ارزیابی تحقیقاتی تعامل انسان و کامپیوتر در سیستم های اطلاعات مدیریت: موضوعات و روش ها

As an emerging subfield of Management Information Systems (MIS), Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) or Human Factors studies in MIS are concerned with the ways humans interact with information, technologies, and tasks, especially in business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts. To date, few studies have either synthesized existing studies or drawn an overview picture of the HCI subfield in MIS. This paper first provides a framework of broad HCI issues and concerns. It then reports an assessment of a sample of published HCI articles in two top MIS journals, MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research, over a period of thirteen years (1990–2002). It identifies the main topics studied, the main research approaches utilized, the research publication patterns, and the needs for future research efforts in this subfield. The results should be of interest to researchers in this subfield, in the MIS field, and in other related disciplines for future research, collaboration, and publication.

Research that synthesizes existing studies to provide an overview of an emerging field is often scarce but extremely important to advance our understanding of the current status and suggest future directions of the field. This situation is especially pressing for an emerging subfield that is an overlapping or intersection of the two important disciplines, human–computer interaction (HCI) and management information systems (MIS). As rightly recognized by Hewett and colleagues (Hewett et al., 1992), there is no agreed upon definition of the range of topics that form the area of Human–Computer Interaction. In an attempt to derive and develop educational materials, these scholars defined HCI as “a discipline concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena surrounding them” (Hewett et al., 1992). It is widely recognized as an interdisciplinary field where many traditional disciplines contribute to the study of its main issues (Preece, Rogers, Sharp, Benyon, Holland, & Carey, 1994). Management information systems (MIS) is a community of scholars interested in the development, use, and impact of information technology and systems in social and organizational settings (Zhang & Dillon, 2003). MIS has been through a steady shift from what was a techno-centric focus to a better-balanced technology/organizational/management/social focus (Baskerville & Myers, 2002). User attitudes, perceptions, acceptance and use of IT have been a long standing issue and a major theme of MIS since early days in computing (Lucas, 1975 and Swanson, 1974). Human–computer interaction (HCI) or Human Factors studies in MIS are “concerned with the ways humans interact with information, technologies, and tasks, especially in business, managerial, organizational, and cultural contexts” (Zhang, Benbasat, Carey, Davis, Galletta, & Strong, 2002, p. 334). The emphases have been on both the “design, evaluation and implementation” aspect and the “use and impact in social and organizational settings” aspect of information technology for human use. Since the 1970s, MIS researchers have published abundant studies concerning HCI issues in many MIS journals. The active HCI-centered minitracks, sessions and workshops in major MIS conferences, along with the newly formed AIS Special Interest Group on HCI, have also shown high interests in HCI among MIS researchers in recent years. With the fast development and deployment of information systems, information technology and communication technology (in this paper, we use IS or IT to represent them all) into every part of our lives, HCI issues become persuasive and fundamental. They also prompt a need to re-examine what HCI is about and how to conduct research in this area. Several studies have been conducted to systematically assess the intellectual evolution of the MIS field in terms of its theories, topics, research methods, etc. (Alavi & Carlson, 1992 and Culnan, 1987). However, very few studies have drawn an overview picture of the HCI subfield up to date (Zhang et al., 2002). The purpose of this study is to reflect on the current status of the subfield in terms of research topics and research methods, to identify gaps that need to be addressed, and to point out future research directions. Specifically, this paper will first depict a new framework of HCI issues, which is intended to capture the dynamics and richness of the interaction between human and technology. Utilizing the new framework for subject topics and an existing framework for research methods, the paper then reports an assessment of a limited collection of the published HCI articles from two main MIS journals, Management Information Systems Quarterly and Information Systems Research, on the following aspects: (1) the research topics being studied, (2) the research methods being utilized, and (3) the publication patterns of the HCI type research in the two journals over time. From the findings, we identify and discuss areas of need for future research. The results of this study can provide useful information to scholars and practitioners in the MIS and the traditional HCI fields for future research, collaboration, publication, and practice. They can also be helpful for interested doctoral students to identify potential research topics as dissertation research. The rest of the paper is organized as the following. Section 2 introduces a framework of broad HCI issues. Section 3 explains the methodology used in this paper for assessing the published articles. Section 4 presents the assessment results. Section 5 discusses and concludes the paper.

By examining existing HCI frameworks, proposing a new one to address the broad HCI issues and concerns, and assessing published articles, this paper contributes to our understanding of the current status of research topics, methods, and publication patterns of the HCI studies in the MIS discipline. This understanding is important for the identification and promotion of this emerging subfield in MIS. It should of interest to researchers and young scholars for their future research, collaboration, and publication. This paper is the first attempt to draw such an understanding of HCI studies in MIS based on the evidence of published articles. As such it is limited in scope due to the time consuming nature of such studies. In order to provide an informative picture, only the most recent 13 years of the two top MIS journals are selected as paper sources. Although the 13-year time period is reasonable for this type of research assessment, the journal selection may have had a strong influence on the assessment results. This includes the potential biases of the two journals' emphases on publishable topics and methods. The HCI type research publication pattern may also be affected by the two journals' characteristics. Another limitation of the paper is the omission of other possible aspects for assessment. For example, the assessment of research can also include active researchers and institutions as some of the MIS research assessment articles did (Pervan, 1998 and Romano & Fjermestad, 2001). This can provide useful information for young scholars or doctoral students to identify potential academic homes where collaboration is highly possible, and their research interests and effort can be recognized and appreciated. We decided to omit this assessment in this paper as we realized that limiting such a study to two journals might provide a skewed picture. Future research is planned to include relevant papers in more major MIS journals, and to provide additional assessments such as specific technologies studied, contexts where studies are conducted, and active researchers and institutions. The fast development and pervasive use of technology prompt a need to re-examine the broad HCI issues in light of the IS/IT development, actual use, and impact on all aspects of our lives. The new framework proposed in this paper emphasizes the entire interaction cycle between humans and technology, rather than a stage or part of it. It also brings in the tasks and contextual factors. This view is intended to show the dynamic as well as the evolutional aspect of issues and concerns regarding the interactions between humans and technology. The assessment of a limited collection of HCI studies in two top MIS journals demonstrates a wide range of research issues and topics being studied by MIS researchers over the past thirteen years. The dominating issues fall in the area of IS/IT use, evaluation and impact. MIS researchers are more concerned with issues that occur after IS/IT is developed. These concerns are closely related to humans' perceptions, beliefs, behavior, attitude, satisfaction, performance and productivity, and individual differences. Among the small percentage of studies focusing on the development stage, MIS researchers are concerned with user involvement and participation, user-analyst differences and interaction, programmer cognition studies, and design methods. The assessment also shows a broad range of research methods employed. The dominating methods, however, lie in empirical studies utilizing lab experiments and surveys to examine issues on events and processes. Due to the dynamic nature of human interaction with technology, task, and context, it may indicate a need to utilize more interpretive research methods such as phenomenology, action research, ethnography, grounded theory, etc. It would help advance the subfield more if there are general instruments being developed and validated, rather than many researchers reinventing the wheel. There are few studies focusing on providing frameworks and high-level overviews of the subfields, which indicates potential research efforts in the future. Overall, it is exciting to see that there is an increasing number and percentage of HCI studies published in the two top MIS journals over the years. The current status of the subfield may indicate an emerging state, rather than a mature one.