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Review Version of 1 August 2018
Roger Clarke and Robert M. Davison **
© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd and Robert M. Davison 2016-18
Available under an AEShareNet 
licence or a Creative
Commons 
licence.
This document is at http://www.rogerclarke.com/SOS/RP8.html
This document supersedes the version of 7 March 2018, at http://www.rogerclarke.com/SOS/RP8-180307.html
In this article, we explore the notion of `researcher perspective', by which we mean the viewpoint from which the researcher observes phenomena in a given research context. Inevitably, this viewpoint privileges the interests of one or more stakeholders, while downplaying the interests of other stakeholders. Preliminary empirical analysis undertaken in preparation for the present paper revealed that over 90% of articles a) adopted a single-perspective approach, b) were committed solely to the interests of the entity central to the research design, and c) considered only economic aspects of the research.
The choice of researcher perspective has considerable influence on the design, conduct and outcomes of any research endeavour. That most recent IS research reflects the selection of a single beneficiary is both unhealthy and likely to cause missed opportunities. We contend that the principle of triangulation needs to be applied not only to data sources and research methods, but also to researcher perspectives, and that a consequent broadening of the IS discipline's scope is essential. We conclude the article with prescriptive recommendations for the practice of research.
In IS research, we commonly study phenomena in various contexts that include information, systems that handle that information, and technology that supports that information-handling. The organisations and individuals within our field of view are stakeholders, with interests that they wish to protect and advance. In empirical research designs, it is common that the interests of one or more of these stakeholders are privileged. The most common stakeholder is the organisational entity that is central to the research context. We refer to this stakeholder as the `system sponsor'. Other stakeholders may include: the employees who work with the information system in the context that is being studied; the customers or consumers who benefit from or are affected by the information system; up- and down-stream supply chain partners that are connected through the information systems; and non-human entities such as local, regional or planetary ecosystems in which the research context and information systems are embedded.
A key dimension of any research investigation will be the perspective that the researcher elects to take with respect to the relevant stakeholders. We refer to this as the `researcher perspective'. We believe that the issue of researcher perspective is significant for the IS discipline because the impacts that IS research may exert are largely determined by the perspective that the researcher adopts. For instance, if a research project privileges the interests and perspective of a single stakeholder, then the interests of other stakeholders may not be served, and indeed may be harmed. Further, that single stakeholder may be served sub-optimally by the research project because the researcher's appreciation of the problem situation will lack the richness that would have resulted from a more holistic exploration of the phenomenon.
For example, consider the research genre of personal data markets. The research published in this area commonly treats the interests of marketing corporations as objectives, whereas those of consumers are conceptualised as constraints on the interests of the corporate players, and as challenges to the corporations' business models. In other words, researchers typically privilege the perspective of corporate entities and neglect the perspective of other stakeholders such as consumers. Much of the actual research undertaken in this genre comprises the playing of laboratory games designed to help understand how corporations can minimise the cost of inveigling consumers into trading their privacy off for a service, for convenience, or for a token amount of money. This process actively stimulates an arms race, in which those sympathetic to consumers' interests produce and distribute means of combatting the consumer marketers' techniques.
We suggest that a much more constructive approach to research on personal data
markets would reflect the perspectives of not only marketers and marketspace
operators, but also consumers. This would lead to a deeper understanding of the
various stakeholders' interests and needs, and a holistic grasp of the market
as a gestalt. The foundations would be laid for win-win-win strategies,
sustainable market models, and active and informed participation by consumers,
rather than sullen capitulation to marketers' power by some consumers, and
opposition and interference by others.
IS researchers consider many factors when selecting research topics to
address, including what is important, what is researchable, what appears
capable of delivering original and interesting results, and what is likely
appreciated by reviewers and hence is publishable. We contend that IS
researchers also need to consider to what extent research gaps exist as a
result of prior research over-privileging the perspectives of particular
stakeholders, and under-privileging others. Our purpose in this article is to
meld theoretical argument, insights from a modest empirical base, and
contentions that raise serious questions about the appropriateness of the IS
discipline's scope as evidenced by research practice.
Following this introduction, we first investigate the notion of researcher perspective through an extensive review of the relevant literature. This is followed by a summary of empirical studies that we have conducted in preparation for the present paper. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for future research in the discipline.
This section introduces the notion of 'researcher perspective' and how it relates to the IS research process. Consideration is then given to the stakeholders whose perspectives may be adopted, the dimensions on which the interests of stakeholders lie, and the nature of single-perspective, dual-perspective and multi-perspective research.
Our propositions are relevant to all circumstances in which researchers observe a domain in which stakeholders exist. This by definition excludes some kinds of research from purview. Important among them are meta-research, such as systematic reviews of existing studies and discussions of research methods. Researcher Perspective refers to the viewpoint of a particular stakeholder in the relevant domain, which is adopted by the researcher as the viewpoint from which to observe phenomena during the conduct of a research project. That description implicitly assumes that researchers always adopt just a single perspective. This is not always the case, as discussed below in the section on Dual- and Multi-Perspective Research. We accordingly propose the following definition:
A Researcher Perspective is the viewpoint of a particular stakeholder in the relevant domain, which is adopted by a researcher as the, or a, viewpoint from which to observe phenomena during the conduct of a research project
It is important to appreciate the distinction between this concept and the many other senses in which the word 'perspective' is used in the IS discipline. In particular, we are not referring to epistemological, ontological or nomological assumptions. Nor are we referring to positivism, interpretivism or other approaches to research. Similarly, our concern is not with the theoretical perspective, or 'lens', adopted by the researcher. Our concern is instead with the stakeholder whose interests are recognised as objectives and whose value-set permeates the researcher's view of the phenomena. In a metaphorical sense, researcher perspective is the angle of view from which phenomena are observed, or the entity through whose eyes the phenomena are perceived.
A wide variety of such viewpoints are possible. Whichever viewpoint the researcher selects will, during the conception, design and conduct of the research, privilege the interests of one or more stakeholders. This is because the adoption of a particular viewpoint necessarily involves the recognition of a value-set that is associated with that entity or category of entities. This in turn implies that, where value-conflicts arise, priority will be accorded to the values of the chosen stakeholder.
Research design is challenging, and the researcher may therefore, intentionally or otherwise, adopt a single viewpoint to the exclusion of others. The advantage of such an approach is that it permits the researcher to focus the research design on a single set of objectives, assessed from the perspective of only one stakeholder. However, there are also disadvantages to this approach. For instance, it is unlikely that, in a messy real-world situation, there is only one stakeholder of note. Instead, multiple stakeholders, perhaps with competing interests, may be involved in any phenomenon that an IS researcher might choose to investigate. We perceive this to have been mainstream thinking in the IS discipline since the acceptance of interpretivism brought with it the recognition that "the phenomenon of interest [is] examined ... from the perspective of the participants" (Orlikowski & Baroudi 1991 p.5). This is better expressed as 'from the perspectives [plural] of the participants', to avoid the presumption that all participants share the same view. Phenomena are subject to multiple interpretations and so the perspective adopted by any one party is not definitive but simply one among many.
