Introduction to the Practice-Based IS Research Minitrack

Abstract

The debate over rigor and relevance has extended many decades with rigor leading the way in the overwhelming majority of our academic journals where theory contribution and methodological excellence transcend any practical implication the research may have. In its first decade, MIS Quarterly had a special section devoted to practice-based research called Application. Over the years, this section produced highly sighted and highly relevant work that often paved the way for a new research area based upon developments in practice, such as Watson, Rainer, and Koh's 1991 article on EIS that largely introduced a new research stream to our academic journals, or that introduced to the academic reader current state of the art practices in industry, such as Kettinger, Teng, and Guha's 1997 description of business process chance techniques, or that provided practical guidance to organizations on highly relevant IS issues, such as Watson, Pitt and Kavan's 1998 article on measuring and sustaining information systems quality in organizations. Unfortunately, the application section was discontinued after 1999. Today one can publish essays, opinions, idea, and method pieces in our top journals, but not exploratory or descriptive field studies on emerging topics. This mini-track seeks to encourage practice-based research on new and emerging IS issues in organizations. Practice-based research aspires to bridge the gap between academic theory and practice, it aspires both to introduce researchers to state of the art practices and issues from industry as well as introduce managers to research that makes sense of and brings coherence to the issues they face. The methods used in practice-based research are often exploratory, field-based studies involving interviews, observations, and/or descriptive surveys. The intense pressure to achieve methodological distinction and theoretical contribution often results in very current practice-based topics being eschewed by researchers, because the topics themselves are not mature enough in practice to achieve desirable samples or sample sizes, nor are they conducive to theorizing since so little is known. These are precisely the reasons that exploratory, practice-based research can play a tremendous role in helping establish and lay the foundations of a research domain while providing insights into an emerging topic.