Foundations Of Information Systems Research Articles

Evaluation of the effectiveness of information system in optimizing warehouse processes

The aim of the article was to present research on the application of information systems in optimizing warehouse processes. The theoretical aspects describing the fundamentals of warehouse processes were discussed. The theoretical foundations of information systems were also developed, with particular emphasis on systems used in warehouse processes. The results of conducted research among manufacturing organizations with complex warehouse processes were presented, which declared the implementation of ERP, WMS, and SCM systems. Based on the research findings, conclusions were drawn along with the direction of development in the area of digitizing warehouse processes.

Preface to the Special Section on the 10th Information Systems Foundations Workshop

Introduction to the Special Section.

Hierarchically defining Internet of Things security: From CIA to CACA

With the rapid development of Internet of Things technology (e.g. wireless sensor networks), security has become a global issue. Confidentiality, integrity, and availability (known as the CIA triangle) is widely used to define and model information security. However, this CIA triangle is insufficient to address rapidly changing security requirements. In this article, we divide information systems into four layers: physical layer, operational layer, data layer, and content layers (PODC). Corresponding, hierarchy of information security is proposed. Furthermore, we define the basic security properties for each layer and show that the four properties (i.e. confidentiality, availability, controllability, and authentication, called CACA) are minimally complete and independent for information security. Based on PODC and CACA, a new definition of information security is proposed, which acts as a secure foundation for information systems.

A Personal Perspective on a Conceptual Foundation for Information Systems

In this paper, I propose a conceptual foundation for information systems based on three propositions:

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Some Propositions for a Conceptual Foundation for Information Systems

Three propositions are put forward as a conceptual foundation for Information Systems as an initial step towards creating a foundation for the field, which has operated for half a century by borrowing theory from elsewhere.

An elusive antecedent of superior firm performance: The knowledge management factor

Knowledge management (KM) concepts, principles, and technologies provide a foundation for understanding and building systems for acquiring, assimilating, selecting, generating, and emitting knowledge-a crucial resource of the firm. In the knowledge management community, it is commonly contended that knowledge, and capabilities for processing it, comprise a major resource that can differentiate one firm from another in the sense of yielding better performance or a competitive edge. However, aside from anecdotes, there has been little to substantiate this contention. Can any empirical link be discovered between a firm's KM success and that firm's financial performance? To develop an answer to this question, we use an independent research company's reports of firms judged to be highly successful in their KM initiatives, plus related data reported by COMPUSTAT. As an initial investigation of the linkage between KM performance and firm performance, as measured by financial ratios, this study uses the Matched Sample Comparison Group methodology to evaluate research hypotheses. The analysis reveals a heretofore elusive antecedent of firm performance-evidence that superior KM performance is indeed a predictor of superior bottom-line performance. This study contributes to the information systems (IS) literature by demonstrating that KM, a basic foundation for IS, is an important factor to consider from the standpoint of achieving strong financial performance. As such, it suggests that KM furnishes an important context for understanding designs, applications, and possibilities for IS with respect to achieving such performance. In the context of devising and executing KM initiatives, both technological and human treatments of knowledge need to be cultivated and integrated in ways that lead to superior KM performance. This study also contributes to the management literature by going beyond anecdotes and case studies in buttressing the proposition that a firm's KM competencies are an important ingredient in that firm's performance. It solidifies the raison d'etre for investigating KM phenomena and methods (computer-based and human), both within and across modern organizations. It gives practicing managers evidence that bottom-line benefits are indeed associated with superior KM strategy and execution.

ERA DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS JOURNALS

The Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) initiative being conducted by the Australian Research Council (ARC), mandates a single journal and conference ranking scheme over every academic discipline in Australia. A universal publication outlet ranking list mandated by a government agency is unique and has attracted interest and comment both within Australia and overseas. Equally, the interest shown has come from all sectors involved in academic publishing – authors, reviewers, publishers – and from commercial and open access publishers. This paper investigates the distribution of information systems journals over the various ERA parameters and comments on a claim of bias whereby the ranking of a journal is positively influenced by the number of years it has been in existence in the areas of information systems and business journals. Clear evidence of the diversity of the information systems discipline is observed. The benefits of a multidisciplinary foundation for information systems is also noted. Longer established journals are shown to attract higher rankings and possible reasons for and implications flowing from this are discussed.

