Marie‐Claude Boudreau

The growing interest in Structured Equation Modeling (SEM) techniques and recognition of their importance in IS research raises the need to compare and contrast the different types of SEM techniques so that research designs can be selected appropriately. After assessing the extent to which these techniques are currently being used in IS research, the article presents a running example which analyzes the same dataset via three very different statistical techniques. It then compares two classes of SEM: covariance-based SEM and partial-least-squares-based SEM. Finally, the article discusses linear regression models and suggests guidelines as to when SEM techniques and when regression techniques should be used. The article concludes with heuristics and rule of thumb thresholds to guide practice, and a discussion of the extent to which practice is in accord with these guidelines.

While many corporations and Information Systems units recognize that environmental sustainability is an urgent problem to address, the IS academic community has been slow to acknowledge the problem and take action. We propose ways for the IS community to engage in the development of environmentally sustainable business practices. Specifially, as IS researchers, educators, journal editors, and association leaders, we need to demonstrate how the transformative power of IS can be leveraged to create an ecologically sustainable society. In this Issues and Opinions piece, we advocate a research agenda to establish a new subfield of energy informatics, which applies information systems thinking and skills to increase energy efficiency. We also articulate how IS scholars can incorporate environmental sustainability as an underlying foundation in their teaching, and how IS leaders can embrace environmental sustainability in their core principles and foster changes that reduce the environmental impact of our community.

Recent perspectives on organizational change have emphasized human agency, more than technology or structure, to explain empirical outcomes resulting from the use of information technologies in organizations. Yet, newer technologies such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems continue to be associated with the agenda of organizational transformation, largely because they are assumed to constrain human action. We report an interpretive case study of an ERP system after its implementation in a large government agency. Despite the transformation agenda accompanying the new system, users initially chose to avoid using it as much as possible (inertia) and later to work around system constraints in unintended ways (reinvention). We explain the change in enactments with the concept of improvised learning, which was motivated by social influence from project leaders, “power users,” and peers. Our results are consistent with arguments regarding the enactment of information technology in organizations and with temporal views of human agency. We conclude that an integrated technology like ERP, which potentially represents a “hard” constraint on human agency, can be resisted and reinvented in use.

This paper reports on a comparative case study of 13 industrial firms that had implemented an enterprise resource plannmg (ERP) system. Firms were compared based on their dialectical leammg process. All firms had to overcome knowledge bamers of two types: those associated with the configuration of the ERP package, and those associated with the assimilation of new work processes. We examined the mechanisms through which firms attempted to overcome each type of knowledge barrier. We also observed different ERP implementation approaches: piecemeal and concerted. In the former approach, firms concentrated on the technology first and on process changes second. In the latter approach, both the technology and the process changes were tackled together. The learning challenges associated with each of these approaches were found to be different.

Over 10 years ago, the issue of whether IS researchers were rigorously validating their quantitative, positivist instruments was raised (Straub 1989). In the years that have passed since that time, the profession has undergone many changes. Novel technologies and management trends have come and gone. New professional societies have been formed and grown in prominence and new demands have been placed on the field’s research and teaching obligations. But the issue of rigor in IS research has persisted throughout all such changes. Without solid validation of the instruments that are used to gather data upon which findings and interpretations are based, the very scientific basis of positivist, quantitative research is threatened. As a retrospective on the Straub article, this research seeks to determine if and how the field has advanced in instrument validation. As evidence of the change, we coded positivist, quantitative research articles in five major journals over a recent three year period for use of validation techniques. Findings suggest that the field has advanced in many areas, but, overall, it appears that a majority of published studies are still not sufficiently validating their instruments. Based on these findings, approaches are suggested for reinvigorating the quest for validation in IS research via content/construct validity, reliability, and manipulation validity.