Analyzing the Type and extent of the consideration of Social and Technical Factors in is Research - a Research Design

In this paper, a research design for the analysis of the type and extent of the consideration of the social and technical factor in the IS literature is developed. The objective of the analysis is an empirical contribution to the ongoing discourse about the “core” of the IS discipline. Its goal is to provide insight whether the proposed directions for IS research of the past are reflected in changes in actual publications or whether there are “blind spots” in current IS research regarding the consideration of social (people, structure) and technical (task, technology) factors. To achieve this, all publications in top IS journals and conferences in recent years are to be classified according to several criteria. The criteria are based on the existing literature and justified by their relevance for the type and extent of consideration of the social and technical factor. They include the scope of the action context (development, adoption, usage, management, reorganization, economics, not ITrelated) and the assumed perspective (individual, group, organization, society). As the next step after a classification, a quantitative frequency analysis for each criterion is intended. It forms the foundation for a final interpretive step in order to answer the initial research questions.