Exploring the critical agenda in information systems research

This special issue of the Information Systems Journal is dedicated to critical information systems (IS) research that involves a wide range of diverse research endeavours that explore the terrain beyond functionalist and positivist approaches, with the aim to transform IS practice and IS–organization relationships.

Abstract

Exploring the critical agenda in information systems researchThis special issue of the Information Systems Journal (ISJ) is dedicated to critical information systems (IS) research that involves a wide range of diverse research endeavours that explore the terrain beyond functionalist and positivist approaches, with the aim to transform IS practice and IS-organization relationships.Critical IS studies share with critical management studies (CMS) deep scepticism 'regarding the moral defensibility and the social and ecological sustainability of prevailing conceptions and forms of management and organization' (Adler et al., 2006), conceptions and forms made possible to a large degree by IS research and practice.Critical IS studies aim at revealing, criticizing and explaining how the development and use of IS in organizations and society in the pursuit of efficiency, rationalization and progress also increase social control and domination, with potential detrimental consequences for some stakeholders and society as a whole.Being 'critical' in IS research also means subscribing to a much broader historical, social and political view of the IS discipline and the role of IS across all institutional levels of society.Critical research draws attention to the ways in which economic and managerial interests, ideologies and discourses, assisted by educational and research funding institutions, shape and construct IS research.Critical IS researchers are concerned with the purpose, use and misuse of IS research outcomes in organizations and society.The point has been made in the International Conference on Information Systems 2007 senior scholars' presentation that the location of many, if not most, IS programmes in business schools places certain constraints on their curriculum and research agendas.Future critical studies should also investigate IS research itself as a social activity -its practice, purpose, implications and institutional constraints under which it is currently operating.The goal of this special ISJ issue, as defined in the call for papers, is to explore the nature of the critical agenda and advance the 'critical debate' in information systems research.In order to document the breadth of current research, identifying itself as socially critical, and to encourage the widest possible debate, the editors deliberately chose not to . . .take a specific position on what should count as critical research.