Business School Deans Assess the Current State of the IS Academic Field

Abstract

Fourteen deans of business schools were interviewed to obtain their assessment of the current state of the IS field in terms of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats facing the discipline. Their observations are organized into nine categories: (1) interaction with the business community, (2) demand for IS courses, (3) identity of the IS field, (4) cross disciplinary nature of the field, (5) research rigor versus relevance, (6) competitors to IS, (7) cost of information technology, (8) shortage of IS faculty, and (9) shortage of IS leaders. These findings are compared with those from an earlier study with leaders in the IS academic field. The differences in perspectives have implications and lead to doable recommendations for the field: (1) work on branding IS, (2) strive for more consistency in IS courses across universities, (3) help provide hardware and software resources, and (4) create an electronic journal that publishes technical research.