Challenges to information systems: time to change

European Journal of Information Systems (2007) 16, 193–195. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000681 In this editorial, I am going to discuss the challenges as I see them to Information Systems (IS). The European Journal of Information Systems has decided to publish a debate on these challenges, starting in its next issue when Richard Baskerville (incoming Editor-in-Chief for the journal in 2008) and I (outgoing Editor-in-Chief for the journal in 2007) will introduce the debate with a joint editorial to be called ‘Changing the challenge: To challenge makes you larger, and being challenged makes you small’ The word change you will observe is common to both editorial titles. ‘How many politicians does it take to change a light bulb? Change, Change!’ I must admit I like change (just as well!). The titles of all my single-editor Editorials contain the word change (see listing of the previous nine below). As well as writing editorials, I have spoken at a variety of meetings and conferences over the last 3 years, either about publishing in journals or about the state of IS or both. It is clear to me that there are challenges to IS, and that it is time to address them – it is time to change. There are five challenges that I have identified. Although I shall set them out separately below, they are of course interrelated. In no particular order then: 1. Nobody seems to know who we are outside the IS Community When IS attracts public attention it is usually for some negative reason, some failure or some error of significance. Expert opinion if sought usually comes from the Computer Science Community, which tends to place emphasis on technology, which if used correctly is the saviour. Clearly technology was not used correctly if something went wrong. Rarely are social factors given much credence other than that people can be a bit tiresome. So why are IS experts not called upon? I have heard that it is because IS groups usually reside in a hostile environment, a Business School or a Computer Science Department. So IS is not seen to be distinct. I tentatively suggest, however, that some assertiveness might be beneficial, and as I mentioned in my plenary at the 2006 UKAIS Annual Conference, coming together as a community would give strength. I argued that far from needing to argue as to whether we have an identity, we should relish being in at the birth of a subject when the relatively interesting discoveries are usually made. And IS is clearly important to Society, if not a major problem due to general ignorance about the relationship between technology and software and both when used in action by humans. Discovery should be exciting given there is so much to find out. 2. Demand from students to study IS is generally dropping, and it is particularly rapid in the U.S.A. This might just be a fashion thing, management courses are heavily subscribed to, and when there is a glut of such graduates, there will be a swing back to IS and computing. But perhaps more significantly, if we dealt with the first challenge, maybe the second would not exist. European Journal of Information Systems (2007) 16, 193–195 & 2007 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/07 $30.00