Searches for terms associated with the concept of researcher perspective have been largely unsuccessful, in both text-books on research and in journal articles dealing with research process. Searches in leading IS journals identify limited usage in the sense described here. Important exceptions include Boland & Tenkasi (1995) and Constantinides et al. (2012). As Boland & Tenkasi put it, "perception is only accomplished through a perspective ... Unexpected events or findings can only be recognized as such from within a perspective" (1995, p.354).
The concept of researcher perspective plays important roles within the research process. A researcher perspective is quite distinct from an 'object of study' or a 'unit of study'. The 'object of study' is the set of phenomena that the researcher observes, and the notion of a 'unit of study' refers to the level of granularity of the observation. Researcher perspective, on the other hand, refers to the direction or orientation from which the observations of the phenomena are undertaken. Hence, a researcher adopts a perspective from which observations are made of an object of study, at a level of abstraction called the unit of study, together with a method that enables the collection and analysis of data. In the diagrammatic representation in Figure 1, the first segment depicts the inter-relationships among the methodological concepts, and the second segment provides an example, whereby a particular research project adopts the perspective of the system sponsor, with the researcher observing the activities of a work-group through the lens of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis, 1989).
A commonly used term for the categories of entity that have an interest in particular phenomena is 'stakeholders' (Freeman & Reed 1983). Many stakeholders are participants in the process or intervention, in such roles as investor, data source, technology provider, system sponsor and user (Seddon et al. 1999). However, the categories of stakeholders are broader than this (Pouloudi & Whitley 1997, p.3), comprising not only "participants in the information systems development process ... viz. individuals, groups or organizations who take part in a system development process" but also "any other individuals, groups or organizations whose actions can influence or be influenced by the development and use of the system whether directly or indirectly".
Contrary to this inclusive approach, there is a strong tendency in industry and government practice, recognised in academic analysis, to include, as a qualifying condition for a category of entities to be recognised as a stakeholder, a requirement that the party be capable of significantly affecting the success of the project. This might derive from market power, or, in the case of a regulator, for example, institutional power. This approach has the effect of marginalising all but the most powerful participants (Mitchell et al. 1997, Achterkamp & Vos 2008).
The foreground example of less powerful participants is what are commonly referred to as 'users'. In B2B and G2B contexts, these may take the form of business enterprises that are smaller or otherwise less powerful than the system sponsor. A common example is a large 'hub' or downstream corporation (such as a motor vehicle assembler or a retail chain) dealing with smaller providers of components or shelf-stock. In some circumstances, less powerful players may have genuine choice, but in others they may be forced to comply with what are tantamount to instructions. Thus, Walmart (Narsing, 2005) requires all of its suppliers to be compliant with its RFID labelling requirements. Similarly, in B2C contexts, the value proposition offered by a vendor or platform is typically non-negotiable: consumers may have little prospect of acquiring goods or services unless they fall in line with the system imposed on them by the platform, as well as any associated legal environment, that together enable and govern the transaction (Muzellec et al., 2015).
Contemporary information systems have very substantial reach. As a result, there may be entities that reside in the background yet are nonetheless materially affected by the implementation of these systems. For example, an online travel booking system has the potential to disintermediate one or more companies, resulting in the cessation of business operations, layoffs, and dislocation and economic hardship for employees' families, and perhaps for others in the regions in which the disintermediated company operated. Another example relates to information systems that store personal data about third parties, as arises with databases relating to credit reporting, tenancy, and criminal intelligence. The agreement between the US and the EU with respect to the collection and storage of air passenger data also comes into this category (Mitsilegas, 2015).
The term 'usees' is descriptive of those entities that are affected parties who are not participants. The term has been in casual use since the mid-1980s in IFIP Technical Committee TC9 (ICT and Society), and especially Working Group WG9.2 (Social Accountability and Computing). See also Clarke (1992), Fischer-Hübner & Lindskog (2001), Baumer (2015). The entities may be organisations or individuals, and may fall into various categories, defined by, for example, attribute, function or location. In some cases, usees are largely or even entirely unaware of the existence of the system or their entry in it. This applies, for example, to criminal intelligence databases and the data-holdings of companies that surreptitiously gather data about Web-users' online behaviour. Examples of record systems that usees are more likely to be aware of include credit bureau holdings (which exist for both consumers and corporations), pooled records of insurance claims, and tenant databases. In some circumstances, usees might benefit from such systems, but it is more common for their interests to be harmed by them. The interests of usees can only be recognised and appreciated if researchers adopt perspectives that accommodate their viewpoints.
The perspective that a researcher adopts has a very significant influence on the entire research undertaking. The researcher perspective dictates the framing of the research, it drives the selection and formulation of research questions, it provides the criteria based on which alternative research designs are evaluated, and it effectively determines what is included within and excluded from the potential outcomes of the research, as well as how those outcomes are expressed. In effect, the choice of researcher perspective reflects the choice of a beneficiary, i.e. a particular stakeholder that stands to benefit directly from the research. It also inevitably drives the contributions that the research makes, with the entity whose perspective was chosen very likely to be the primary beneficiary.
The choice of researcher perspective has particularly significant impact on the formulation of research questions. In order to provide some insight into the depth of that impact, the authors devised a research question that can be addressed from the perspectives of many different stakeholders: "What are the impacts of the withdrawal of the customer option of receiving printed invoices through the post?". Table 1 presents a set of alternative pairs of researcher perspective and research question. The question is intentionally simple, in order to focus attention on the researcher perspective. While the question may appear passé or banal to IS academics, it is of ongoing relevance to IS practitioners, to the public and to policy-makers: even in advanced economies, 10-25% of households have no Internet access, with significantly higher percentages for households that are non-urban or low-income, or whose occupants are all beyond retirement-age.
Of the forms taken by the research questions in Table 1, some are familiar and even mainstream, whereas some others are unusual. The authors' contention is, however, that all are within-scope of the IS discipline.
Stakeholders exhibit considerable diversity in their weltanschauung. In business contexts, most system sponsor interests are ultimately financial or economic in nature. It needs to be recognised, however, that on occasions research may be undertaken from the system-sponsor perspective but on the social dimension, where for example a government agency seeks to use an IS to improve the well-being of a minority group, or a non-government organisation uses an IS in support of an environmental objective. A specific example of research from the system-sponsor perspective that is on the social dimension is Srivastava & Shainesh (2015), which studied healthcare service-providers and their work for service-disadvantaged segments of Indian society.
