Inf Technol Manag
DOI 10.1007/s10799-014-0182-4
State of the academic field of IS in India
Rajendra K. Bandi • Ravi Anand Rao •
Laxmi Gunupudi
 Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract The field of information systems (IS) remains
ill-defined, facing problems of recognition and identity
crisis. Several papers and debates have been dedicated on
this topic for over three decades. The focus of these debates
have largely centered on the state of the IS field in
Americas and Europe and with a limited study conducted
in the Asia–Pacific context. This study attempts to assess
the field in the Indian context and highlight the challenges
and issues faced by IS faculties in India. Based on literature
survey of the seminal papers in the field, we identified the
salient topics of interest to IS researchers: identity of the IS
field; diversity of the field; research approaches, methods
and rigor; reference disciplines; journals and conferences;
and IS course and curriculum. A two-phase study was
carried out to explore the interest generated by the IS field
in India. In the first phase, secondary data review of leading
business schools in India was carried out to understand
their focus on IS as an academic discipline. In the second
phase, we conducted interviews of IS researchers from the
premium business schools in India. In our study, we ana-
lyze the research focus of IS faculties in B-schools in India,
analyze the composition of the faculty pool and the nature
of research work undertaken by them. Our study points at
the restricted focus of IS researchers in India around a few
narrow areas, with a significant breadth of topics not being
explored for research. We found the identity struggle of the
R. K. Bandi
R. A. Rao (&)
L. Gunupudi
Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Bannerghatta Road,
Bangalore 560076, India
e-mail: ravi.rao10@iimb.ernet.in
R. K. Bandi
e-mail: rbandi@iimb.ernet.in
L. Gunupudi
e-mail: gunupudi.laxmi10@iimb.ernet.in
field to be prominent, which was further compounded by
the limited number of active, IS researchers. The growing
importance of qualitative techniques in IS research, the
challenges of developing a sound base in multiple refer-
ence disciplines and the need for making IS course inter-
esting for business school students were some of the other
significant observations. Our study also highlighted the
paradox of the success of the IT industry in India leading to
reduced enrollment of IS courses in B-Schools. We con-
clude by providing recommendations to B-school deans
and directors.
Keywords IS academic field
Identity of IS field
IS
research
Rigor versus relevance
IS course curriculum
1 Introduction
IT industry in India has gained a brand identity of its own
and continues to be a leading employment generation
sector of the country. Growth of this sector resulted in a
huge increase in the demand for IT skills. Several institutes
across the country offer technical and engineering spe-
cializations in the field of IT. But, the area of Information
Systems in B-schools (generally referred to as management
institutes in India) faces a problem of identity crisis.
Several past studies have highlighted significant differ-
ences in IS research paradigms in European and North
American regions [4, 10]. Other papers have compared and
contrasted the positivist research paradigm in North
America with interpretive research paradigm in Europe.
Many country specific studies in the past have looked at the
state of IS research in respective countries. Example of
such studies include: Zhang et al. [40] have looked into the
IS research in Chinese mainland and how it compares to
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the rest of the world in terms of research topics and
research methods; Sato et al. [33], who focused on the IS
academic societies and state of research in Japan; and
Gable [15] who studied the IS academic field in Asia–
Pacific spanning six countries in this region (Australia,
Hong Kong, Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan).
These papers highlight the importance of research com-
munities and professional bodies in promoting IS research.
Studies based on Indian context have focused on either
the socio-technical aspects of ICT implementations in
developing countries [37]; Avgerou [3] or the practitioner
related IT management issues in India [31] and have
highlighted the region specificity in implementing ICTs or
in managing technology. With an exception of one study
[9], which focused on IS discipline in India by under-
standing the perceptions of both the IS and non-IS faculty
in Indian business schools, we did not come across papers
that looked at IS academic and research context in India.
The field of IS remains ill-defined facing problems of
recognition and identity crisis. Many papers and debates
have been dedicated on this topic for more than three
decades. Issues such as the core identity of IS, the legiti-
macy of the field, the debate on rigor versus relevance, the
need for developing additional theories and the quality of
the publications continue to be areas of concerns for the
field. Information systems (IS) researchers would be well
aware of this struggle through which the IS field has pro-
gressed. Given the importance of these topics to an aspiring
IS researcher, we set out to study the current state of IS
academic field in India.
More than two decades back, Banville and Landry [5]
expressed their concern on the state and the future of the
MIS field describing it as a fragmented adhocracy and
noted the insufficient progress made by the field in estab-
lishing its collective identity. Given the importance of this
subject to the IS field, the issue of identity of the IS field, or
the lack of it, is one of the primary areas of interest in this
study. Benbasat and Weber [6] have commented on the
diversity of the field in terms of problems addressed, ref-
erence disciplines, theoretical foundations and methods
used. Several other seminal papers have also focused on
this topic [29, 32]. The topic of diversity in the IS field is
another area of interest.
