In this statement, I would like to elaborate on the reasons for founding the Journal of Information, Information Technology, and Organizations (JIITO). Let me address these reasons by arguing how JIITO is supposed to be different from other journals dedicated to the study of information systems (ISes).

JIITO is one of many IS journals. The similarities on the surface conceal some important differences. Different journals imply different meanings to the term “IS.” Some focus on information technology (IT), positing either that an IS is IT or that the distinction between the two is unimportant. While a merit of this reductionism is debatable, particularly alarming is the fact that the phenomenon of information associated with IS is left out of the analysis. Thus, the phenomenon that is supposed to differentiate IS from other kinds of systems is removed. This information-less approach reduces IS to a thing, tool, or commodity that is to be adopted, managed, and used, and that can be related (somewhat arbitrarily) to various organizational dimensions.

There are journals that do pay attention to information. These focus on information behaviors and on the organization, format, and management of information. True, the concepts of information used are not always clear, and this approach is not a stranger to reified understanding of information that obscures subtleties of human cognition. But what is particularly alarming is that this approach pushes IT into a distant background, if it considers it at all. The distancing from the information-less gap leads to falling into a gap on the opposite side. The result is an IT-less approach that cannot differentiate between different types of IT and their consequences for information.

There are journals that (justly) pay attention to the organized context in which ISes are embedded, such as organizations and groups. Yet, other journals (unjustly) minimize or annihilate the role of context. Allegiances to different research approaches and the associated worldviews add to the variety of specific approaches in IS journals. For example, some journals readily greet articles that deploy the quantitative hypothesis testing inquiry, while others are friendlier toward a qualitative interpretivist inquiry.

While acknowledging contributions of the different partial approaches outlined above, JIITO intends to take a more systematic, integrationist approach. My colleagues and I would like to encourage authors to develop quality papers that address in a balanced manner all three entities signified in JIITO’s title: information, IT, and organizations. We believe that the information-less and IT-less approaches should learn from each other. The IS field is not about either IT or information, but it is about both, and these should be clearly contextualized. This broadening implies that the IS field covers a range of academic subjects and streams of research (see Cohen, 1999). These include management information systems, library and information science, study of information, social informatics, systems analysis & design/software engineering, telecommunications, human-computer interaction, and cognitive science. JIITO is supposed to serve as a bridge that connects these sub-fields.

JIITO is interested in information in the broad lexical sense of the term—as an informing agency. Information exists in the form of data that are in various states of organization within IS and in the output from IS. Information is also the meaning of data that is elicited in the human brain, and, therefore, information can result from using IS. Knowledge is the most complex form of information, a sophisticated cognitive structure inherent to the brain. Knowledge can be externalized in IS, via various representational forms, and in organizational artifacts. And, yes, we want to encourage authors to think about wisdom as well. It refers to all those “smart judgments” that cannot be equated with knowledge. These judgments may be elicited via improvisation (Ciborra, 1999), thinking out-of-box (Weick, 1996), and unordinary insights. Wisdom surfaces when someone faces novel problems, yields to free play of inherent creative impulses (Barrett, 1956), or “stands on the edge of a cliff” (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995: 80).

JIITO takes interest in various types of IT. Candidates are various kinds of modern electronic IT as well as older technologies (including paper trail) that real-world organizations indeed still use to meet their information needs (see Hirschheim et al., 1995). IT is the crucial means of creating and manipulating information. Medium is the message (McLuhan, 1964), as exemplified in the case of portraying the same event by different media of mass communication and with different cognitive effects. IT placed in the organizational context interacts with different forms of information. In turn, organizational tasks, processes, and dimensions are affected by this interaction. For example, Markus’s (1983) study of a financial management system revealed how changes in IT interacted with the content and flows of information, and how this interaction enabled a new organization of work and power. Moreover, when IT supports higher levels of automation (e.g., IT for automated supply chains and for software-intensive production systems), it can have “a life on its own.” Automated systems evade our understanding of what is happening inside them (Weick, 1990), and these can more directly affect the organizational context. The increasing compression of time and space presents a remarkable example of how these systems are instrumental in reshaping operations, strategies and designs of contemporary organizations.

JIITO also encourages articles that bring rich, detailed accounts of IT. Even though many IS journals have made IT their focal point, IT is often conceptualized as a black box and operationalized via surrogate measures (Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001). These research lenses cannot capture specific material characteristics of technology that can interact with different users in different ways. In an email system, the single function of informing the sender that a message is delivered could be critical for a distrustful user to switch from the familiar, safe paper trail to email. Or, focusing on the uses of mobile phones as instruments of e-education is illuminating only if particular technological features are investigated in connection with knowledge increments on the learner’s side. Studies on group support systems provide a good example of unpacking the black box of IT (Ciborra, 1996).

The word organizations in JIITO’s title implies that information and IT need to be investigated in an appropriate context. This includes tasks, processes, individuals, groups, organizational units, whole organizations, organizational networks, and community. JIITO welcomes investigations of organizations of any sort, any industry, and any relevant social domain.

Please also note that JIITO operates over a broad philosophical horizon. Organizations are complex puzzles that no single paradigm can entirely solve (Marsden & Townley, 1996; Westwood & Clegg, 2003). The same applies to the phenomena of IS. To tap into this complexity a requisite variety of perspectives is needed. Examples include post-modernist, modernist, symbolic, and critical; universalistic and particularistic; consensual and dialectic; and Platonic and pragmatic (cf. Churchman, 1971; Hatch, 1997; Latour, 2005; Trompenaars & Hampden-Turner, 1998).

Provided that an article submitted to JIITO complies with the balanced perspective I described above, it can cover any specific topic. We are particularly interested in papers that describe how organizations cope, prosper, change, fail with respect to using, managing, designing and adopting IS. In the conceptual realm, JIITO encourages papers that take a critical look at models entrenched in IS research, particularly those that deviate from JIITO’s approach. Examples include reductionisms toward IT or information, black-boxed models of IT and information, modeling information as uncertainty reduction, the conduit model of mediated communication, the solipsistic, static and decontextualized models of users of IT and information, reified models of information, and the like. Although each of these models provides some insight, being aware of their limitations is important for advancing information systems research and communicating more effectively with other research fields and disciplines.

In summary, JIITO welcomes articles that address in a balanced way information, IT, and organizations. Assumed is a broad concept of information, richly conceived IT of various sorts, and various types of organized contexts. JIITO aims at bridging various academic subjects and streams of research that deal with IS phenomena. We greet any philosophical and research perspective, and any topic that contributes to understanding the complex puzzle of IS in organizations.

We look forward to working collegially with you.

Bob Travica
JIITO Editor-in-Chief
September 2005

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