Insights from the Theories and Products of Theorizing (T-PoT) World Tour

The goal of this paper is to summarize several findings from the Theories and Products of Theorizing (T-PoT) World Tour sponsored by the Association of Information Systems (AIS) Special Interest Group on Philosophy (SIGPHIL) in Information Systems (IS). Since the IS field’s inception, the field has struggled with theory, particularly in building its own native theories. Using critical discourse analysis, this study provides preliminary insights of an underlying dominant discourse, jointly constructed, that is holding the IS field back from building native IS theories. This dominant discourse is supported by socially-valued resources in the academic context such as position, status, group membership, and invisible colleges that prevent the IS community from engaging with theory in its research.