Future Trends

Future Trends

The study of IS will significantly change as it is driven by IS research. Historically, IS developed to serve the agendas of accounting. Over time, IS development led to a variety of domain-specific applications such health-care monitoring systems and geographic information systems, of general-purpose applications such as network analysis programs, and of niche applications such as fuzzy-logic programs or expert systems. As IS groups seek to understand growth and viability of IS within organizations, researchers will need to employ techniques such as simulation in order to express the regular and repeated patterns shown by the field.

IS researchers have the immense benefit of owning the paradigm The world is composed of systems and subsystems. With this perspective, researchers can represent the problems of the field in models, which can be extended into simulation models. The missing component is the mathematical and numeric correspondences to drive the static models of the field into dynamic models. As researchers become familiar with the potential of simulation, the data required to express the correspondences for the simulations will be captured by the researchers doing "field studies" of IS.

The software packages designed for simulation are not a limitation to IS researchers. In fact, most of the packages support visual modeling and representation, which blend naturally with the diagramming conventions already embraced by the IS field. The visual representations can be easily manipulated and executed by the software. What would limit IS researchers from adequately using the packages is their understanding of the simulation paradigm. The situation is analogous to the understanding of spreadsheet software. Use of spreadsheet software is a literacy skill; formulating an appropriate system within a spreadsheet requires a conceptual skill. Similarly, the simulation paradigm can be taught; the creative questioning of the field for the intent of simulation must come from the researchers.

Eventually, IS research would give to IS planners and managers an analytical framework for examining the use, need, and character of IS at the strategic, tactical, and operational level of analysis. The analytical framework would be well-defined simulation models for reviewing the efficiency and effectiveness of proposed and operational systems. The simulation results could provide comparisons between proposals or explanations of problematic events.