The practitioner perspective

Abstract

The Information Systems (IS) discipline traces its origins to issues that were of interest to practitioners, but in recent years the practitioner perspective has often been neglected. Nevertheless, there is increasing recognition that the practitioner's perspective is still important and that the research we undertake can (or should) have implications for practitioners. Journals like MIS Quarterly Executive target this segment exclusively. In this, they complement non-IS journals and magazines in the broader business and technology spheres that also have practitioners in mind, including: Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, Communications of the ACM, McKinsey Quarterly, Academy of Management Perspectives, CIO Magazine, etc. Moreover, some of the existing journals that are predominantly focused on publishing theoretical contributions, for example, the journals that make up the Association of Information Systems' College of Senior Scholars list of eleven premier journals,1 have also demonstrated that they are open to practitioner-oriented submissions.

The Information Systems Journal (ISJ) has for several years championed the publication of what we call Practitioner Papers (PPs). PPs can contribute to knowledge in a number of different ways, but one of our key objectives in promoting PPs is to further the dialogue between academia and practice. As part of this dialogue, PPs should provide deep insights for researchers into the practitioner's experience with IS in a particular context, as well as, of course, prescriptive and actionable recommendations for practice based on well executed research. Insights for practice may include reframing or reimagining specific practitioner problems, offering a thorough exploration of a phenomenon, documenting lessons learned by practitioners, or illustrating good practices and their outcomes. To render these insights actionable, these articles will include action-oriented prescriptions that suggest what practitioners should do differently in practice.

While practitioners are the primary intended audience of PPs, academic researchers may also benefit, for instance when PPs engage with new phenomena and propose new insights that challenge and extend the existing discourse. Such outcomes can inspire future academic work to re-examine those prior findings, perhaps as part of the researcher's problematisation of the phenomenon (Chatterjee & Davison, 2021).

Although practitioners are commonly thought of as working in or for organisations, we recognise that practitioners can be found in diverse settings and may not necessarily be serving a corporate entity. We can find practitioners in the political spectrum (i.e., lawmakers), non-governmental organisations, charities, villages, and communities. They may be formally employed, working as activists, or simply citizens with an interest in using IS to make the world a better place (Walsham, 2012).

Submissions in the PP genre at the ISJ have been sporadic and the quality has varied. Examples of published PPs are Tamm et al. (2022) and Tim et al. (2021), while Pan and Pee (2020) offer a framework for demonstrating the impact of research on practice. To further encourage the undertaking of practitioner-oriented research, we have recently both reformulated our PP guidelines2 and announced a special issue3 that focuses exclusively on practice. Our aim is to spur further practitioner-oriented work.

As with regular research articles, PPs could be written about a wide range of topics within the broad IS domain. Like all premier journals, we seek to publish cutting edge research that advances knowledge in the IS domain. Thus, we do not intend that PPs be used as a vehicle for teaching cases, or low quality (rejected) research articles that have some incremental contribution to practice. We are particularly interested in PPs that investigate contemporary and emerging issues, for example, blockchain, digital futures, generative AI (artificial intelligence), robotics/automation, simulations/digital twins, and sustainable IS. Although many of these topic areas are of concern to practicing managers, we emphasise that managers are not the sole audience and we welcome submissions that target non-managerial readers, including academics, employees and citizens. For instance, some of the societal problems contributed by digital technology are very difficult to solve and thus we would appreciate submission of PPs that articulate these issues and provide illustrative case studies of how some groups in society are trying to address them.

We note that the fundamental purpose of a PP is not to advance theory! Instead, the purpose is to contribute actionable insights that will be of interest to practitioners in solving the practical problems and addressing challenges that they face. This does not mean that theory is barred from PPs, since we expect that the authors of PPs will be aware of relevant theory and that the PPs themselves will be consonant with that theory. The frameworks that are employed in PPs can thus be theory-informed, even as they incorporate ideas and language that might not be found in the academic literature. We do not want authors to imagine that a theoretical contribution is required in a PP or that a PP will be rejected if it lacks a theoretical contribution.

We do expect, however, that PPs will both provide novel insights and make recommendations for putting those insights into practice. Some effective ways of providing insights include frameworks, guidelines and the identification of demonstrably effective practices that practitioners can adopt. In addition to providing insights, we expect PPs to conclude with recommendations for practice that are action-oriented. Authors of PPs can help readers see what steps to take to extract value from the insights that have been presented.

In line with previous ISJ editorials (Davison, 2023; Díaz Andrade et al., 2019), we are interested in learning what works and what kind of impact can be achieved, at both the local and the global scale. Thus, a study undertaken in South Africa needs to be situated in the South African context, to refer to the unique features of that context and how they inform the study, to surface insights from that context, and to provide actionable recommendations that will be relevant in the South African context. The insights and recommendations may have validity beyond both the study's geographic or cultural context and its specific topic, for example, ERP (enterprise resource planning) implementation, Fintech Impacts, AI applications, etc., but such extended recommendations need to be justified with care (cf. Davison & Martinsons, 2016; Seddon & Scheepers, 2012).