The core topic concerned with research approaches,
paradigms, methodologies and topic selection in the IS
field is the third vast area that we focused on. Starting with
Keen [22], several other eminent researchers have com-
mented on the lack of theory impacting the field of IS. The
need for focusing on a wider research methodologies [11,
20, 29], the need to balance relevance of the research
without compromising rigor [1, 7], and the dependence on
reference disciplines [22] are some of the predominant
issues in IS research. Consequently, we included these as a
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core focus in our study. An understanding of the IS journals
and conferences, their acceptance within the larger man-
agement science community and the emerging journals and
conferences within India is another area of interest covered
as part of this study. Finally, this study also explores the
importance of IS as a subject in the management education
curriculum and the issue of what constitutes an adequate
Body of Knowledge (BoK).
To summarize, a primary motivation for the study is the
fact that despite the increasing prominence of IT and IT
enabled services (ITES) industry in India, there is a lack of
research and curriculum focus on IS in management
schools in India. The purpose of the study is to assess the
current state of the IS field in India along the following
dimensions: the identity of the IS field; the diversity of the
field; IS research approaches, methods and rigor; reference
disciplines; journals and conferences; and IS course and
curriculum. This article starts by describing the study and
then the findings are elaborated to highlight the current
state of the IS academic field in India.
2 The study
Given the growth of information technology (IT) out-
sourcing in India and the subsequent demand for IT pro-
fessionals [2], the field of IT as a discipline in India has
witnessed considerable growth, both as an academic and as
a vocational subject. However, it would be incorrect to
conclude that the field of IS has attracted similar attention.
Considering this, we began our research by exploring the
interest generated by the IS field in India.
Past studies analyzing the IS academic field have relied
on diverse techniques including literature reviews [15, 40],
interviews [38, 39], surveys [4, 35], and survey of institute
web-sites [28]. For our study, we adopted a two phase
approach. In the first phase, we studied secondary data
available in the public domain such as websites of leading
management institutes in India to understand their focus on
IS as an academic discipline. We followed this by con-
ducting semi-structured interviews of IS researchers from
eminent business schools. Our approach was similar to
those carried out by Watson et al. [38, 39].
To understand the state of IS as an academic field in
India, we limited the scope of our study to analyzing the
top tier business schools in India. To determine the set of
top-tier B-schools in India, we used a combination of
several rankings published by different agencies, so as to
remove any bias introduced due to factors like non-par-
ticipation of a particular school, methodological bias etc.
The top 20 listings of B-schools of most of the rankings
reported a significant overlap, with minor variations among
the lists. Since our objective was to obtain a representative
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set, we considered the set of institutes that appeared most

frequently across these ranking lists. The details of the
ranking agencies and the set of B-schools considered in our
study are provided in ‘‘Appendix 1’’. For each of these
schools, we studied data available in the institute websites
and collected data on the IS faculties including their
background and research interests.
We followed recommendations for conducting a quali-
tative research and grounded study approach [36]. While
grounded study typically begins with an open coding [36],
we followed the approach of first developing a research
template [23] and started with a base set of categories guided
by our literature review. As outlined earlier, the categories
under which we collected data include: the identity of the IS
field; the diversity of the field; IS research approaches,
methods and rigor; reference disciplines; journals and con-
ferences; and IS course and curriculum. Based on these
categories, we developed an open ended questionnaire Fig. 1 Research focus of faculties
(Appendix 2), to be administered to IS faculties. We also
sought the opinions of a few non-IS researchers, since a
measure of the identity of a field is the recognition of the field qualifications had almost all ([90 %) of their faculties
among researchers from outside the field. The sample of having doctoral degrees. But the remaining institutes had
institutes that we included in our study for conducting almost half of the faculties (42 %) without a doctoral
interviews was limited to a few top Indian management degree and they often employed IT practitioners with
institutes having a substantial focus in active IS research industry experience to deliver IS related courses.
work. The questionnaires were administered to nine
researchers through a combination of face-to-face and tele- 3.2 Research focus
phonic interviews. The next section provides the summary of
the findings from this study. We also noticed a difference in the research focus among these
schools. In order to measure the research focus of faculty
members, we used Harzing’s publish or perish software [18]
3 Study findings and conducted an author impact analysis. We used the h-index
of the author to assess both the impact and the productivity of
Since the inception of IS field, IS scholarly community has the authors. We noticed that the average h-index of the top-tier
strived to develop a meaningful, resilient identity within faculties was between 6 and 7, whereas that of the next-tier
the institutions that comprise its organizational field, colleges was between 0 and 1. We further noticed that top-tier
namely the organizational science and information science institutes that focused on research had even their non-PhD
research communities, business and information science faculties (if any) co-authoring research publications, whereas
academic institutions, and the various organizations, the next-tier institutes that focused primarily on teaching had
industries and professional groups that comprise the minimal research publications even from the PhD faculties.
information technology in industry [8]. The first step in our We conclude that faculty members from the top ten schools on
study was to assess the identity of the IS field within the an average have a higher research focus and that research in IS
management institutes in India. Our findings are summa- field in India is mostly concentrated in and limited to the top
rized below. ten B-schools.

3.1 Department and faculty 3.3 Research areas

We observed that fifteen out of the twenty institutes we
reviewed have a separate IS department offering core IS
courses. Two of the schools offering IS courses had the IS
faculty housed in related discipline such as Operations and
Computer Science. We observed that about half of the
institutes for which we collected data on faculty
We have also looked at the topics of research that the
faculty in these schools were engaged in and mapped these
areas as per International Federation for Information Pro-
cessing (IFIP) classification. A summary of the topics of
interest across the faculties we studied is depicted in Fig. 1.
