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A Consideration for Researcher Career Retrospectives in Information Systems and Organization Studies

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Nordic Contributions in IS Research (SCIS 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 223))

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Abstract

This essay considers the researcher career retrospective (RCR) as an emerging publication genre in information systems (IS) and organization studies (OS). I assess two recent career texts, by/of Daniel Robey and John Van Maanen, as representative exemplars of this genre. I outline the genre, and identify resemblance between this and three genres of academic writing – namely career studies, IS history, and tribute. RCR fills an important niche within IS/OS publishing, and is especially needed in the Scandinavian IS research, in which it is currently absent. The 38 years of the IRIS conference, and 27 years of the SJIS journal, coincide with the careers of dozens of researchers. Reflection on these careers would provide much value for younger researchers and for the whole research community.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The Finnish original text is as follows: “Tietä käyden tien on vanki. Vapaa on vain umpihanki.”

  2. 2.

    Association for Information Systems Webinar “A Glorious and Not-So-Short History of the Information Systems Field”, which was held on February 9th, 2015.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Harri Oinas-Kukkonen, Daniel Robey, Rudy Hirschheim, all participants of the Seinäjoki IS doctoral seminar in April 2015, and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive and encouraging comments.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, PO Box 3000,, 90014, Oulun Yliopisto, Finland

    Arto Lanamäki

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  1. Arto Lanamäki
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Correspondence to Arto Lanamäki .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Harri Oinas-Kukkonen

  2. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Netta Iivari

  3. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Kari Kuutti

  4. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Anssi Öörni

  5. University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland

    Mikko Rajanen

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Lanamäki, A. (2015). A Consideration for Researcher Career Retrospectives in Information Systems and Organization Studies. In: Oinas-Kukkonen, H., Iivari, N., Kuutti, K., Öörni, A., Rajanen, M. (eds) Nordic Contributions in IS Research. SCIS 2015. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 223. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21783-3_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21783-3_6

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