SPEAKER: Dr. Kevin Ortbach, ERCIS

TOPIC: The Future of IS Research – A Balancing Act on the Edges of Relevance and Scientific Rigor

Kevin Ortbach just finished his Ph.D. at the European Research Center for Information Systems, University of Münster. During his studies, he has been visiting researcher at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane and the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. He has published more that 40 scientific papers in major IS journals (e.g. BISE, CAIS, JHCI, IJIM) and on international conferences (e.g. ICIS, ECIS, HICSS). Apart from design science methods and their practical relevance, his research interests include IT consumerization and business process management.

ABSTRACT:

IS research is struggling with irrelevance. There is a huge gap between the development of novel and innovative IT tools on the one hand, and rigorous scientific methods on the other hand. Conferences and journals are filled with empirical studies that are well-executed but lack practical relevance and often even provide rather limited theoretical knowledge. At the same time, researchers developing IT artifacts often face well-justified critique concerning the scientific rigor in developing and evaluating their tools. While research on how to approach IS design (e.g. works on design science methodology or action design research) is highly published and discussed, actual design-oriented research is rare. The talk will discuss these and other issues in current IS research and point out ways how we may overcome them in the future.