It can be observed that a significant breadth of topics is not

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explored by IS researchers in India. This observation is
limited to the research in academic field and does not
account for any research that may be conducted by research
laboratories of IT firms and other industrial bodies.
3.4 Identity of the IS field
In their seminal paper, Benbasat and Zmud [8] have sug-
gested that the lack of a research focused on the ‘‘IT arti-
fact and its immediate nomological net’’ [6] has led to a
dilution of the collective identity of the field. They suggest
that the IS research community is making the discipline’s
central identity even more ambiguous by under-investi-
gating phenomena closely associated with IT-based sys-
tems and over-investigating phenomena that is distantly
associated with IT-based systems [8]. Considering the
absence of a clear focus on the IS department in many of
the business schools, we sought to get the opinion of the
faculties of leading schools on their perspectives on the
identity crisis of the field.
We notice that the identity crisis of the field manifesting
in the Indian context in two ways: (a) owing to the lack of
research focus on core IS related topics as eluded by
Benbasat and Zmud [8], and (b) as a result of the IS dis-
cipline being equated with Software Engineering or Com-
puter Science, as we explain below.
The researchers we interviewed, while acknowledging
Benbasat and Zmud’s call for a greater focus on the IT
artifact and its immediate nomological net, also felt that no
management discipline can operate in isolation and that the
identity crisis of the field arises out of trying to compart-
mentalize the IS discipline. IS being a practitioner oriented
field must collaborate with other areas.
In management no discipline can be isolated. IS is
practitioner oriented. [..] must collaborate with other
areas. Identity crisis issue is blown out of proportion.
Crisis comes in treating IS in isolation.
One of the professors suggested that Orlikowski and
Iacono’s conceptualization of IT usage [30] is relevant to
IS curriculum as much as its applicable to IS researchers.
They felt that IS researchers, particularly in India, should
avoid the temptation of limiting themselves to the ‘‘Tool’’
or ‘‘Nominal’’ view of IT usage and consider other views
of IT including ‘‘Proxy’’ and ‘‘Ensemble’’ view.
The IT services industry in India has grown significantly
in India over the last couple of decades and has been a
leading employment generator in India [2]. Software
development being central to IT services industry, there is
a common misconception among management students and
non-IS faculties that the field of IS is the same as that of
software engineering. These faculties and students assumed
that that the primary focus of the IS department is to
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disseminate software engineering and project management
practices, and to train on various IT tools.
This issue existing in the Indian context is similar to the
one suggested by Dickson et al. [14], who noted that the
image of IS academia among academic colleagues, man-
agement practitioners and IS practitioners is ‘‘unclear’’ and
this unclear image translates into a ‘‘lack of clout’’ and
inadequate resource allocations. They have also noted that
definitional uncertainty is the core to existing identity crisis
[14]. As described earlier, we observed the existence of this
definitional uncertainty with many of the non-IS faculties
associating the IS field with software engineering and
computer science.
The impact of IS in organizations and societies goes
beyond just the mere usage of IS as a tool and has a higher
order impact across a wide spectrum of organizational and
social roles is often missed. While acknowledging the
identity crisis of the field, many of the researchers we
interviewed were optimistic that the identity crisis of the
field may not be as severe as it was in the past with a
growing acknowledgement of the field by other disciplines.
3.5 Diversity in the IS field
IS research is characterized by its ‘‘diversity’’, in the
problems addressed; in its reference disciplines; in its
theoretical foundations; and in the methods used to collect,
analyze and interpret data [6]. Robey identified ways in
which diversity can both threaten and advance the field of
IS, and suggested that diversity comes with the responsi-
bility of ‘‘disciplined methodological pluralism’’ and
commitment to collaborative ideals [32]. On posing this
issue of diversity in IS field to the academicians, there was
a common consensus on the vast diversity that existed in
the IS field, but it was generally perceived as a healthy sign
of a nascent field rather than being a threat.
On the question of whether the diversity of the field was
responsible in creating a lack of cumulative tradition
through its effect of impeding communication and collab-
oration within the field, the majority opinion was that the
collaboration within the IS community is not seen to be
problematic. One of the researchers suggested that the lack
of cumulative tradition was a result of the constant and
rapid technology evolution that leads to a constantly
changing focus on the topics of research interest and not
necessarily due to the lack of cohesiveness in the
community.
Collaboration is quite high within the IS research
community. Lack of cumulative research is not
because of lack of cohesiveness within the commu-
nity but rather due to the constantly changing topic.
However, collaboration with the industry is quite low.
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A lack of a collaboration platform in India was high- 2 covered use of IS by business organization. Now,
lighted by one of the researchers who felt that the collab- we have evolved into Stage 3 that looks at the usage
oration within the community was driven primarily by of IS by people in general.
personal contacts and not through any organized platform.
