We are happy to announce that Dr. Andreas Drechsler from Wellington's School of Information Management will give a guest lecture on June 27th, 2024. The lecture will be on the topic “A Framework for Analysing the Consideration of Boundary Conditions in the IS Literature”.

This talk presents a preliminary framework for analysing the extent to which IS papers consider boundary conditions in their research design and results presentation. Boundary conditions are assumptions about values, time, and space which need to be fulfilled so that the identified relationships in an explanatory theory hold true until falsified. Despite this prominent role, boundary conditions are one theory component that – unlike constructs, variables, and the relationships between them – have received surprisingly little explicit attention in the literature. Similar considerations exist in design-oriented research around the tension between more abstract artefacts (or design theories) and their application to specific contexts. Insufficient attention to boundary conditions may lead to IS research drawing on unsuitable knowledge or making unreflected or too wide claims for the validity, accuracy, or applicability of their findings. The framework in this presentation is developed around the role of boundary conditions across the research lifecycle. The plan for the near future is to draw on a refined version of the framework to analyse recently published papers in top IS journals, and to derive insights whether and to which extent IS scholars can benefit from further guidance around boundary conditions.

Dr. Andreas Drechsler is Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington's School of Information Management. His current research interests revolve around topics such as IT governance, business IT alignment, enterprise architecture, information security, project and #noproject management in small and medium organisations, Scaling Agile organisational contexts as well as HyFlex approaches to IS course design in higher education. He has published more than 30 papers on these and other topics in international academic journals and conferences.

Interested colleagues and students are cordially invited to attend the talk on June 27, 2024 at 11:00 am in room R11 T00 D05.