The words Fashion and Information Technology can't be used in the same sentence

The notion that trends in Information Systems (IS) resemble that of Fashion industry trends is annoying to say the least. In this response I will firstly, visually show how the patterns differ between IS trends and Fashion trends published in related articles. Then I will argue types of questions that researchers ask there respondents to support the notion of Fashion. Lastly, I will show why the notion of Fashion can be rejected by comparing so called “old fashion innovations” which is still an issue for todays IS managers.

Because Fashion is transient in nature, it exhibits upswings and downswings. As shown in Figure 1, how skirt width measurements in England and France deviated from the mean from 1954 to 1990. Some researchers try to associate this trend with that of IS.

Figure 1. Curran, L. (1999). An Analysis of Cycles in Skirt Lengths and Widths in the UK and Germany, 1954-1990

For instance the Wang (2010) stated that the innovations in Figure 2 came into fashion and peaked at a point in time. We cannot relate Figure 2 with Figure 1. Figure 1 moves unpredictably like fashion does where as Figure 2 shows how an innovation came into IS, gained interest to a peak, and then died off.  Gill and Bhattacherjee (2009) called this pattern The Completion of a Successful Informing Process. I agree with this notion of the IS pattern.

Figure 2. Wang, P. (2010). Chasing the Hottest IT: Effects of Information Technology Fashion on Organisations

Then researchers go to some extremes to support their notion of Fashion. Basaglia, Caporarello, Magni, and Pennarola (2008) asked the questions in Figure 3 to support their hypotheses that “Greater fashion setter pressure, will lead to greater intent to adopt”. The questions asked are clearly not a representation of what fashion is or isn’t.

Figure 3. Basaglia, S., Caporarello, L., Magni, M., and Pennarola, F. (2008). Environmental and organizational drivers influencing the adoption of VoIP

Innovation like Knowledge Management (KM), E-Commerce, Data warehouse(DW), Customer relationship management(CRM), Business process reengineering(BPR) are all claimed to be a fashion hype (Raub and Rüling, 2001; Scarbrough and Swan, 2001; Basaglia et al, 2008; Baskerville and Myers, 2009; Wang, 2010). But all of these relate to a study by Luftman and Zadeh (2011) key Information Technology and Management Issues. How can these innovations be seen as Fashion if it is still an issue for the IT managers of today.

References

Basaglia, S., Caporarello, L., Magni, M., and Pennarola, F. (2008). Environmental and organizational drivers influencing the adoption of VoIP. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 7(1), 103–118.

Baskerville, R. L., and Myers, M. D. (2009). Fashion Waves in Information Systems Research and Practice. MIS Quarterly, 33(4), 647-662.

Curran, L. (1999). An Analysis of Cycles in Skirt Lengths and Widths in the UK and Germany, 1954-1990. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal , 17, 65-72.

Gill, G., and Bhattacherjee, A. (2009). Fashion Waves versus Informing: Response to Baskerville and Myers. MIS Quarterly, 33(4), 667-671.

Luftman, J. and H. S. Zadeh (2011). Key Information Technology and Management Issues 2010–11: An International Study. Journal of Information Technology, 3(26), 193-204.

Raub, S., & Rüling, C.-C. (2001). The knowledge management tussle – speech communities and rhetorical strategies in the development of knowledge management. Journal of Information Technology, 16(2), 113–130.

Scarbrough, H., and Swan, J. (2001). Explaining the Diffusion of Knowledge Management: The Role of Fashion. British Journal of Management, 12(1), 3–12.

Wang, P. (2010). Chasing the Hottest IT: Effects of Information Technology Fashion on Organizations. MIS Quarterly, 34(1), 63-85.