It was also widely acknowledged that the depth of the-
Personal contacts drive these collaborations. Plat- oretical foundations in IS has improved significantly with
forms have not yet evolved. They are episodic. substantial effort focused on the rigor of the research. The
Platforms like consortia are necessary. In India there contributions by the research community over the last few
is this problem with all disciplines. years were felt to be significant. From a review of the
recent papers published in the basket of eight journals, it
Collaboration with the industry is perceived to be low.
can be observed that the IS researchers, while continuing to
However, collaboration with Government on IS related
conduct research in classical fields such as IT governance,
initiatives are seen to be increasing in trend.
outsourcing, strategy and system development, have also
expanded their focus to include current trending topics
3.6 Information systems research
such as Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud (SMAC), and
recent developments in software development area that can
IS discipline as an area of research has been the subject of
directly impact IS such as Open Source and Agile software
several studies and been debated by several prominent
development. Another interesting point observed was that
researchers over the last few decades. Keen had observed
IS researchers, compared to their contemporaries from
that the methodologies used in IS research are atheoretical,
other disciplines, have been more welcome in adopting
the dependent variables are at best surrogate measures,
alternative methodologies, philosophies and approaches for
there is virtually no cumulative tradition and the output of
conducting IS research. The recent increase in the number
these research work is of little value to the practitioners
of special issues focusing on topics such as Critical Real-
[22]. The lack of focus on the IT artifact as the core subject
ism and Alternative Genres is an indication of these.
of the research was also identified as a problem area [30]
The research interests of Indian faculties, on the other hand,
and there was a call to bring back the focus on IT artifact
seemed to be largely focused on the traditional areas (Fig. 1).
[8]. It was also noted that IS research needs to improve on
The number of researchers who have expressed interests in
relevance, cumulative tradition, cope up with the dyna-
newerareassuchascloud,mobilityandsocialmediaseemedto
mism of Information Technology [7]. Yet another dimen-
be in smaller numbers. However, many of the researchers
sion indicating the narrow focus of IS research was based
expressed interests in data analytics, though it was not clear
on the research methodologies adopted by IS researchers
from our data whetherthesefaculties are researchinganalytics
with positivist studies dominating the field and a paucity of
in conjunction with Big Data and SMAC.
interpretive and critical research [29]. Considering the set
In conclusion, IS discipline as an area of research, was
of criticism that the IS field has attracted on research as a
perceived to be vast in scope offering opportunities to
topic, and the apparent paucity of IS research in many of
researchers with diverse set of interests and using a diverse
the leading management institutes in India, studying the
set of methodologies. However, the paucity of active IS
progress of the field and the impediments hindering the
researchers in India was noted as a concern.
progress is an important topic of interest of this paper.
3.6.2 Rigor versus relevance
3.6.1 Progress in the field of IS research
Acknowledging the lack of theory and rigor impacting the
There was a broad agreement amongst the researchers that
field, the respondents felt that the depth of theoretical
research in the IS area has progressed well over the years.
foundations in IS has improved significantly with sub-
It was noted that the field of IS research has indeed pro-
stantial effort focused on the rigor. While there was an
gressed well from the initial focus of IS which addressed
agreement that rigor needs to be balanced with relevance,
the needs of the scientific and design community, to the
none were willing to compromise on the effort to be
usage of IS by business organizations, and subsequently
expended towards ensuring rigor. Noting the difference
towards the usage of IS by society in general. Further, the
between academicians and consultants, one of the
scope of IS research in business is perceived to have been
researchers felt that IS researchers should try to match the
broadened to include both inter and intra organizational
consultants in terms of relevance but should not compro-
aspects.
mise on the strength of their rigorous approach to research.
Viewing IS research in multi-stages…Stage 1 was One of the researchers referred to the work of Davenport
limited to IS usage by scientists and designers. Stage and Markus [12] that urged the researcher to acknowledge

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IS as an applied field and adopt practices from other
applied fields having a tight integration between research
and practice such as Medicine.
Rigor has improved substantially but not relevance.
There are very few examples where both rigor and
relevance exist. IS field is like medical profession
where the faculties are not distant from practice. IS
frameworks are not adopted by Industry - one should
explore why?
Giving examples of numerous frameworks and models
contributed by IS researchers, he posed the question on
why only a handful have been adopted by practitioners.
Introspection on this issue could perhaps be useful in
improving the relevance of IS research.
We posed the argument that perhaps the fast paced
nature of IT poses a constant challenge to the IS field
leading to topics being researched rendered irrelevant by
the time it comes out of the rigorous research cycle.
However, the researchers felt that while technology is
changing, the underlying issues were not and usually were
an instantiation in a new context under a new technology.
Compromising on rigor while addressing these issues was
not considered as prudent.
The pressure of publishing in peer reviewed academic
journals that needs a high standard in terms of rigor and the
lack of recognition of practitioner oriented outlets were
identified as yet another impediment in the path of rele-
vance. The need for acknowledging practitioner oriented
journals such as Sloan Management Review and Harvard
Business Review and equating them to other tier-one
journals was felt to be an important step, particularly for an
applied field such as IS.
