Understanding the dominance and advocacy of the design-oriented research approach in the business informatics community: A history-based examination

Abstract

Information Systems (IS) is a scientific discipline with global reach that investigates the development, use, and impact of information and communication technologies (IT). In this article, we focus on historical investigation of one major scientific community within the larger IS discipline, namely that of Wirtschaftsinformatik (Business Informatics or BI). Business Informatics, which had its genesis in the 1960s, is now the dominant IS community in the German-speaking countries (Austria, Germany, Switzerland). This community is best characterized by its strong connections to industry and its concentration on engineering (e.g., Heinrich, 2005; Frank et al., 2008; Buhl et al., 2012). Thus, even though most BI scholars acknowledge that both research and development are equally important objectives of scientific enquiry, the focus of BI has been on the development of IT artefacts, and not on the theoretical investigation of IS behaviour.