Guest editorial: a valued institution builder: Gordon B. Davis

The information systems discipline is still young. Our more senior colleagues personally witnessed the creation of the key institutions of the field—our journals, professional associations, conferences, degree programs, curriculum recommendations, and research centers. Many did far more than witness! Beginning in the late 1960s, these institution builders riveted with near evangelical enthusiasm their emerging knowledge of information systems to institutional models and traditions they adapted from the neighboring disciplines from which they had migrated. The products of their energies were the essential institutions required for launching and establishing credibility for a new discipline.