Editorial

Abstract

We are pleased to introduce the first issue of the 20th volume of the Information Systems Journal (ISJ). With the first issue of the ISJ we wished to provide an outlet for the best research that did not fit in with that acceptable by the (then) mainstream IS journals. Twenty years later we see the ISJ with an impact factor second only to the MIS Quarterly and therefore the ISJ can itself now be seen as mainstream. Indeed we are delighted to report that our nomination from the ISJ by Rosio Alvarez (2008) is one of the five best Information Systems papers published in 2008 as chosen by Senior Scholars Best Publications Committee of 2008. Nevertheless, as this issue shows, the ISJ continues to publish the best IS research, whatever the research method and research tradition. Authors in this issue come from Australia, China, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Taiwan and the USA. The first paper of William Wang, Michael Heng and Patrick Chau looks at adoption in the context of the Taiwanese information technology industry using survey data. An important motivation for this study is the lack of research on Business-to-Business integration (B2Bi) adoption from the business network perspective. In addition, the paper combines the technology acceptance model (TAM) with adoption studies. This paper provides a contribution to an important area of IS research for which there are a few similar studies. A model for organizational adoption of information technology is developed by combining constructs from prior research on internal and network conditions. Hypotheses for this model are tested using Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analysis of survey data. The results confirm the theorized role of business network characteristics in firms' decisions to increase their business-to-business integration sophistication. The findings also permit an examination of the role of government intervention in firm IT investment decision-making. The strength of this study is in its rigorous empirical test that confirms several theorized relationships in the emerging context of industry business networks. The theoretical development draws from a wide range of interesting features in the business network environment. Collection and analysis of empirical data to confirm this model was performed by following established practices and resulting in satisfactory indicators for quality. Subsequent discussion of the implications also provides insight into how this model explains observed industry behaviours. The paper by Ulrich Remus and Martin Wiener uses multi-methods research to understand critical success factors (CSF) research better. The authors have developed an interesting research design that could contribute to the literature and to future research but the paper also has potential to be of considerable significance for practice. The paper looks at lessons learned from a CSF research project in the field of portal engineering and these are then integrated with lessons learned in another CSF research project in the field of offshore software development. Both research projects deal with CSFs in IS implementation projects. The first project investigated CSFs for projects from the perspective of portal integrators and the second primarily from the clients' point of view. The combination of research methods used in these projects (literature review, grounded theory, case study, coding procedure, survey and statistical analysis), both quantitative and qualitative, is particularly interesting, however, there is a strong focus on qualitative research methods. Lesson learned from their more holistic and systematic approach to CSF research include state-of-the-art analysis, CSF identification, CSF relevance and CSF management in these projects. Bendik Bygstad, Peter Axel Nielsen and Bjørn Erik Munkvold look at the highly relevant issue of integrating new development efforts with existing arrangements so that a new information system can be integrated with and adapted to the business organization. In doing so, their paper seeks to contribute to an area made up at the junctions of several research areas: the diffusion of innovations, organisational implementation of information systems, systems development/software engineering, the socio-technical school and information systems. The research was mainly achieved through a total of 40 interviews across three longitudinal case studies (large IS projects consisting of iterative information systems development.) from which they formulate four implementation archetypes. One case (an SAS airline project) represents both the stakeholder and technical integration types; the other two cases represent big bang and socio-technical integration. The authors consider the strengths and weaknesses of each integration pattern, in particular investigating the management challenges for each pattern. Steve Sawyer, Patricia Guinan and Jay Cooprider give a performance perspective to the social interactions of IS development teams. There is a comprehensive research design – 60 IS development teams at 22 sites of 15 Fortune 500 organizations – each making a substantial contribution to the research over a long period of time. Both the sample size and the longitudinal nature of the research make the research convincing to the reader. The authors identify five patterns of team-level social interactions and the relationships of these patterns to a suite of objective and subjective measures of ISD performance and conclude that there is no clear path to performance success which is a powerful finding, though the paper does provide insights for professional practice and also suggests opportunities for continued study. Too often published case studies argue that there is ‘one answer’. Practitioners and researchers alike know that the information systems world is more complex. This makes the best IS research, of which this is an example, so interesting to do and to study. We take the opportunity in this first issue of volume 20 to thank our senior editors, associate editors and referees not only for all the work that helps authors to develop their papers from original submission through to publication but also for pointers that help us write our editorials. For this particular editorial we also thank four PhD students at ESSEC Business School, Abolfazl Abbaszadeh, Wim van Lent, Shora Moteabbed and Aljona Zorina who provided valuable comments on our first draft.