Author ORCID Identifier
Peter B. Seddon: 0000-0001-7517-5524
Abstract
In a recent paper entitled “Causality Is a Lost Cause: IS Research Is Better Off Without It”, Niederman (2026) argues that IS researchers should stop trying to develop deterministic causal explanations of the rapidly evolving socio-technical phenomena we study. With respect, I disagree. Instead, I argue that over the centuries the search for causal explanations has proven to be one of humanity’s strongest tools for successful knowledge creation and has been widely used by researchers of many ontological and epistemological persuasions (including positivists, interpretivists, and critical researchers). Therefore, contrary to the title of Niederman’s (2026) paper, it would be a huge mistake to try to eliminate this powerful tool—the search for causality—from our IS-researchers’ toolkit. In short, causality is not a lost cause.
Recommended Citation
Seddon, P. B. (In press). Response to Niederman: Causality is NOT a Lost Cause. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 59, pp-pp. Retrieved from https://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol59/iss1/57
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