[SIGCIS-Members] interesting paper

Bernardo Batiz-Lazo bbatiz64 at gmail.com
Thu Dec 15 04:58:26 PST 2011


Something a bit out of the norm which might be of interest
Season's greetings
Bernardo
Bangor University (Wales)


An Historically-Grounded Critical Analysis of Research Articles in MIS
Date:	2011
By:	François-Xavier De Vaujany (DRM - Dauphine Recherches en
Management - CNRS : UMR7088 - Université Paris IX - Paris Dauphine)
Isabelle Walsh (Humanis - Humans and Management in Society -
Université de Strasbourg)
Nathalie Mitev (Departement of information systems - London School of Economics)

URL:	http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00644398&r=his

In order to explore scientific writing in Information Systems (IS)
journals, we adopt a combination of historical and rhetorical
approaches. We first investigate the history of universities, business
schools, learned societies and scientific articles. This perspective
allows us to capture the legacy of scientific writing standards, which
emerged in the 18th and 19th centuries. Then, we focus on two leading
IS journals (EJIS and MISQ). An historical analysis of both outlets is
carried out, based on data related to their creation, evolution of
editorial statements, and key epistemological and methodological
aspects. We also focus on argumentative strategies found in a sample
of 436 abstracts from both journals. Three main logical anchorages
(sometimes combined) are identified, and related to three
argumentative strategies: 'deepening of knowledge', 'solving an
enigma' and 'addressing a practical managerial issue'. We relate these
writing norms to historical imprints of management and business
studies, in particular: enigmafocused rhetorics, interest in
institutionalized literature, neglect for managerially grounded
rhetoric and lack of reflexivity in scientific writing. We explain
this relation as a quest for academic legitimacy. Lastly, some
suggestions are offered to address the discrepancies between these
writing norms and more recent epistemological and theoretical stances
adopted by IS researchers.

Keywords:	argumentative strategies; history; academic writing; legitimacy



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