3.6.3 Research methodology
While positivist research seemed to be the dominant par-
adigm of research in the IS area, there is a growing trend of
research under the interpretative paradigm and an
increasing acceptance of the critical research paradigm as
well. Also prominent is the growing acceptance of quali-
tative research techniques. The use of qualitative methods
is seen to be adopted for positivist research as well. While
quantitative techniques are found to be suitable for con-
ducting research in organizational context, it was felt that
qualitative techniques are more suitable when it came to
analyzing the impact of IS on society.
3.7 Reference disciplines
It was agreed that IS being an applied field will draw
theories from various disciplines. Given the general lack of
theory in the IS field, it is bound to adopt and build theories
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from other areas. Apart from the usual reference disciplines
such as Computer Science, Software Engineering, Orga-
nizational Theory and Behavior, Economics and Strategy,
there is a growing interest in classical disciplines such as
Sociology and Anthropology. Overall, it was felt that the
multitude of reference disciplines posed a challenge to the
IS researcher to be adept with knowledge on a wide range
of topics.
3.8 IS journals and conferences
Considering the wide range of topics of interests and the
multitude of research methodologies, the wide spectrum of
journals and conferences followed by the researchers came
as no surprise. The top tier journals such as AIS senior
scholars’ basket of journals were followed by most of the
academicians. However, given the narrow range of
research methods and topics focused by the top tier jour-
nals, most academicians had their own preference of
journals catering to their focus areas. A small set of
researchers preferred consultant journals to academic
journals indicating the perceived importance of the need
for relevance. While there was a clear preference towards
academic journals, the need to publish in practitioner ori-
ented journals for an applied field such as ours was also
acknowledged. It was felt that there is an acute lack of high
quality academic conferences in India and there was an
urgent need for organizing these to foster the discipline.
3.9 IS course and curriculum
We compared the curriculum of the IS core course offered
by a few selected institutes with a model curriculum to
understand the content scope and consistency of the IS core
courses offered by these institutes. Our first step was to
baseline a course outline covering the minimal required
breadth of IS topics relevant for business school students.
We started with a review of model curriculum for IS stu-
dents and studied papers on this topic including Gorgone
et al. [17], Glass et al. [16] and Shackelford et al. [34]. We
found that these papers provided curriculum guidelines
specific for Masters in IS program, whereas the scope of
our review is specific to understanding IS curriculum for
general management program. We followed suggestions of
Ives et al. [21] that not all students may need exposure to
specialized IS skills and narrowed our review to focus on
papers that addressed the specific topic of IS for MBA
students.
We found the suggestions provided by Ives et al. [21] on
Core IS requirements for business school graduates, as
summarized from the opinions provided by a group of forty
eminent educators in the field, as particularly relevant to
our study. These guidelines, covered the breadth of the
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Table 1 IS Curriculum guidelines for business students considered by us for evaluating the IS curriculum includes:
Ives et al. [21] Loebbecke et al. Dhar and Sundararajan
(1) Strategic Analysis, (2) Business Technology manage-
[25] [13] ment, (3) Business Process management, (4) Economic
Value Analysis, (5) Ethical and Social issues, and (6) Data
1. Information 1. Strategic 1. IT enabled
analysis.
systems overview Analysis transformations
We conducted two levels of analysis. First, we collected
2. IS and 2. Business Types of industries
organizational technology the curriculum information for the institutes from their
Role of digitization
competitiveness management websites. Out of the overall set of twenty colleges selected
Use of platforms
3. Importance of 3. Business for the analysis, we were able to obtain IS course related
Information
databases to process data for nine of them. The list of core courses and the
economics and
organizations management elective courses for each of these institutes were noted and
network effects
4. Technology 4. Economic grouped into the above set of categories. Next, we obtained
Human computer
infrastructures Value analysis
interface the detailed course outline for five of the institutes and
5. Internet and
Networking
2. IT investments conducted further in-depth analysis of the course outline
technology IT investment for the core IS courses offered by these institutes to assess
portfolio the extent of coverage across the categories. Figure 2a
6. Information
economics IT governance depicts the extent of coverage across these six categories
7. Enterprise IS IT outsourcing aggregated over the five institutes, and Fig. 2b provides the
8. Implementing IS 3. Use and governance institute wise coverage across these categories.
of data Our findings indicated a wide variation in the coverage
9. IS management
Data privacy and across these categories and across the institutes. All the
10. Ethical, criminal
Governing data
and security issues five institutes considered had the maximum focus on
Decision support
systems
Technology Management with an average of 45 % of the
Social media and big
time focused on this topic. Technical issues relevant to
data managers such as technology infrastructures, databases
and data management, and IT implementation were
included in the curriculum of most of the institutes. While
scope of the IS discipline with an adequate exposure to majority of the institutes included an overview of tech-
technical, managerial and social issues and is summarized nical topics as part of the core course outline, others
in the first column of Table 1. The second paper we chose to provide these as elective courses. The topic of IS
reviewed was Loebbecke et al’s paper [25] on recruiters’ implementation was addressed by most institutes, but the
perspective on the demand for IS skills. They classified the amount of time allocated varied from \10 % to more than
IS skill requirements based on three types of IS hiring 40 % across the institutes. One of the institutes had
clusters: Technology service providers, IS professionals in almost half of the course schedule dedicated towards the
business firms, and IT-savvy business executives. Given topic of designing, developing, acquiring and imple-
the focus on business schools, we considered the curricu- menting IT systems.