There has long been a tradition within some segments of the IS discipline of reflecting the social interests of individual users within organisations, through the socio-technical approach and participative analysis of requirements and system design (e.g. Land & Hirschheim 1983). As systems reached beyond organisational boundaries, organisations other than the system sponsor were recognised as having a stake in their design and implementation (Pouloudi & Whitley 1997). Then, as individuals outside the organisation became users of networked computing facilities, the systems became extra-organisational in nature (Clarke 1992), and the individuals' actions and interests, both economic and social, also needed to be encompassed within the frame of reference.
During the last 50 years, as computing became a major consumer of electricity and as cathode-ray tubes mounded up in scrapyards, impacts on the environment came to the fore. More recently, as the economic value of, for example, coltan has come to be realised for the supply chains associated with the production of tantalum capacitors used in a wide variety of electronic devices, so the exploitation of mineral rich deposits located in developing countries (primarily Brazil and DR Congo), and the associated environmental degradation, has also reached our collective attention. As a result of developments such as these, it is now reasonable to treat the environment as having joined economic and social needs as a third dimension.
Economic and social interests are associated with reasonably definable entities such as people and organisations of various kinds. Environmental interests might also be treated that way (e.g. by associating them with nature and wilderness reserves, national parks and environmental trusts). On the other hand, it may be more appropriate to treat the abstract notion of the environment as being a third dimension along with the economic and social dimensions. The emergence of 'triple-bottom-line' reporting ostensibly reflects this kind of thinking (Elkington 1994), although it is also critiqued as being inadequate to ensure genuine sustaining of the earth's ecology (Milne and Gray, 2013). Nevertheless, this tripartite notion has become a precept underlying the notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Hedman and Heningsson, 2016). It is notable that a large proportion of 'Green IS' research focuses on the economic dimension, given an interest in corporate wellbeing in an era of rising energy costs. Research on the environmental dimension is, however, also on the rise (Watson et al. 2010, Elliot 2011, Deng et al. 2015, Gholami et al. 2016. See also the Proceedings of AIS SIG Green Workshops).
In categorising the range of alternative researcher perspectives that can be adopted, it is useful to combine the concept of dimensions with the 'unit of study' notion. Phenomena may be observed at different levels of abstraction. For example, a corporation or government agency has multiple sub-organisations and individual roles within them; and the interests of humans affected by information systems can be considered at the level of each individual employee, of work-groups, or of the employed workforce as a whole; or at the level of each individual external to the organisation, the communities with which they identify, or society, variously at the level of a region or a nation. Understanding of environmental phenomena is similarly tiered, reflecting, for example, individual-species-within-context, local bio-communities, regional bio-communities, or the biosphere as a whole.
In Table 2, a wide range of perspectives is presented each of which sometimes is, or could be, and, we contend, should be, adopted by IS researchers under some circumstances. The alternative researcher perspectives are allocated to the dimension to which they belong, and organised in descending order of abstraction.
It is common for IS researchers to adopt the perspective of only one of the many possible stakeholders. There are a number of advantages of this approach. It simplifies many aspects of the research, such as the formulation of the research questions or objectives, the design of the research process, and the expression of the findings. The results of the research are likely to be at least comprehensible to that stakeholder, and quite possibly also of interest, relevance and value to them.
One actor is central to the operation of information systems, and is accordingly often foremost in the minds of IS researchers. We use the term system sponsor in this article to refer to the organisation (or entity or unit) that develops, implements or adapts a system, process or intervention, causes it to be developed or implemented, or for whose benefit the initiative is undertaken. In such contexts as joint ventures and collaborative inter-organisational schemes, the system sponsor may be a collective. In some cases, however, the perspective adopted by the researcher may be that of a category of organisations, such as those that install a particular ERP package, or adopt a particular category of application, such as electronic health record systems or cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) services.
Our informal observation, which we further investigate in this article, is that, in a great deal of IS research, the research questions (or, in design science and action research, the objectives) are formulated with the system sponsor's interests at least as the primary focus, and even as the sole set of interests that is recognised by the research design. The interests of all other stakeholders are then treated as constraints on the achievement of the system sponsor's interests.
The focus on the system sponsor as a central player in an IS is evident in positivist empirical research, where observational studies, experiments and surveys are conducted in order to understand the impacts of interventions, from the system sponsor's perspective. In addition, a great deal of interpretivist research is also performed with the intention of providing the system sponsor with an understanding of those impacts.
In design science, the sense in which the term 'design' is used is "the purposeful organization of resources to accomplish a goal" (Hevner et al. 2004). Most commonly, that goal is formulated in order to serve the interests of the organisation(s) by or for which the intervention is made, or the design activities are performed. In contrast, action researchers aim to ameliorate organisational problem situations for all relevant stakeholders (Davison et al. 2004). However, action research that is informed by a critical or emancipatory epistemology may instead prioritise the interests of a single stakeholder group other than the system sponsor, such as employees or usees (Ledwith 2016).
Business enterprises define objectives specifically in terms of the organisation's own interests. This is 'in the DNA', because the nature of the joint stock company is such that directors have a legal obligation to act in the interests of the company. In some cases, social and/or environmental interests may be directly commensurate with economic interests. In other circumstances, regulatory mechanisms as diverse as statutory obligations, activism among investors or employees, and public opinion may cause an organisation to compromise its own economic interests in order to provide social and/or environmental benefits (Hedman & Henningson 2016). The system sponsor may recognise that other entities also have interests, yet those interests are seldom treated as objectives, and generally operate only as constraints on the organisation's achievements of its own objectives. This mode of thinking has migrated beyond the business context, because mission statements are now the driving force in the public sector and not-for-profit organisations as well.
In practice, as discussed above, the system sponsor is seldom the only party that has an interest in the system's operation. The multiple stakeholders in information systems often have distinct interests. Moreover, it is likely that the interests of some of the pairs of stakeholders will be at least to some extent opposed, and even diametrically so, in patterns that approximate a zero-sum game. Users and usees were discussed above as frequently having limited bargaining power, with the result that their interests are often marginalised. A considerable array of other categories of stakeholder were identified in Table 3.
