Editorial

Citation

Wynn, E.H. and Whitley, E.A. (2005), "Editorial", Information Technology & People, Vol. 18 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/itp.2005.16118daa.001

Editorial

All the papers in this issue have been through at least two rounds of revisions and have benefited considerably from the review process that the journal offers. This editorial will therefore spend a little time explaining the review process used by the journal and offer some reflections on successfully coming through the review process.

Since 2002 the whole review process has been run from the ITP review management web site (www.itandpeople.org). This allows electronic submission of the paper, electronic delivery of papers to reviewers and electronic submission of reviews. The system also simplifies the process of keeping track of who has acted as a reviewer for the journal (the list of reviewers used this year is listed on page 409).

When papers are received at the journal, details are sent out to all the associate editors and co-editors of the journal and one of these people “picks up” the paper and manages its review. The first stage of the review process typically involves scanning the paper to identify any obvious flaws with the work and to identify potential reviewers. If there are clear problems with the paper at this stage, the paper is returned to the authors with advice about how to improve the paper.

When suitable reviewers have been identified, they are normally asked to submit their reviews within three weeks of receiving the paper. Whilst this might appear to be a rather short period, our experience is that reviewers either complete their reviews almost immediately or shortly after the deadline for the reviews (regardless of the due date for the review). Making the due date shorter therefore helps ensure that there are no unnecessary delays in the review process.

In terms of what makes a successful paper, one of the most important characteristics that is frequently missing is a good story or narrative structure to the paper. The paper is supposed to be telling us something new and novel and, all too often, the structure of the paper hides rather than reveals what the paper is all about and what it is expected to deliver.

To this end, the new structured abstracts that Emerald (the journal publishers) expect for all accepted papers is particularly helpful (see www.emeraldinsight.com/info/authors/writingforemerald/submissions/structuredabstracts.html for full details) and we encourage all authors to produce structured abstracts when submitting their papers as they will require authors to reflect on the structure and contribution of their paper. In particular, structured abstracts require information about the Purpose of this paper (What are the reason(s) for writing the paper or the aims of the research?); Design/methodology/approach (How are the objectives achieved? Include the main method(s) used for the research. What is the approach to the topic and what is the theoretical or subject scope of the paper?); Findings (What was found in the course of the work?); Research limitations/implications (Is there anything the reader should be aware of that might limit the applicability of the results?); Practical implications (What outcomes and implications for practice, applications and consequences are identified? Not all papers will have practical implications but most will. What changes to practice should be made as a result of this research/paper?); What is original/value of paper (What is new in the paper? State the value of the paper and to whom.)

A well written paper should address each of these concerns in a clearly identifiable way and preparing the structured abstract may well help authors to improve the structure (the “story”) of their papers.

Papers in this issue

There are four papers in this issue:

“Making sense of eCommerce as social action” by Marius Janson and Dubravka Cecez-Kecmonavic presents a critical theoretic perspective on ecommerce. By drawing on Habermas’ Theory of Communicative action they view ecommerce as a social interaction process and demonstrate, through a detailed empirical case of vehicle sales, how the new social conditions of ecommerce, particularly regarding availability and access to information, affect buyers and sellers and broadens the theoretical perspective of eCommerce research beyond economic and technological considerations.

The paper by Tom McMaster and Dave Wastell “Diffusion – or delusion? Challenging an IS research tradition” also provides an alternative, critical perspective on a mainstream topic, in this case diffusion theory that is widely used in information systems research. They draw on Blaut’s deconstruction of the concept in the wider historical context of European Colonialism. They suggest that diffusion, as commonly understood, divides the world into one group that is innovative and the rest that are uninventive and “simply” follow; indeed one part of this group is given the derogatory label of laggards as though it was essential to adopt all innovations.

In “Emphasizing technology: sociotechnological implications” Elisabeth Berg, Christina Mörtberg and Maria Jansson present a fascinating study of mobile phone use. As with the McMaster and Wastell paper, this paper is sensitive to the non-use (rather than non-adoption) of information and communications technology. They thus listen to what is not said about the technology, about the silences, as well as to the expressions in support of the technology.

The paper by Anna Börjesson and Lars Mathiassen “Improving software organizations: agility challenges and implications” explores the effects of disruptive events on software process improvement initiatives at Ericsson. They study a requirements management initiative from three perspectives – the improvement initiative, the targeted software practices, and the environment – and argue that agility principles would have helped respond more effectively to a sequence of events that impacted the initiative. They also note that such SPI agility requires coordination and alignment with other agility initiatives within the software organization.

Editorial board changes

In 2006 both Edgar Whitley and Michael Gallivan will be joining MIS Quarterly as associate editors. Michael will be stepping down as an associate editor for ITP in the process and we would like to thank him for all his excellent work for the journal as an author, reviewer and more recently as an associate editor.

Eleanor H. Wynn, Edgar A. Whitley