What Drives Waves in Information Technology? IT Discourse From the Organizing Vision Perspective

Suggestions are welcome. Please do not quote or distribute. Abstract Waves of fashionable ideas shape the practice and research of information technology (IT). What drives idea waves in IT? In this research, IT idea waves are examined through the lens of organizing visions. Introduced by Swanson and Ramiller (1997), an organizing vision is a focal community idea for applying IT in organizations. Each organizing vision is produced and sustained in a diverse interorganizational community through a discourse – what is said and written about the IT. By examining the influence of several forces on the rising discourse promoting one major IT – enterprise resource planning, this study shows that three factors may jointly shape IT idea waves: (1) discourse highlighting a business problem that the IT is claimed to solve, (2) the market for the IT, and (3) the collapse of related old idea waves. This paper demonstrates that, in research on IT diffusion, it is critical to study ideas as the basis for understanding new IT, and that discourse is a powerful research vehicle. Calling for future study on fashionable ideas in IT, this work offers the prospect of helping practitioners and researchers better monitor and relate to the exciting waves in our field. 2 We are not interested in a wave and we certainly aren't going to believe that any particular wave is the wave. We are interested in wave generators.