IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/tjisxx/v19y2010i4p382-388.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using the theory of the professions to understand the IS identity crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Mark John Somers

Abstract

Academic information systems (IS) is struggling with an identity crisis that is grounded in limited consensus about the discipline's core concepts, its important research questions and its boundaries. The result is a pluralistic discipline that has triggered an ongoing debate about whether the ‘liquidity’ characteristic of IS is a natural consequence of rapidly changing technologies or if it is indicative of a chaotic state that is unsustainable. This paper looks at IS through a new and different lens by using the theory of the professions to gain insight into current and heretofore unidentified problems facing the discipline. Casting IS as a profession presents an integrated view of academic IS, IS practice and IS education grounded in a framework that explores connections among these three elements. The paper concludes with a discussion of the processes by which professions evolve and likely consequences for IS research, practice and education.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark John Somers, 2010. "Using the theory of the professions to understand the IS identity crisis," European Journal of Information Systems, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(4), pages 382-388, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:19:y:2010:i:4:p:382-388
    DOI: 10.1057/ejis.2010.26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/ejis.2010.26
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/ejis.2010.26?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:tjisxx:v:19:y:2010:i:4:p:382-388. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/tjis .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.