Constantinides et al. (2012) note that " ... IS research practice involves choices about conflicting ends -- implicit and explicit choices about what we value and what we (intentionally or unintentionally) pass over as relevant knowledge for IS research" (p.2). Where multiple stakeholders exist, the decision by the researcher to privilege the perspective of one of the parties is tantamount to a political act, whether the researcher has made a conscious choice or is merely following the established lines of a particular research genre, adopting and taking for granted a dominating ideology. Wall et al. (2015) describe this phenomenon as unconscious hegemonic participation, which can be manifested in the dominance of common research topics, questions, theories and methods, as well as beliefs about how research should be undertaken and research results interpreted (Wall et al., 2015). According to the emancipatory precepts of critical theory, it is likely that the choice most commonly exercised will be that of the most powerful stakeholder, whose ideological hegemony is unlikely to be challenged, especially if it is also this stakeholder that underwrites the research funding (cf. Stahl et al., 2008).
It is important to recognise the vital role that the disciplinary institution plays in the establishment and maintenance of the hegemony. Many entrants to the IS research profession have previously undertaken undergraduate studies in IS, all have been subjected to large volumes of exemplars of IS research as part of their postgraduate programs, and all have conducted research that conformed sufficiently with the discipline's norms to achieve recognised qualifications. Their teaching work is likely to impose on the next generation of students similar value-judgements to those with which they themselves have been indoctrinated. The expectations of editors and reviewers, and of selection and appointment committees particularly in Business Schools, have the effect of reinforcing a worldview that,as we argue in this paper, is unwelcoming or even hostile to research that does not privilege the business perspective, but instead adopts a perspective other than that of the system sponsor, or adopts more than one perspective, or adopts a perspective that is on the environmental dimension.
Even where a strong 'Business School' ethos is adopted and the interests of business are regarded as paramount, we contend that single-perspective research constrains the value that can be delivered to the researcher's client. Research undertaken from the perspective of any one participant is likely to in effect grasp one part of a large elephant, without gaining much of a feel for the remainder of the pachyderm. The conclusion might be reached that a particular system feature is beneficial to the system sponsor's interests, but it is unlikely that much insight can be offered into the intensity of opposition that the feature might engender among other stakeholders, how that opposition may be manifested, or how the impacts of that opposition might be mitigated. In short, for robustness and depth of insight to be achieved, the principle of triangulation needs to be applied not only to data sources and research methods, but also to researcher perspectives.
To some degree at least, the deficiencies in IS research that we are highlighting could be argued to derive from the discipline's strong association with business schools and management disciplines. A number of threads in management disciplines suggest that a degree of goodwill exists among management academics towards stakeholders other than the system sponsor, and dimensions other than the economic. Since the 1970s, 'business ethics' has been a topic of discussion in Business Schools (Stark 1993), with specialist journals in existence since the 1990s. The notion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) also emerged in the 1970s (Sethi 1975, Wood 1991), and has since been extended to environmental responsibility (CSER). A movement consolidated within the discipline of organisational behaviour around the turn of the current century, with a focus is on the notion of 'positive organizational scholarship'. This "is concerned with conditions that foster flourishing at the individual, work group, and organizational levels" (Dutton & Glynn, 2008, p.69; see also Cameron & Spreitzer, 2012). Further, "The articles in [an Academy of Management Review] special issue [on Care and Compassion] open new windows [by humanizing] people working inside organizations ..." (Rynes et al., 2012, p.505).
However, it is not entirely clear that such movements have much impact on business practices. Even if they do, recognition of them within the IS discipline is muted. In mid-2018, the holdings of the AIS eLibrary were approaching 40,000 papers, yet the mentions of 'positive organizational scholarship' in Title and in Abstract numbered 0 and 1, those of 'compassion' 1 and 3, and even 'business ethics' only found 3 and 7. The term 'corporate social responsibility' has attracted a little more attention, with 15 in Title and 25 in Abstract. However, a superficial inspection of these articles suggested a strong commitment to the system sponsor's perspective, with themes such as "enhancing sustainability image", employer reputation, the effect of tweeting CSR on stock prices, and the relationship of CSR with corporate performance.
We offer the following example of how richer understanding might be achieved in the research domain of social media funded by advertising. Research from the system-sponsor's perspective might adopt the following research question:
"What proportion of social media users need to authorise the provider to exploit their data to ensure that advertising-based business models are viable?"
On the other hand, research conducted from the perspective of social media users might ask the following, rather different, research question:
"What techniques and tools are available to social media users to enable them to obfuscate, subvert or falsify their identities and locations, in order to prevent the provider from exploiting their data?".
That question might of course be extended, e.g. to investigate perceptions of the ethicality of such activities, or the understandability and practicality of such techniques and tools.
We suggest that the combination of the two disparate perspectives into at least a research program, and perhaps even into a single research project, would be likely to deliver better understanding than either approach alone.
As an alternative to the single-perspective approach, we conceive of a research question that internalises the tensions and enables the emergence of insights of value to at least two protagonists. A research question that corresponded to these expectations could read as follows: "How do the views of social media users and providers compare with respect to providers' Terms of Service, privacy features and policies, user identity, and obfuscation or falsification of data by users related to their location or other privacy-sensitive information?". An example of research that recognises this potential is Fletcher (2015), in which consumer power, exercised for example through the use of ad-blocking software, has negatively influenced the impact of online advertising and business attempts to benefit from CRM systems.
Even where a stakeholder with a competing interest lacks power (such as the capacity not to adopt a feature, or to misuse it), the system sponsor may nonetheless benefit from dual-perspective research, because it can provide a more comprehensive understanding of the attitudes and likely behaviours of the various actors. This may also apply to the impacts on and behaviour of indirectly-affected parties, referred to above as 'usees'.
Many inter-, multi- and extra-organisational systems involve far more than two stakeholders. Beyond dual-perspective research, multi-perspective approaches need to be understood, their benefits appreciated, and appropriate research techniques adopted and matured. Constantinides et al. (2012) drew attention to the advantages of reflecting more than a single perspective, and with it the weakness of single-perspective research: "... critical questioning of the ends of IS research brings into sharper focus the need to consider all possible relevant ends -- and with it the greater good that researchers, as producers of knowledge, are striving to serve ... [C]omplex individual and collective problems cannot be solved by uncritically accepting only one interpretation of relevance, at the exclusion and expense of others" (p.2). Examples of research questions that would deliver value to policy-makers include: "What are the social and economic impacts of the current business model for social media?" and "What benefits and disbenefits would accrue to which stakeholders if regulatory measures were imposed in order to achieve balance between the interests of providers and users?".
