Modes of Theory Integration

Multiple social science fields, including Information Systems (IS), share a desire to make sense of the how humans, technology and information can be organized to support desired modes of behavior. Over the past three decades IS has tended to import reference theories. More recently there has been increased effort to obtain legitimacy by creating ‘native’ IS theories. While some decry the obsession with theory [1] publication outlets continue to emphasize the primacy of theory development and testing as the maximal contribution to the field [2]. As a result of this emphasis on theory, IS has moved from having a relative paucity of theories about phenomena of interest, to its current state of multiple, overlapping, and overly narrow theories. IS, along with many reference disciplines, are now faced with a problem common to social sciences–how to make sense of a disparate range of theories originating across multiple fields researching the same phenomenon.

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