期刊名称：International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management
印刷版ISSN：2182-7796
电子版ISSN：2182-7788
出版年度：2019
卷号：7
期号：1
页码：1-7
DOI：10.12821/ijispm070101
出版社：SciKA
摘要：During the ICIS 2018 conference, in San Francisco, two interesting panels addressed themes related to the recurrent
debate within the IS domain about the relevance of IS research. One panel - Seeking Public Intellectuals in the
Information Systems Discipline: Towards an Impact and Engagement Agenda - discussed the influence (or lack of) of
the IS research community on public policies and on public opinion in what concerns problems that affect the society.
The other panel - the Senior Scholar Panel - focused on the relationship between IS research and IS professional
practice. The perception, by IS academics, that IS research is of little relevance for IS practitioners was addressed once
more. These are two different dimensions of the relevance of IS research. Both are important to a pivotal domain in the
modern society that creates scholarly knowledge crucial to understanding, influencing and leading the transformations
that society is undergoing. Those dimensions are also critical if IS seeks to become a “vibrant, socially relevant and
influential” domain as recently mentioned by Hassam and Mathiassen [1]. This article focuses on the relationship
between IS research and IS professional practice. I share the view of those that consider that the IS domain
encompasses both, an academic facet and a practical facet. The two facets are interdependent and demand forms of
collaboration between academics and practitioners that are only perceptible within an overarching view of scientific
knowledge and of its production and use. This article aims at proposing such a view. A main feature of the proposed
view is that it involves distinguishing among different types of scientific knowledge and different modes of doing
research. In particular, it involves emphasizing a form of research that is overlooked in IS - clinical research. Insights
from the medicine domain are used to illustrate the place of clinical research and its role in connecting researchers and
practitioners.