Information Systems as Dialectic, Tool - Mediated Activity

Information Systems (IS) draws its significance from the uniqueness of computer-based information and communications tools and their place in shaping recent human history. Advances in the field come from a better understanding of how to develop and use these tools and what impact they have on the way we work, and live. As IS is still an evolving field of study, two views, the objective and the subjective, are in constant tension and, though these may be considered complementary, it is rare that they come together as a unified whole. A more balanced, and integrated, foundation for IS may be found in the subject-object dialectic arising out of the German philosophical tradition. An extension of this approach from the Cultural-Historical Activity Theory is presented in this paper. This theory views all human endeavour as a purposeful, dynamic, dialectic relationship between subject and object, mediated by tools, such as technology and information, and by the social environment or community. An adaptation of this holistic theory, to incorporate the best of other theoretical approaches used by IS researchers, could span and integrate the breadth of the field IS providing it with unity and identity.

The Changing Profile of Information Systems Research: 1995–2000

There has been considerable debate in the literature about the status of Information Systems (IS) as an academic discipline, its progress and its survival. Often these critiques focus on two major themes: (a) the need to develop theoretical foundations for IS and (b) the rigor and relevance of IS research. This paper presents the results of investigating four popular IS journals from 1995–2000 to determine the research methodologies used in published articles. Comparing the results to earlier studies shows that IS research is reducing its focus on subjective/argumentative studies and increasing its focus on experiments, case studies, and field tests. Some IS professionals contend that this changing publication focus provides evidence that the information systems discipline is becoming more rigorous and mature. This study also provides insights relating to the ongoing discussion concerning rigor and relevance of IS research.

An Assessment of the Singerian Inquiring Organizational Model: Cases from Academia and the Utility Industry

The Singerian model of inquiring organizations is reviewed (Proceedings of the Americas Conference on Information Systems, Phoenix, Arizona Aug. 16–18,1996:443–445; Australian Journal of Information Systems, 1998;6(1):3–15, reprinted in Foundations of Information Systems: Towards a Philosophy of Informative Technology, http://www.cba.uh.edu/~parks/fis/fisart.htm.) and two cases of organizations representing the Singerian approach are analyzed. The Singerian organization, based on Churchman's (The Design of Inquiring Systems: Basic Concepts of Systems and Organizations, New York, NY: Basic Books Inc., 1971.) Singerian inquiring system, has ethical purposes, treats employees, customers and other stakeholders with trust and respect, and pursues socially responsible goals, including a respect for the environment. Decision making in Singerian organizations is holistic and systemic, and includes diverse stakeholders, thus requiring an open, cooperative culture, wherein debate is encouraged. Authority is diffuse. Measurement is fundamental. A system of measures is continuously monitored, refined, compared and revised to assess progress. Cooperation and communication are supported with various types of groupware, including e-mail, electronic meeting systems, group support systems, negotiation support systems, discussion forums, knowledge bases, knowledge management systems and the like. The Internet and World Wide Web may serve as resource and dissemination agents for “exoteric” knowledge created by the organization. Two organizations, an Energy Service Company and an academic Center for the Management of Information Systems, are analyzed for their conformance to and success with the Singerian approach. The organizations tended to prosper when the model was followed, but ran into difficulties when it was not.

Feminist Philosophy and Information Systems

This paper offers a new approach to the philosophical foundations of information systems (IS) through feminist philosophy and, in particular, feminist epistemology. This can be used to expose the universalizing tendency of many information systems and to show the importance of using real-life complex examples rather than the simplified examples often favored by philosophers. Within traditional epistemology and its relation to IS, subjectivity, the propositional/skills distinction and epistemic hierarchies are subject to arguments from feminist epistemology. With respect to the emerging critical school of IS, feminist epistemology, and within that, feminist standpoint theory, are used to examine the complexities of the positivist/anti-positivist position and the related concept of emancipation. In addition, it is argued that the liberal version of emancipation encapsulated in such systems may have an effect opposite to that of emancipation These issues are illustrated in an existing expert systems project.

Ethics: essence for sustainability

This paper aims to demonstrate ethics as being an essential element in order to achieve sustainability. This will be taken throughout the crisis of the development model rhetoric upon which western society is established and with the foundation of information systems as interference factors to environmental consciousness.