We suggest that the credibility of a PP will be enhanced when at least one of the authors, ideally in a leading role, is also a current practitioner. We realise that practitioners are (like everyone else) very busy and may not have significant time and energy to commit to a project, but we do expect that the practitioner-author will make a significant contribution to a PP. This implies that we do not regard PPs as mere ‘translation’ exercises that extrapolate the assumed practical implications from a theoretically-driven research project. Rather, they should be studies that are significantly informed by practitioner perspectives, ideally throughout the entire research lifecycle, from problem formulation to articulation of recommendations. When a PP originates from a theoretically-driven research project, we expect that the PP will place practitioners' interests and viewpoints at its core.

Thus, authors should take steps to identify which practitioner audience is the primary beneficiary of their findings and present their research in a language that resonates with that audience. Keep in mind that such practitioners need not be limited to executives such as the CIO, CTO or CDO, but could involve any legitimate practitioner who engages with information systems, for example, line managers, frontline or back office employees, consultants, contractors, specialists in NGOs or society more generally. Clarke and Davison (2020) comment on the tendency of IS researchers to identify with the corporate entity (whether CEO or organisation) as the stakeholder whose perspective is championed in their own research. While corporate stakeholders can be valid beneficiaries of PPs, they are not the only possible beneficiaries and we would particularly welcome PPs that aim to benefit non-corporate stakeholders, such as citizens, employees and the environment, and indeed with respect to the creation of non-economic value.

We require authors of PPs to problematise the phenomenon that they are studying carefully (Chatterjee & Davison, 2021). Thus, authors need to provide a motivation for the study that is not related to filling a gap in the research or practitioner literatures, but instead identifies a problem that affects specific practitioner stakeholders and is worth investigating. In order to make the PP more relevant to practitioners, it may be valuable to reference the practitioner-oriented literature when exploring the significance of the problem.

Practitioner insights into what works, where, when, how and why are particularly valuable and have the potential to be put into action by practitioners. We require a high standard of evidence to convince reviewers of both the veracity of the findings and their contemporaneity, that is, we do not want to see papers that report on well-established norms. This implies that we expect to see careful treatment of methods in a PP. Readers will appreciate knowing how the research was done, how the researchers approached the problem situation, which methods they applied. To keep the heart of the paper short and accessible, the description of methods used in a PP, if applicable, will generally be found in an appendix.

We recognise that potential authors of PPs may be concerned about how their papers will be reviewed. Firstly, we believe that a practitioner perspective is an essential element in the review, so each PP that passes initial screening and is sent for review will have at least one practitioner reviewer. This will not be a supplementary reviewer, but a primary reviewer to whom we will pay as much attention as we do academic reviewers. In selecting academic reviewers, we will also be mindful of their expertise and will seek to appoint reviewers who have themselves authored practitioner-oriented papers. We would not appoint reviewers who are antagonistic towards the notion of a PP.

We expect that the format of a PP will differ from both research articles published in academic journals and consulting reports published in the practitioner literature. Reviewers of PPs should not be overly concerned about the format, but instead should examine the message that the authors are attempting to convey. If the language used in the paper is very technical, or full of academic jargon, and is likely not to be understood by either a practitioner or an academic audience, we expect reviewers to raise a flag. For instance, researchers may understand concepts like inter-coder reliability or transactive memory, but practitioners may not, so the language needs to be adjusted to be less technical, less jargon-filled. In a similar way, an academic audience might be confused by some terms commonly used by practitioners, especially if the terms are rooted in specific organisational contexts.

We expect that by championing the practitioner perspective, we will bring about several longer term impacts in the Information Systems domain. We hope to reinvigorate the debate about the relevance of our research, and to encourage academic researchers to take the world of practice seriously. We also hope to bring our research closer to the practitioner community. We have much to learn from IS practitioners and we look forward to their active contributions to this debate. We hope that they will also learn from each other through this medium.

Is there a downside? Ivory tower researchers may resent our foray into the world of practice, much as they dislike consultants. PhD students may be confused, especially if their supervisors tell them to steer clear of PPs, whether as authors or readers. Some may regard this venture as an existential threat to the sanctity of IS as an academic discipline. To all these people, we suggest that you assess the utility of your prior work and the impact that it has, not on your career, h-index and curriculum vitae, but on other stakeholders. Indeed, we aver that your reputation (and h-index) will be greatly enhanced by the presence of PPs on your curriculum vitae.