These kinds of multi-perspective research questions do not represent the mainstream in articles published in IS research journals. However, we feel that the value and impact of IS research may be significantly weakened if the discipline fails to develop techniques that facilitate the study of situations characterised by multiple, partly conflicting interests. For example, in the context of international trade EDI, Cameron & Clarke (1996) addressed the research question: "What are the critical success factors for a project management framework for collaborative inter-organisational systems, from the viewpoints of each of the players?". More recently, Agarwal et al. (2012) examined cyber-collective social movements (CSMs) such as the use of social media in the 'Arab Spring' of 2010-2012. After surveying the available research methods literature, the authors developed an analysis based on Individual Perspective, Community Perspective, and Transnational Perspective. The article featured no system-sponsor, but rather three levels of abstraction of the social rather than of the economic dimension, as discussed earlier in this article. Another example is Selander and Jarvenpaa (2012), which expressly adopted the perspective of social movement organizations that work for changes in societies. Agarwal et al. (2012) and Selander & Jarvenpaa (2012) are noteworthy in being among only a small number of articles located by the research team in which the term 'perspective' is used in a manner similar to that proposed in the present article.
The opportunity exists to extend research techniques whose focus is on the construction of artefacts (which we refer to here as 'constructivist') into multi-perspective research. The way has already been shown by action research, because it adopts "the idiographic viewpoint [whereby] any meaningful investigation must consider the frame of reference and underlying social values of the subjects" (Baskerville 1999). Thus, Olesen and Myers (1999), in documenting the adoption of Lotus Notes by senior management at a university in New Zealand, experienced an action research failure when the interests of the system sponsor (the university) clashed with those of the personal assistants (users) of the senior university managers (usees): the users refused to apply the system as it eroded their power to control their managers' diaries.
A similar approach can be adopted with the other major constructivist research technique, design science. The accumulated understanding of socio-technical thinking (Emery & Trist 1960, Mumford 2000) can be applied in order to articulate what might be usefully described as 'participative design science'. Beyond asking 'What is a feasible and effective process for the design of a particular system or category of systems?' (cf. Guideline 3 of Hevner et al., 2004), research questions of the following form can be investigated: 'What is a feasible and effective process for reflecting the perspectives of all parties in the design of a particular system or category of systems?'.
Each of these opportunities may benefit from consideration of recent discussions in the literature relating to 'phronesis'. This Aristotelian notion injects an ethical flavour into research design, by requiring deliberation about the appropriate values that need to be applied, which in turn depends on appreciation of the various perspectives involved and accommodation of the various stakeholder interests (Harrison & Zappen 2003, Constantinides et al. 2012). In addition to seeking relevance to practitioners, Constantinides argues that IS researchers should consider "a whole range of entirely different and relevant ends for IS research with different audiences" (p.2). These audiences include professionals, managers, executives and company directors; and policy-makers in parliamentary, governmental and advocacy contexts. Once again, the ground has been prepared, in this case by critical theory research. This is inherently multi-perspective in nature, being directly concerned with conflicts among the interests of the various actors, and with the power-structures that determine the outcomes. It is also inherently instrumentalist, because it is conducted with the express intention of influencing the phenomena that are under observation (Klein & Myers 1999, McGrath 2005; Cecez-Kecmanovic 2001, 2005; Cecez-Kecmanovic et al. 2008).
While arguing for recognition of the desirability and benefits of dual- and multi-perspective research, we acknowledge that this significantly increases the cognitive load, particularly on the researcher, but also on reviewers and editors, and finally on readers. Further, it adds to the challenges already faced in squeezing reports of research work into the limited space conventionally available in conference papers and journal articles. This raises the question of the extent to which dual- and multi-perspective research can be applied within individual projects, and the extent to which adoption needs to be sought in programs undertaken by moderately-sized teams of researchers.
We found little evidence of prior work on the nature of researcher perspective, its consequences, and its application within IS research. We searched the literature in a number of ways. First, we searched using the key terms `perspective' and `research(er) perspective' variously with and without the qualifying term `information systems'. Our primary search vehicle was Google Scholar, in order to cover as large a catchment as possible, although we also searched the AIS eLibrary, in order to complement the generic approach with a large discipline-specific collection.
We encountered difficulties in identifying further terms likely to be correlated with the notions being examined, especially terms that were not highly ambiguous. One such term was 'stakeholder', particularly when used in ways that could reflect at least recognition of complexity, and perhaps even an endeavour to address it. For example, the use of the plural form ('stakeholders') was considered more likely to indicate a relevant approach, particularly in conjunction with 'interests', and perhaps also with 'conflict'.
Most uses of the term 'research(er) perspective' merely distinguish between the interests of researchers on the one hand and professionals, educators or students on the other. Most uses of the term 'perspective' alone relate to the theoretical lens adopted, and some to interests of an actor within the research domain. The few cases found where the term relates to the angle of view adopted by the researcher are cited in the appropriate places within this article. Although the term is not used, the concept of researcher perspective we perceive as being latent in the literatures on project success (DeLone & McLean 1992, Seddon et al. 1999), project failure (Lyytinen & Hirschheim 1987, Sauer 1993, Heeks 2002), and soft systems methodology (Checkland 1981, Avison & Wood-Harper 1990). The concept can be inferred from the focus of these genres on the extent to which practitioners do or do not recognise and manage the interests of stakeholders in an information system.
Action research necessarily involves careful attention by the researcher to the interests of all stakeholders involved in the project. Searches of literature on action research techniques suggest, however, that the perspective of the researcher is seldom explicitly discussed. Implicitly, it is assumed that the approach is holist in nature, and hence agnostic to the values of specific participants and to the resolution of conflicts among them (Baskerville & Wood-Harper 1996, Davison et al. 2004). Nevertheless, a careful reading of action research articles suggests that in some cases the values of different groups of participants are identified and hence that multiple perspectives are taken by the action researcher. Thus Wong and Davison (2018), in their action research investigation into knowledge exchange practices in a global logistics firm, identify the values of both employees (the knowledge exchangers) and management (the system sponsor). Further, we suggest that action research projects are more likely to be successful when they do consider the interests of all significant stakeholders, and not only those of the system sponsor. As Davison et al. (2012) observed, an AR-based change that is designed exclusively from the perspective of management (the system sponsor) but is of little interest to employees, is likely to fail when it depends on the same employees' cooperation for implementation.
Guidelines in relation to critical theory research also include evidence of the 'researcher perspective' notion. For example, Principle 2 of Myers & Klein (2011, p.25) states that "Critical theorists advocate values such as open democracy, equal opportunity, or discursive ethics", and 4 and 5 argue for an orientation towards "individual emancipation" and "improvements in society".
