishing replication research in their journals; and (3) a new policy proposal towards replication research broadly across all journals. We propose that all journals should take responsibility for publishing replications of theory or empirical results that have formerly been presented in that journal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]