The Sociotechnical Axis of Cohesion for the IS Discipline: Its Historical Legacy and its Continued Relevance
By Suprateek Sarker, Sutirtha Chatterjee, Xiao Xiao, Amany R. Elbanna. MIS Q., 2019
461 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The sociotechnical perspective is often seen as one of the foundational viewpoints—or an “axis of cohesion”— for the Information Systems (IS) discipline, contributing to both its distinctiveness and its ability to coherently expand its boundaries. However, our review of papers in the two leading IS journals from 2000 to 2016 suggests that IS research has lost sight of the discipline’s sociotechnical character—a character that was widely acknowledged at the discipline’s inception. This is a problem because an axis of cohesion can be fundamental to a discipline’s long-term vitality. In order to address this issue, we offer ways to renew the sociotechnical perspective so that it can continue to serve as a distinctive and coherent foundation for the discipline. Our hope is that the renewed sociotechnical frame for the IS discipline discussed in the paper holds potential to contribute to the enduring strength of our diverse, distinctive, yet unified discipline. It also prompts members of the discipline to think more deeply about what it means to be an IS scholar.
Subfields: Sociology and Political Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/3918edae4d9597e00064bd48e1d4e0b67d2766c1
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In Sociology and Political Science
- Nripendra P. Rana
- Yogesh Kumar Dwivedi
- Abdullah Mohammed Baabdullah
- Maung Kyaw Sein
- Suprateek Sarker
- Frantz Rowe
- Deborah Bunker
- Thompson S. H. Teo
Citations in the corpus
- Socio-Technical Perspectives on Smart Working: Creating Meaningful and Sustainable Systems (2020, background): “Sarker et al. (2019) argue that interest in a socio-technical perspective has waned within Information Systems research community, but that it has the potential to draw together the dimensions of this ‘diverse, distinctive, and yet unified discipline’ for the future.”
- Climate change and COP26: Are digital technologies and information management part of the problem or the solution? An editorial reflection and call to action (2022, background): “We also think of how, through metering, we are able to encourage consumers to consume less electricity, which again contributes to better environmental outcomes (e.g., Wunderlich, Veit, & Sarker, 2019).”