Relevance in Information Systems Research: An Empirical Analysis

The importance of instilling relevance for IT executives in IS research has been stressed by a number of scholars for the long term survival and growth of the IS discipline. Though there have been extended deliberations on the subject, to our knowledge, there has been no empirical analysis to examine the relevance of current IS research. In this study, we analyze the relevance of the 388 published academic articles in the three top IS journals: MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research and Journal of Management Information Systems, for a five year period from 2000-2004, by examining their ‘fit’ with the ‘key issues for IT executives’ identified by the latest survey conducted by Society for Information Management (SIM) in the year 2003. Results from the empirical analysis reveal that the issue of relevance for IT executives is not being adequately addressed by the current IS research. Based on the results of analysis, we make recommendations for increasing the relevance of IS research. As a future research direction, we identify four top concerns of the IT executives, which have not been adequately researched. The four identified topics are IT and business alignment, IT strategic planning, security and privacy, and attracting, developing, and retaining IT professionals.