Practical and Tacit Knowing as a Foundation of Information Systems

The importance of the human subject (and subjectivity) with its inherent capacity for intuition as a foundational concept for Information Systems is explored in this paper. The paper considers two philosophical contributions: (1) Michael Polanyi's distinction between Practical and Tacit Knowing, and (2) Rudolf Steiner's distinction between Intellectual Thinking and Intuitive Thinking. Intuition as it arises from subjectivity for an Information System is the key to determining the appropriate balance between practical and intuitive considerations necessary for the continued evolution of an Information System. Given this balance the theme of an Information System can emerge. Since an Information System is a social system bound to technology, it is the tacit capacities of an individual's subjectivity within an Information System that allow us to connect with the culture and the wider perspective of decision making in an Information System.

Logical Image Modelling and Retrieval

A logical model of images is presented, as a theoretical foundation of information systems allowing the retrieval of images on the basis of their form (typically via visual queries) and content. The proposed model offers a multiple representation of images, extending along three dimensions: form, content and abstraction. At each dimensions, a first-order logic is postulated as a representation and reasoning tool, and one specific logic is introduced for the first of these dimensions, the one dealing with the form of images. A query on images is modelled along the same three dimensions and by means of the same logics. This allows us to model the image retrieval process by the relation of classical logical implication, i.e. an image is retrieved if it logically implies the query.

A measure for determining the strategic relevance of IS to the organization

Several recent studies ranked the strategic planning and policy foundation of information systems as one of the most critical issues facing IS and general management. The IS strategic grid was suggested as a framework to investigate IS importance to the organization: a prerequisite to consideration of IS policy issues. This paper seeks to construct a measure that allows an organization to find its position on the strategic grid by analyzing a small number of measurable organizational and IS variables. The suggested measure is empirically tested by using data from 127 organizations, and its applicability is then demonstrated.

Towards new epistemological foundations for information systems

AbstractThe practices used to design information systems reveal the weaknesses of present scientific theories which justify them (information theory, automata theory, cybernetic theory, mathematical logic, decision‐making theory). The study of a specific information processing science shows the acuteness of the contemporary crisis of epistemology, and the relevance of questions brought up by information theory and computation theory. Three promising areas of development to improve the quality of “practices” are discussed: An epistemology of a science of design, a development of research in logic (particularly deontic and self‐referential), and a systematic consideration of memorization processes, in order to integrate, in the modeling process, both the functions (synchronic) and the transformations (diachronic) of organizational information systems.

The Clifford Paterson Lecture, 1979 - From computing slave to knowledgeable servant: the evolution of computers

Although it is only about thirty years since the first stored program elec­tronic computer was demonstrated, the descendants of those first machines are now ubiquitous in commerce, industry and government. They have acquired a somewhat ambivalent reputation with their users as essential but uncooperative and awkward. The reasons for this can readily be identified. The original objective of computer design, to devise a computing slave, was necessarily selected without the benefit of any real understanding of the role of ʻinformation’ in human affairs or of the consequential requirements for devices to assist people to handle their information. Nevertheless, the computing slaves have been adapted to a wide range of users with the aid of a complex of programs which now represent a very large social investment in software and trained people. This large investment has tended to fossilize the con­ceptual foundations of information systems even though we can recognize with the benefit of thirty years experience that a more appropriate objec­tive for computer design would now be to devise a knowledgeable servant which could respond constructively to users’ requests for information and information processing. With the aid of up-to-date technology, it is now quite practicable to devise an information system designed from the beginning to be such a knowledgeable servant and to graft it on to current practice. The lecture will outline the arguments underlying the choice of such design objectives and illustrate them by some recent research projects in the information engineering field.

PROFILE OF THE INFORMATION SYSTEM AND USER INTERFACE AS COMPONENTS ОF INFORMATION SYSTEM METHODOLOGICAL BASE

Development of information systems in management education is an urgent problem to implement information technology in the education area. The primary objective of the study of this problem is to determine the theoretical foundations of information systems. Subject of the article is devoted to methodological aspects of information systems for creating the information systems profile and building the user interface. The paper presents the principles of construction, the structure of the profile and requirements to user interface. The source reflects the results of studies in the research work "Scientific and methodological support of information systems planning research in the National Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of Ukraine on the basis of the Internet», № s.r. 0109U002139.