An empirical assessment of researcher perspectives
Abstract
The notion of researcher perspective refers to the viewpoint from which the object of study is observed. It appears to have to date attracted very little attention in the IS and cognate literatures. On the basis of preliminary studies undertaken in relation to a range of IS publishing venues, the author's contention is that the vast majority of IS research adopts the perspective of the system sponsor, with very little adopting the perspectives of users, usees or the environment, and very little of it reflecting the reality that stakeholders in information systems have distinct and often conflicting interests. A review was undertaken of the perspectives adopted by researchers in papers presented at the Bled eConference. On the basis of a 20% sample, Bled papers were found to have been very strongly oriented to the interests of system sponsors. Although a larger proportion of papers at recent events have been on the social dimension, most studies of social media are motivated by the desire of corporations to exploit social media users. Few researchers rise to the considerable but important challenges of dual-perspective and multi-perspective studies. The quality of IS research can be much-improved if researchers give more careful consideration to the perspective(s) that they adopt in their work.