A key exemplar in both the social dimension and the multi-perspective approach is Agarwal et al. (2012). Despite being an AIS prizewinner, this article accumulated only 27 citations in its first 5 years, suggesting that it sits outside the disciplinary mainstream. A second exemplar, which also involves the social dimension and is also dual-perspective in nature, is Lin et al. (2015). This contrasts the interpretations of a system sponsor and the aboriginal people who the system was designed for, but upon whom it was in effect imposed. This article evidences a similarly slow accretion of citations, despite apparent advantages of authorship and venue. The paucity of citations of these papers is consistent with our initial finding from the literature review that only a very small proportion of IS research addresses the matters at the heart of the present research.
In order to supplement the limited literature that we have been able to locate, we have conducted a series of studies, initially of an exploratory nature, and then in greater depth. The initial study was undertaken in support of a Keynote at the Australasian Conference (ACIS). It considered a sample of 36 papers from the previous year's Proceedings, together with the 38 papers published during the same year in the Australasian Journal (AJIS). The results were reported in Clarke (2015). The research design and coding protocol were refined, and then applied to a 19% sample (212 papers) of the corpus of Bled Conference Proceedings, 1991-2015. The results were reported in Clarke (2016). The approach was also applied to a quite differently selected sample of 6 papers on the theme of 'personal data markets'. The (as-yet unpublished) results of that study are in Clarke (2017a), and reflection on learnings from the processes of examining, at that stage, almost 300 papers, and progressively refining the technique, were reported in Clarke (2017b).
A further and larger study was then conducted, utilising the accumulated experience and the iteratively-refined coding protocol. The focus of this study was exemplars of high quality research, conducted on a variety of topics in IS, and published in high quality journals that are readily accessible to IS scholars around the world. The rationale underlying these criteria was that articles of this kind are 'leading', in the sense of being much-used in the reading-lists provided to postgraduate candidates, and are indicative of the kinds of papers that candidates should aspire to producing. For these reasons, we selected articles from the AIS Basket of 8 journals. The Basket of 8 is, in effect, the repository of the discipline's 'role models', whereby it refines and transmits its essence and achieves a degree of cohesion and compliance. The research design and results, as-yet unpublished, are reported in Clarke et al. (2018).
Despite using successive versions of an iteratively improved research design and coding protocol, the results of the series of studies showed significant commonalities. A proportion of articles was excluded, because they were 'discipline-internal' in nature, lacking any emphasis on the interests of any real-world actors, reducing the sample to 548 relevant articles. Table 3 summarises the results (Clarke et al. 2018). The salient findings from the 'Basket of 8' study were as follows:
We stress that we are making no claims about external validity. The data arising from the studies that we have conducted shows very strong dominance within the specific samples that were examined. Further research will need to be conceived, carefully designed and carefully conducted, in order to reach any generalisable conclusions about the corpus of papers published in particular venues, in the Basket of 8, or in the IS discipline as a whole.
In our investigations into the perspectives adopted by researchers, a number of distinctive patterns have emerged. In this section, these patterns are summarised and some key implications identified.
Commencing with two of the most salient findings from our most recent study, the articles in our sample were overwhelmingly (96%) single-perspective in nature, and very strongly oriented towards the system sponsor (90%). This singularity of purpose seems quite remarkable. Secondly, the economic dimension dominates the sample (93%) with the social dimension visible in a very small (7%) number of articles, and the environmental dimension entirely absent. These findings are alarming, for they suggest that IS researchers, for whatever reason, are either scarcely interested in non-economic, non-system sponsor research perspectives; alternatively, if this research is being undertaken and submitted then it is either published elsewhere or consistently rejected. Note, too, that the other three venues from which samples have been extracted showed similar dominance patterns.
This dominance raises questions about the ethicality of research behaviour. The current situation might be interpreted as a failure to adapt to two very substantial shifts that have occurred over the last 35 years: the application of computing outside organisational boundaries, and the broadening and strengthening of IT's impacts not only on economic but also on social and environmental values. There is a clear need to revisit the calls that have been made over the years for the broadening of the IS discipline's scope.
In our earlier theoretical discussion, we considered the vexed question of unconscious hegemonic participation, i.e. the tendency for researchers to adopt uncritically and unreflectively a perspective that is consistent with that of the hegemonic stakeholder or power broker. Normatively, we would expect this stakeholder to be evident as the primary financial underwriter and/or as the primary beneficiary of the research. However, the perspective that the researcher adopts (whether consciously or unconsciously) is closely connected with not only the research question(s) that are posed, but also the conception of the research problem and the selection of the phenomena to which the research question(s) pertain. The researcher perspective is thus intimately related to all other aspects of the research. Indeed, the identity of the primary beneficiary of the research and hence the likely researcher perspective can be more or less directly inferred from the abstract of each article. In order to trace the rationale for the selection of perspective, we need to look further back to the motivation to undertake the research in the first place. If it is system sponsor-funded research, with the research question identified in collaboration with that system sponsor, then the logic is clear. However, much research is premised on the existence of so-called gaps in the literature. These gaps should, in principle, be addressable from multiple perspectives. Indeed, as argued earlier, benefits would arise from adopting more than one perspective at a time. Nevertheless, it is almost invariably the case that a) a single perspective is taken, b) this perspective is that of a real or hypothetical system sponsor, i.e. the organisation or industry that will most likely and to the greatest extent benefit from the research, and c) an economic aspect will prevail over social or environmental concerns.
We suggest that there is a significant ethical dimension to the current situation, at least as it pertains to research that purports to provide insights to practitioners. The dominance of system sponsor and economic perspective research has several implications. Firstly, it is clear that other perspectives (e.g., customer, social, environmental) are scarcely reflected in research designs. Secondly, it is likely that non-economic and non-system sponsor perspectives are either wilfully ignored or are acknowledged as existing yet neglected. Thirdly, and as a corollary, the omission of non-economic perspectives in research designs is directly linked to the failure of these neglected perspectives to exert any significant impact on real world practice. Taken together, these three implications firmly entrench the current economic and system sponsor hegemony. Further, the findings suggest that we are failing to grasp the opportunity to learn from other perspectives. Since different stakeholders will have different insights into phenomena, it is essential to ensure that research designs are sensitive to these different perspectives if research outcomes are to offer greater value to all stakeholders. In contrast, single-perspective research will inevitably offer lower quality findings than dual or multiple perspective research because it is in its very nature blind to the interests of other stakeholders.
A further ethical consideration relates to the role of university-based researchers and the funding arrangements that support their research. Some research is industry funded, or funded by research grants that specify industry partners as intended beneficiaries. In such circumstances, taking a systems sponsor perspective is reasonable and appropriate. However, research that is funded by public universities, or from public research funds, would reasonably be expected to contribute to society more generally, since a large proportion of their funding comes from the public purse. If this contribution to society does not occur, then the discrepancy between the source of funding and the identity of the beneficiaries of research looms large: why should industry be the primary beneficiary of government-funded research, with society receiving limited direct benefits? This makes it particularly troubling to see so few articles in our sample adopting a perspective on the social dimension, and none that considered an environmental perspective. The data suggests that university-based researchers may be essentially setting themselves up as publicly funded business consultants, which should be a matter of great ethical concern for society.
