Theoretical perspectives in IS research: from variance and process to conceptual latitude and conceptual fit

• Published in: European journal of information systems Vol. 24; no. 6; pp. 664 - 679
• Main Authors: Burton-Jones, Andrew, McLean, Ephraim R, Monod, Emmanuel
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Taylor & Francis 01.11.2015; Palgrave Macmillan UK; Taylor & Francis Ltd
• Subjects: Business and Management; Business Information Systems; Epistemology; Information systems; Information Systems and Communication Service; Innovation/Technology Management; Latitude; methodology; Ontology; Operations Research/Decision Theory; Philosophers; Philosophy of science; process; Research Essay; Researchers; Social sciences; Studies; system; Theory; variance; New York; United States > US; process; system; epistemology; variance; theory; methodology
• ISSN: 0960-085X; 1476-9344
• DOI: 10.1057/ejis.2014.31

There has been growing interest in theory building in Information Systems (IS) research. We extend this literature by examining theory building perspectives. We define a perspective as a researcher's choice of the types of concepts and relationships used to construct a theory, and we examine three perspectives - process, variance, and systems. We contribute by clarifying these perspectives and explaining how they can be used more flexibly in future research. We illustrate the value of this more flexible approach by showing how researchers can use different theoretical perspectives to critique and extend an existing theoretical model (in our case, the IS Success Model). Overall, we suggest a shift from the traditional process-variance dichotomy to a broader view defined by conceptual latitude (the types of concepts and relationships available) and conceptual fit (the types of concepts and relationships appropriate for a given study). We explain why this shift should help researchers as they engage in the knowledge generation process.