Editorial

Abstract

As this issue is published, academics in the UK will be eagerly awaiting the December results of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework. This activity, undertaken every 5–6 years, informs the distribution of around £1.6bn annually in government ‘quality-related’ research funding. Assessed by peer reviewers including research users, the outcome not only directly affects funding but also the eligibility to bid for other government funding and studentships, and perhaps most importantly, reputation. Reputation not only affects student applications and the ability to attract exceptional staff, but also enables or inhibits the forming of research partnerships at home and overseas. The task is substantial, not only on the institutions submitting but also on the review process. Universities submitted the research of 52,077 academics across 36 units of assessment to the Research Excellence Framework and, for the first time, each unit had to submit a number of research impact case studies, which would determine 20% of the final result. Research impact – what we get for our inputs – is assuming greater prominence around the world. An AIS Senior Scholars' panel considered the issue at ICIS in Milan and a report of that event will be published soon. In parallel, ISJ will be announcing its contribution to enhancing research impact as part of our 25th anniversary editions in 2015. We hope to contribute not only to disseminating research impact, but also to understanding of the concept itself – the nature of impact, how it is manifest and how it is measured. If scholars can publish research impact papers in top journals, others will be able to build upon this and we will all be better prepared for funders' questions as to what they get for their money. Turing to this issue of ISJ, our first paper by Kai Reimers, Mingzhi Li, Bin Xie and Xunhua Guo investigates how industry-wide information infrastructures emerge. Such structures are of increasing interest to policy makers, especially in sectors such as the healthcare sector where they are believed to contribute cost containment and improved service quality. However, the emergence and evolution of industry-wide information infrastructures is poorly understood, as the information systems literature tends to focus on smaller units of analysis such as projects, organizations or networks. Reimers et al. propose a combined company-level and industry-level framework to shed light on the process of industry-wide information infrastructures' emergence. They demonstrate that these structures' emergence is linked to the industry life-cycle in the case of fragmented industries. The paper explores the relationship between the industry-level and company-level life-cycles in the emergence process and develops a novel proposition regarding this relationship. The findings suggest that current policy initiatives to promote the development of industry-wide information infrastructures do not take sufficient consideration of industry-level conditions. Birgitta Bergvall-Kåreborn and Debra Howcroft assess persistent problems and practices in information systems development. This second paper studies mobile applications development and distribution. The substantial take up of mobile technologies has led to the re-structuring of the mobile market. This has engendered major shifts in the predominance of particular firms and has seen the emergence of new business models. These socio-technical trends significantly influence and shape software professionals' working lives. Building on prior research investigating the persistent problems and practices of systems development, Bergvall-Kåreborn and Howcroft examine mobile applications development and distribution by employing a qualitative study of 60 developers based in Sweden, the UK and the USA. The study analyses problems of diversity, knowledge and structure and reveals how platform-based development in an evolving mobile market represents significant changes at the business environment level. These changes permeate and accentuate current trends and developments leading to persistent problems intensifying and new challenges facing software developers. In the final paper in this issue entitled ‘Educating reflective Enterprise Systems practitioners: a design research study of the iterative building of a teaching framework’, Eli Hustad and Dag Olsen report on the iterative design of a teaching framework developed for teaching enterprise systems classes to information systems graduates. Enterprise systems embed technical complexity and create organizational challenges for organizations when implemented. Thus, teaching enterprise systems classes well is pedagogically challenging, and students tend to find the curricula difficult. Hustad and Olsen have designed and rebuilt curricula and teaching frameworks over the last 8 years resulting in the development of a set of eight design principles. They report their design and evaluation process and present a teaching framework. The aim is to educate reflective practitioners with multiple enterprise systems skills. The intention is to enable students to tackle the complexities of enterprise systems implementation contexts. The framework has implications for IS educational research and practice, and it may be transferable to other academic institutions and adaptable to other IS learning environments. In addition, this work contributes to IS design research by extending its application area.