Given that system sponsor oriented research on the economic dimension has achieved far more than a simple critical mass, the notion of shifting baseline syndrome could be applied (Pauly, 1995; Ortmann, 2010). This postulates that research norms migrate over time, and that previous 'baseline states' quickly fade away. One interpretation of the current state of affairs in IS might be that research that favours the system sponsor and is on the economic dimension is the new norm, and previous baseline states favouring a broader range of perspectives have been largely forgotten.
The opposite interpretation appears, however, to be a better fit to the evidence, i.e. the baseline has failed to shift, despite contextual changes. IS began by studying systems in which data was the raw material and work-in-process, and information was the product. MIS in the USA and Wirtschaftsinformatik (WI) in German-speaking countries began by studying such systems specifically from the viewpoint of managers and executives. All of these threads emerged in the mid-1960s, about a decade after the first applications of computing to administrative data (Clarke 2008, Hirschheim & Klein 2012). The early development of the discipline occurred in parallel with very rapid progress in computing capabilities. Until the mid-1970s, such systems were accessible only by government agencies and corporations of considerable size. By 1980, end-users within such organisations had become one of the focal points for the IS discipline. Hence, during the discipline's formative years (1965-1985), there was little incentive or scope to consider perspectives other than that of the system sponsor, or dimensions other than the economic.
Gradually, the concept of computer users outside organisations began to make sense, as first ATMs and then EFTPOS systems made progress. IS and computing entirely outside organisations gradually became tenable from about 1980, but only became significant from the early-to-mid-1990s, initially in independent form through the installation of software products on individuals' own devices. This independence was quickly reversed commencing in about 2005, as consumer products were replaced by consumer services.
In short, the IS discipline's foundational paradigm (in the sense popularised by Kuhn 1970) was based on addressing the interests of the system sponsor, was of necessity single-perspective research, and was inherently on the economic dimension. In the last three decades, the discipline has had the opportunity to move beyond that paradigm. Instead, much of the discussion has been about withdrawal by the discipline even further into its shell. Orlikowski and Iacono (2001) and Benbasat & Zmud (2003) proposed that the IS discipline be defined in terms of 'the IT artefact', effectively removing from scope any non-IT-based activities. Alter (2003) counter-proposed as the core concept the performance of 'IT-reliant work', which would remove from scope those aspects of IS that lie outside working contexts, such as domestic, hedonic and consumer-based arrangements. The long thread of discussion continues. We find it extraordinary that a discipline should consider marginalising elements that are (a) vital parts of real-world systems, and (b) major factors in the success and failure of endeavours to intervene in those real-world systems.
We argue that the continued dominance of the longstanding (system sponsor and economic dimension) paradigm constitutes an ossification of the discipline, because the framework within which IS research is undertaken remains frozen within a context that has long since passed on. As an intellectual community, we have failed to reflect the far broader applications and implications of IT-enabled information systems, and failed to embrace the far larger and more diverse sets of stakeholders. We accordingly support proposals that have been made to adopt a more open interpretation of the role of IS. For example, Clarke (1988), writing at a time when the environmental impacts of IT had yet to gain prominence, called for consideration of economic, legal and social implications to be integrated with research in and the application of IT, not segregated from it. Clarke (1988, p.519) also argued that "the closing sections of our papers must not be confined to 'implications for further research', but must also directly address 'implications for people'".
Further, DeSanctis (2003) argued for an inclusive approach: "a path toward improvement via boundary enhancement" (p.360). Meanwhile, Galliers (2003) suggested that "an appropriate locus of IS study is more broadly based than organizations or individuals. Societal, policy and ethical issues might reasonably be included within the ambit of the IS field" (p.342). In Nunamaker & Briggs (2012, p.20:1-20:7), the IS discipline was exhorted to "expand our vision to embrace information needs and uses in all kinds of people and teams. Systems exist in a rich milieu of economic, social, political, cognitive, affective, and physical values, and are designed to create value for humans along all these dimensions. Studies of these perceptions of value are therefore also equal in importance to studies of technology".
Casual observation of IS literature suggests that, in recent years, more IS researchers have become interested in both the social dimension and the conduct of dual-perspective studies. A noteworthy example is the MISQ special issue on 'ICT and Societal Challenges'. The special issue editors report in their editorial (Majchrzak et al. 2016) that a large number of articles were submitted and a substantial number accepted for publication. Further, the guest editors suggest that "IS researchers should relabel their practical implications section to policy implications. There is no reason to presume that managers of businesses are the only practitioners who can benefit from our insights" (Majchrzak et al. 2016, p. 275).
If a narrow MIS / Wirtschaftsinformatik worldview is adopted, then the dominance of the system sponsor perspective and the economic dimension might be seen as being natural, appropriate and desirable. On the other hand, even from that narrow worldview, it would not be rational to applaud the dominance of single-perspective research, because dual-perspective and in some cases multi-perspective research can deliver superior quality information to the system sponsor.
In any case, do corporate board-rooms, executives and managers, who some IS academics in business schools perceive as their clientele, really want researchers to adopt a narrow worldview, and thereby limit the scope of the information they provide, and reduce business discipline journals to the level of an echo-chamber? Of the three 'core values' of the relevant accreditation organisation, the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, a business school must "(1) encourage and support ethical behavior by ... faculty, and (3) demonstrate a commitment to address, engage, and respond to current and emerging corporate social responsibility issues ... through its ... research" (AACSB 2013, pp.6-7). Adopting a broader worldview, we readily reach the conclusion that the continuing dominance of single-perspective, system-sponsor, economic-dimension research represents not merely a missed opportunity, but a serious flaw in the contemporary IS discipline.
Given the longstanding paradigm's dominance, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a hegemony (Wall et al., 2015) exists. IS researchers participate in and are unconsciously and disproportionately influenced by this hegemony as they read prior literature to identify materials to support their arguments. Breaking the shackles of this hegemony requires a dramatic shift in values away from the current, overwhelming focus on the economic dimension towards social and environmental concerns, and away from system sponsors to other legitimate stakeholders such as individuals, teams and non-human entities such as ecosystems and the planet. Within the current mainstream of IS, the likelihood of such a revolution in values seems farfetched, though punctuated equilibrium theory (Eldredge and Gould, 1972; Gersick, 1991) provides some clues as to how it might be achieved. If stable but dysfunctional behaviours, such as the current systems sponsor-economic narrative, are punctuated with radical stimuli, then dramatic changes may ensue. However, the punctuation agent needs to offer a new narrative that is more persuasive than the current one (Monbiot, 2017). In this way, it may be possible to engineer a shift in the baseline (Pauly, 1995) away from the status quo towards a new equilibrium.
