The Social Life of Information Systems Research: A Response to Benbasat and Zmud's Call for Returning to the IT Artifact

Benbasat and Zmud (2003) argue that there is an identity crisis within the Information Systems discipline and, as a solution to the crisis, propose a focus on “the IT artifact and its immediate nomological net” (p. 186). Using Aldrich’s (1999) articulation of organizational evolution, they note the need for greater cognitive legitimacy as a driving force for sustainability of the discipline. They recommend that researchers and journal editors set the boundaries of the field more firmly so that greater attention is given to the IT artifact rather than to structure, context, or other phenomena that lie distant from the

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