Abstract
The notion of the information technology (IT) artifact has received a great deal of attention, particularly since Benbasat and Zmud’s (2003) call for it to be the core of the information systems discipline. Yet, little work has focused on defining and discussing the IT artifact in a way that can facilitate consistent treatment across studies. In this paper, we develop a taxonomy of the IT artifact. The taxonomy is derived from literature on general systems theory and Akerman and Tyree’s (2006) architectural ontology. We provide a preliminary explication of the taxonomy using four different systems as examples. We also discuss the iterative approach we will take to develop the taxonomy more completely. Our objective is to develop a taxonomy that will provide a language for IS researchers to use when discussing the IT artifact.
Recommended Citation
Matook, Sabine and Brown, Susan A., "Conceptualizing the IT Artifact for MIS Research" (2008). ICIS 2008 Proceedings. 102.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2008/102