Ethnic diversity in IS: What are current Ph.D. students saying?

Abstract

Much attention has been focused on creating diversity in research in the Information Systems (IS) discipline (DeSanctis, 1993; King, 1993; Benbasat and Weber, 1996; Robey, 1996). However, ethnic diversity among the IS faculty has not been a primary research focus. African-, Hispanic- and Native-Americans represent only 4.9% of the more than 24,000 business school professors and only 2.8% of the more than 2,000 Information Systems professors. Many universities attribute this nominal minority representation to the difficulty in finding qualified, tenurable faculty members from these ethnic groups.We replicate the research of Hammond (1995) using the survey and commenter features of a group support system, GroupSystems. In particular, we explore cultural issues that may contribute to the small number of African- and Hispanic-Americans who pursue doctoral degrees in information systems/technology (IS/IT). Our results confirmed some of the cultural differences found in earlier research-such as social isolation and lack of minority faculty mentors. Our results also identified family responsibilities and the need to give back to ethnic communities as important cultural issues affecting minorities' IS/IT doctoral students.