Such a new narrative needs to be communicated to, accepted and enacted by a critical mass of early adopters who accept its legitimacy and push for its adoption as the new mainstream narrative. Alternatively, a group of researchers might break away to form a new sub-discipline, most likely one with its own conference(s) and journal(s) that will publish this kind of work. Existing sub-disciplines do exist, for instance under the IFIP umbrella, Technical Committee 9 (ICT and Society) with working groups such as WG9.2 (Social Accountability and Computing), WG9.4 (Social Implications of Computers in Developing Countries), and perhaps most promisingly WG9.9 (ICT and Sustainable Development). For instance, IFIP WG 9.9's website encourages the investigation of "interaction among social, environmental and economic issues in the development of ICTs and their applications". These or other communities of practice (Wenger, 1988), perhaps in conjunction with a special issue organised at one of the more liberally minded journals, may provide the venue where a new sub-discipline can emerge.
Working to the extent feasible within the current paradigm, we suggest that greater value can be offered by IS research if it applies the principle of triangulation not only to data sources and research methods, but also to researcher perspectives. Thus, the economic perspectives need to be complemented by social and environmental perspectives that examine the interests of a variety of stakeholders, not only those of the system sponsors. Such an approach will ensure the realisation of deeper insights by all parties into the needs of all stakeholders, and lead to more effective designs of systems, applications and interventions.
The dominance of single-perspective research, of the interests of the system sponsor, and of the economic dimension, is unhealthy for both society and the IS discipline, and represents a missed opportunity. Like any hegemony, it will be challenging to overcome this mind-set and achieve a shift in the discipline's baseline.
In preparing for this research, we noted the dominance of the system sponsor perspective adopted by researchers in IS. We also noted the apparent absence of any notion of researcher perspective from the debates about the 'core' of the IS discipline, stimulated by such senior scholars as Benbasat & Zmud (2003) and Walsham (2012). By conducting several studies, including one of three complete years of all Basket of 8 journals, we found the dominance to be remarkable. We suspect that the population of c. 3000 articles in those journals during the period may show similar patterns. On the basis of our previous studies, we also suspect that the IS literature as a whole may not be markedly different. Why should one researcher perspective dominate all others? Why has this fact escaped the notice of senior scholars in the field and as a result not appeared on the wider research radar? We have suggested reasons for the dominance of the systems sponsor perspective, which are entangled with the current fetish for an economic justification for research, manifested increasingly frequently in econometric analyses of what are only notionally IS problems.
Explaining the absence of debate about the phenomenon is probably fruitless. We suggest that it is more productive to start the debate now and challenge the IS community in general, and journal editors in particular, to increase their awareness of researcher perspective, and to seek ways to encourage what can only be described as abnormal perspectives that lie outside the current hegemony, such as those of users, usees, ecosystems and other non-human stakeholders. We need to challenge the current dominance of the economic dimension, since despite its flaws, triple bottom line reporting is already well established and so the legitimacy of non-economic values is already recognised, even within the business community.
Notwithstanding the current dominance of economic and system sponsor perspectives, we are personally aware of articles that are on the environmental dimension and that do consider beneficiaries at the level of ecosystems, whether local, regional or planetary. However, the absolute number of such studies is tiny and we would not expect that a study of all articles published in the basket of 8 journals since their inception would reveal a very different pattern of results.
The discipline's gatekeepers are in a position to stymie the endeavours of minorities and counter-cultures, or to encourage them. We contend that journal editors and reviewers need to recognise the risks of stasis in disciplinary norms, and must adapt their policies and practices in order to embrace greater plurality of researcher perspectives, and of the dimensions on which those perspectives lie. They must also demonstrate greater tolerance in relation to methodological issues, since otherwise excessively high hurdles will continue to obstruct the emergence of effective techniques for dual- and multi-perspective research.
One practical step that editors and reviewers can take is to ensure that all submitted research articles explicitly identify the implications for practice, society and the environment. Clarke (1988) argued that "Economic, legal and social implications of information technology must all be considered together, to enable the various factors to be seen in perspective". By documenting these different implications, we can raise awareness of their importance more generally and thereby encourage researchers to consider their own research designs more carefully. Future meta-analyses could consider how journals and their editors have approached this challenge.
A further important contribution can be made by senior members of the discipline within their own schools and strategic partnerships. Realpolitik, and the need to establish a publishing record and reputation and achieve tenure, make it unwise for early-career academics to invest too much of their time challenging the boundaries of the discipline. Senior, tenured professors are not as heavily constrained. They should accordingly ensure that the research programs that they run, and the larger-scale funding sources that they tap, encompass not only the mainstream - currently single-perspective, system-sponsor, economic dimension research - but also a sufficient diversity of parallel and counter-cultural work, which can deliver a plurality of views and multi-facetted triangulation.
In order to guide individual researchers who wish to diversify their research designs yet remain within the mainstream, we offer the following prescriptive advice. We suggest that researcher perspective should be recognised as an important element of research conception, design, conduct and reporting. This will require researchers to deliberate on the alternative perspectives that may be relevant in the specific context under investigation. As a result of that deliberation, researchers will need to determine which perspectives are to be adopted. At various points in an article, but particularly motivation, method, discussion and conclusion, the perspective taken will need to be referred to. Formal structuring of this kind may seem unwieldy and laboured at first, but in time will be accepted as simply part of how research is undertaken and reported. Researchers who have less patience to wait for the mainstream to change may focus more of their attention on sub-communities, such as the various IFIP groups, where the interests and perspectives of multiple stakeholders are more evident. Their departure would be a loss for the IS discipline, so this is an outcome to be avoided.
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The authors acknowledge the feedback provided by attendees at presentations of many of the ideas in this paper, at ACIS 2015, Bled 2016 and the University of Sydney Business School in 2018; to a considerable number of colleagues who have undertaken informal review of related manuscripts; and to two formal reviewers.
Roger Clarke is Principal of Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra. He is also a Visiting Professor in Cyberspace Law & Policy at the University of N.S.W., and a Visiting Professor in the Research School of Computer Science at the Australian National University.
Robert Davison is a Professor of Information Systems at City University of Hong Kong. He is Editor-in-Chief of both the Information Systems Journal and the Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, and Chair of IFIP WG 9.4.
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