lum requirements arising from IS skill requirements for IT- The next largest coverage was on the topic of Business–
savvy business executives, which we have summarized in Process Management. In this category, we observed a
the second column of Table 1. Finally, Dhar and Sundar- prominent focus on the applicability of IT systems as a
arajan [13] was the third paper we considered which pro- functional and technological tool to aid businesses. Some
vided the blueprint required for IT education in business. institutes also covered the topic of IS management such as
Adopting a business centric-view of IT (as opposed to a IT governance, the role of the CIO function, and IT out-
techno-centric view), they classify the need for students to sourcing. Business-Technology Management and Busi-
appreciate: (a) the transformations enabled by IT, (b) the IT ness–Process Management together constituted almost
investments and associated strategic choices that busi- 70 % of the course duration and appeared to have a con-
nesses need to make, and (c) the problem relating to sistent focus across all the institutes.
effective use and governance of information and data. The Strategic Analysis of IS is included in the curriculum of
suggestion provided by these authors is summarized in the all the institutes but with substantially lesser focus as
third column of Table 1. compared to the top two categories. For example, among
For our analysis, we adopted the categories suggested by the top-four schools alone, the time allotted for the topic of
Loebbecke et al. [25] and added categories to address the ‘‘IS and organizational competitiveness’’ varied from\5 %
additional dimensions suggested by Ives et al. [21] and to over 20 % of the overall course schedule. Similarly, the
Dhar and Sundararajan [13]. The final set of categories focus on Economic-value of IT including information

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Fig. 2 a Summary of findings across five institutes, b category-wise details for the five institutes

Table 2 IS curriculum—core Strategic Business Business Economic Social Data

versus electives (institutes A–I) analysis technology Process value impact analysis
management management analysis

A
Core X X X X
Electives X X X X
B
Core X X X X X
Electives X X
C
Core X X X X X
Electives X X X X X
D
Core X X
Electives X X X X X
E
Core X X X X
Electives X X
F
Core X X
Electives X X X
G
Core X X X
Electives X X X
H
Core X X X X X
Electives X X X X X X
I
Core X X
Electives X X X

economics and business value of IT was varied with only had only marginal coverage of these topics. However, only
three of the institutes including this in their curriculum. one of the institutes stood out in its focus on social issues
Social impacts of IS was prominent in its absence from by allocating 20 % of the course timeline on topics such as
the course outline of many of the institutes, while others ICT for development, e-governance, digital divide, ethical

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and privacy issues. It is also worth noting that emerging
trends in IT such as social networking, big-data, cloud
computing etc. and its impact on IS was addressed by most
of the institutes as part of the core IS curriculum. Business
analytics and Decision support systems were not covered as
part of the core curriculum by any of the institutes. How-
ever, most institutes provided these as electives.
We also conducted a brief review of the elective IS
courses offered by the nine institutes to verify whether any
of the under-represented categories had separate electives
being offered. Table 2 provides a summary of the topics
covered across the core and elective courses. We notice
that the elective courses were also largely focused on the
topic of Business–Process Management and Business–
Technology Management and covered two broad themes:
(a) IS as a tool for gaining productivity or profitability and
covered functional or technical topics on software pro-
ducts/techniques; (b) aid for implementing IS and covered
topics such as project management, software engineering,
IT outsourcing. In addition, there were a few institutes
offering elective courses on specialized topics such as
strategy, e-governance, or data analytics. We also noticed
that the strategic impact of IT is often covered as part of
Strategy courses and not by IS departments.
We also noticed a variance in the prescribed course
material. The top-tier business schools laid substantial
importance on research papers as a pedagogical instrument
for teaching and recommended a combination of text book,
research papers, industry case studies and management
review papers. However, the course materials prescribed by
the next tier schools were usually limited to text books.
Our findings on the variance in course content and
pedagogy across these business schools mirror the concerns
reported by Watson et al. [38] and also expressed by the
academicians interviewed by us. It is clear that IS, unlike
other established disciplines which have minimal variance
in curriculum across business schools, is far from reaching
such a status. This reiterates the need for establishing a
common BOK that is widely accepted by the IS community
[24]. It was also unanimously felt by the academicians we
interviewed that the IS course is core to management
studies and can no longer be ignored in the curriculum of
management students. It was felt that IS courses must
orient themselves in the area of IT and business strategy
alignment, set the perspective of management problems of
systems in organizations, and adequately address the
societal implications of IS.
Lack of student enrolment to the IS courses, similar to
those witnessed in the western world [19, 26], was felt by
the academicians we interviewed. While the impact of
outsourcing and globalization was viewed as one of the
reasons for a reduced demand of IS courses in the western
world [19], our findings seems to be counter-intuitive, as
No Experience
IT / ITES
Consulting
Non-IT
Fig. 3 Student profile of top 3 institutes
these reasons should have logically predicted an increase in
the demand for IS courses in India—considering the out-
sourcing of IS jobs from the western world to countries
such as India. This paradox can be explained when we
consider the definitional uncertainty that exists with the
field in India.
