Addressing the Credibility Crisis in IS

A credibility crisis continues to plague the information systems (IS) discipline. For decades IS has struggled to acquire and maintain its stature as a highly-respected academic discipline. The recent demise of several IS programs around the world highlights the credibility crisis, as departments have been subsumed into other business disciplines, or worse yet, abandoned entirely. In a recent MIS Quarterly article, Gill and Bhattacherjee [2009] highlight some of the challenges facing IS: low student enrollments, research that is rarely discussed in our classrooms, and research that fails to make an impact in practice. While useful tactics in terms of research [Dennis et al., 2006], student recruitment [Koch et al., 2010; Looney and Akbulut, 2007] and pedagogy [Firth et al., 2008] have surfaced, a holistic strategy for addressing the credibility crisis has yet to emerge. This article summarizes a panel discussion at the AMCIS 2010 conference, where a group of distinguished IS professors offered their unique perspectives on the challenges, origins, and solutions related to the current credibility crisis in IS.