Wir freuen uns, dass Prof. Rudy Hirschheim von der Louisana State University, einer der profiliertesten Vertreter des Information Systems Research, am 11. Juni 2025 um 14 Uhr in R09 R04 H02 im Rahmen der Visiting Scholar Academy bei uns zu Gast in Essen ist. Herr Prof. Hirschheim wird einen Vortrag mit dem Titel “Stop Talking About Theory: Garbage Cans, Pragmatism and Useful Generalizations” halten. Alle Interessierten sind herzlich eingeladen!

“In my 'Against Theory' paper in JAIS, I argued that the field’s fetish with theory was problematic as we researchers had to couch everything we did within the context of theory: theory production, theory modification, implications for theory, what type of theory, etc. One area that I didn’t explore in much detail was the impact of the field’s theory focus on one key stakeholder group – practitioners. Practitioners are uninterested in theory; they want guidance in terms of what they need to do. Talking about theory turns them off as they see this as simply more ivory tower baloney. Perhaps adopting Cohen, March and Olson’s 1972 notion of ‘the garbage can model of organizational decision making’ might provide a useful way of thinking about how we can formulate the research that we do and how this could be valuable to our practitioner colleagues. I will also offer some thoughts about the value of 'useful generalizations' which are essentially archetypes that practitioners might find far more valuable than the production of 'theories'.” Rudy Hirschheim, Stephenson Department of Entrepreneurship and Information Systems E.J. Ourso College of Business - LSU

Rudy Hirschheim (PhD, University of London) is the Ourso Family Distinguished Professor of Information Systems at Louisiana State University. He has previously been on the faculties of the University of Houston, the London School of Economics (University of London), and Templeton College (University of Oxford). He is past Senior Editor for Information and Organization and Journal of the Association for Information Systems. He is on the editorial boards of: Journal of Management Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Journal of Information Technology and Journal of Strategic Information Systems. He holds the LEO Award for Lifetime Achievement and is a Fellow of the AIS. He was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Oulu (Finland) and the University of Bern (Switzerland)