As explained earlier, the IT services industry in India
has been a significant employment and foreign exchange
generator in India. A high paying career and the opportu-
nity to travel oversees on client engagement offered by the
IT services industry has made it a very sought after desti-
nations for undergraduate students from the premier col-
leges in India. Since the IT industry in India attracted top
talent from universities, it is not surprising that a majority
of the B-school students were those with prior experience
in the IT industry. An analysis of the top three B-schools in
India reveals that almost 40 % of the students have past
experience in the IT industry (Fig. 3). Most of these stu-
dents, who were primarily engaged as software developers
in their past jobs often equated IS discipline to software
engineering. This pool of students, that formed a large
chunk of the overall student base, narrowly perceive the IS
discipline to be focusing on software engineering and
project management. With the perception that they were
already exposed to IS topics as part of their working career,
these students believed that the IS courses offered by
B-schools had nothing new to offer to them and hence were
reluctant to enroll for IS courses. Thus, a significant factor
in explaining the reduced demand for IS courses in India
can be seen to be arising from the definitional uncertainty
of the field.
In summary, the IS curriculum showed a vast variation
across the institutes in terms of the breadth of the topics
covered, the amount of time allocated for these topics and
the mix of core versus elective courses. Business–Process
management and Business–Technology management
seemed to have the maximum coverage as well as the
123

maximum variation in its coverage across the institutes.
Several important categories such as the strategic impact of
IS, economic value of IS, and social implications were
often under-represented in several of the institutes. Student
enrollment in IS courses seems to be a consistent problem.
4 Discussions
Having described our motivation for doing this study and
our findings, we now summarize these findings as sug-
gestions to aspiring IS researchers.
4.1 Develop knowledge on research methodology
Despite the raging debate on rigor versus relevance, IS
researchers would do well not to ignore the rigor part of the
research. IS research work ultimately has to measure up to
the high standards of academic research and relevance of
topic cannot be used as an excuse to dilute the rigor.
Selecting relevant research topics in a field that is influ-
enced by rapid change in IT is an added challenge to
researchers in this field. Consultants, who are often cred-
ited for working on relevant topics, tend to work on ‘‘topic
of the day’’. IS researchers cannot take this approach and
instead should focus on more enduring topics. Core issues
of IS do not change much, rather they present themselves
in new context under new technology. Such issues will
need rigorous research work and can only be addressed by
IS researchers.
4.2 Do not ignore qualitative techniques
With the focus of IS research moving away from within the
confines of the business organization to the society as a
whole, there is a growing need for adoption of interpretive
and critical research paradigms by IS researchers. With an
eye on the future direction of the field, IS researchers
would be well advised to develop a strong foothold on
qualitative research techniques. This, in no means, indi-
cates that they should ignore quantitative positivist
approaches as these methods are still best suited for a wide
variety of research problems.
4.3 Develop knowledge base in multiple reference
disciplines
The cross-disciplinary nature of IS field will not fade away.
This makes research in the IS field more challenging and
interesting. Aspiring IS researchers have to acknowledge
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Inf Technol Manag
this and prepare themselves by having a sound knowledge
across the multiple reference disciplines.
4.4 Future of the IS field
The IS researchers we spoke to were very optimistic on the
future of the IS field. The general consensus was: ‘‘yes,
there is an identity crisis, acknowledge that and move on’’.
There are far too many interesting challenges and oppor-
tunities in the field, a vast range of open areas to be
researched on and a growing contribution to other fields.
The non-IS researchers acknowledged the growing influ-
ence of IS in their disciplines and felt the need to actively
collaborate with IS researchers. In addition, given that this
is a young discipline, IS researchers have a better oppor-
tunity in making a mark in this field and thus are encour-
aged against attrition to other fields.
4.5 Make the IS course more interesting for managers
Today, managers do not shy away from handling people
related or finance related issues in their day to day activi-
ties, but are wary of taking ownership of IS related issues in
their work practice. There is no doubt that management
students and emerging managers will have to encounter IS
related issues throughout their career and need to build
adequate skill sets to manage these issues. Identifying and
continually updating the minimal IS related BOK that all
managers should be aware of, offering courses that inte-
grate IS into all other management disciplines and devel-
oping an interest in IS subjects among management
students is an important area for the growth of the field.
The non-IS researchers acknowledged the need for having
IS as a core course and were of the opinion that IS need not
be limited to being a single discipline course and can be
considered as a capstone course integrating insights from
multiple disciplines.
5 Limitations
One of the primary limitation of the study is the limited
number of business schools that were surveyed and the
limited sample of IS researchers that we were able to reach
out to. However, given the exploratory nature of the study,
we are of the opinion that the data analyzed is sufficient
enough to provide an overview understanding on the state
of the discipline in India. The significant insights that we
got from this limited set of institutes and faculties indicate
the immense potential for conducting a broad-based study
across a wider group of institutes and researchers.
Inf Technol Manag
6 Conclusion
IS research has traditionally been driven by north-Ameri-
can and European researchers. However, of late, an
increased amount of contribution can be seen to be coming
from Chinese and Indian researchers. While past studies
have looked at the state of IS research in non European and
American contexts—such as Asia–Pacific [15], China [40],
and Japan [33], there have been no such study focused on
the Indian context. It is this gap that we attempted to
address by conducting a study of the state of academic field
in India.
We reviewed the functioning of IS departments across
top management institutes of India and subsequently con-
ducted detailed interviews with a few of the eminent IS
researchers from India. While our findings indicate the
continued presence of issues that have persisted in the field
over the last several decades, there was also a clear sense of
optimism in the future of the field in India.
We have earlier elaborated on the prominence of the IT
industry in India. It may be noted that the initial focus of
the IT industry in India was on IT services. Subsequently
the employees hired by these companies were either from a
Computer Science background or trained in Software
Engineering. With the maturing of the IT services industry
and subsequent reduction in annual growth rates, most
Indian IT service providers are exploring options of non-
linear growth [27]. This has led the Indian service pro-
viders to expand their services to areas such as IT product
implementation and end-to-end IT and business consulting.
With increasing opportunities in IT and business consulting
space, B-school students would be well advised to pursue
IS courses as part of their graduate education. Subse-
quently, we argue that there is a greater need to bring back
the focus on IS in B-schools in India.
While the primary audience targeted by our paper are IS
researchers, we also have inputs for B-school deans and
directors. Our analysis lays emphasis on the breadth of IS
related topics that are essential for management students
and the need to focus beyond just a ‘‘tool view’’. The
implication to administrators is on the need to invest in IS
faculties capable of imparting these essential skills to stu-
dents. Other stakeholders such as government agencies,
industry groups and organizations would also benefit from
a study of the IS academic field. Such a study would need
to analyze information relevant to such stakeholders
including interfaces between academia and government/
industry bodies, analyze their demands from IS academia,
and assess the relevance of IS academic research to prac-
tice. We suggest these as an agenda for future research
work.
Our study indicates that the IS research community in
India is still relatively small with a primary focus on
teaching. Even faculties who showed research interests had
a relatively smaller number of publications, when com-
pared to their American and European counterparts, owing
to the high teaching demands imposed by Indian B-schools.
However, it may be noted that the scenario in India is
changing, with most schools now benchmarking their
research contributions with those of foreign universities.
This has translated into an increase in the research focus by
faculties in India. With such a changing context, a study
that tracks the publication that arises out of India and the
collaboration the Indian researchers have among them-
selves and with foreign researchers may be interesting to
conduct. A related topic would be to assess how the Indian
IS researchers have been performing compared with
researchers from other disciplines. This may be achieved
both by studying the temporal progress of IS researchers in
comparison to other disciplines, as well as by comparing
the relative performance of Indian researchers across dis-
ciplines against their counterparts from Americas and
Europe. We leave this as a suggestion for future research.
Appendix 1: List of B-schools and ranking agencies
The ranking agencies considered included the following:
• Economic times 2011 ranking (a leading business
newspaper)
• Business Today B-school ranking 2011 (a leading
business magazine).
• CNBC TV18 ‘A List of B-school’—2011 (a leading
business news channel).
• http://www.mbauniverse.com/BSchoolRanking2011/,
www.4gmat.com/; and http://www.pagalguy.com/
(online MBA preparatory websites).
The final set of institutes considered for analysis in our
study include:
Indian Institute of Management Development Institute,
Management, Ahmadabad Gurgaon
Indian Institute of Narsee Monjee Institute of
Management, Bangalore Management Studies,
Mumbai
Indian Institute of SP Jain Institute of Management &
Management, Calcutta Research, Mumbai
Indian Institute of Symbiosis Institute of
Management, Indore Business Management,
Pune
Indian Institute of VGSOM School of Business, IIT
Management, Khozikode Kharagpur
Indian Institute of Xavier Institute of Management,
Management, Lucknow Bubaneshwar
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Indian Institute of Management, Xavier Labour Research 3 How would you rate the dependence or independence of IS from
Shillong Institute, Jamshedpur these disciplines
Indian School of Business, Hyderabad Christ college institute of 4 Would you consider any topic that is core to IS and not influenced
management, Bangalore by other disciplines
Institute of Management Technology, Faculty of Management D Curriculum and Teaching (for MBAs)
Ghaziabad Studies, Delhi 1 In your opinion, do you see the need for a distinct IS course in the
Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of ICFAI Business School MBA curriculum?
Management Studies (JBIM), (IBS)-Hyderabad 2 Should IS be a core course or an elective in MBA curriculum?
Mumbai 3 Are there any aspects that you think are better taught by
practitioners?
E IS department at the institute
Appendix 2: Survey questionnaire
1 What is the role of the IS department in the institute?
2 Is the institute subscribing to all the research databases/IS
A IS Research Community journals that you would like to read?
1 How you like would to define IS as a discipline? 3 What are the expectations from an IS faculty?
2 How would you rate the contribution that IS research has done to 4 What are the expectations from an IS researcher/student?
the Industry/Society/Other disciplines?
5 Your perspective of academic freedom and how much you have
3 How would you rate the progress of IS research over the last few been able to achieve this at the institute?
years?
6 What changes do you anticipate in the role being performed by
4 Would you consider an identity crisis within the IS research the IS area in the institute in the near future?
community?
5 What is your opinion on the current state of affairs in terms of
rigour and relevance?
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