We've Got 99 Problems, But a Phone Ain't One: Mobile ICT and Academic Agility in Information Systems Research

The year 2013 celebrated the 40th anniversary since Martin Cooper made the World's first mobile phone call setting off a slow start to a mobile revolution diffusing a range of mobile information and communication technologies (mobile ICT) within reach of just about anyone. This paper explores how the Information Systems (IS) field has reacted to this significant phenomenon as an example of a measure of our field's agility in quickly addressing environmental changes to the sociotechnical phenomena constituting our field and incorporating these changes into the mainstream academic discussions. The main assumption is that irrespective of what possible impact and influence the IS field may have on such emerging phenomena, it is an essential part of the field's justification for existence to provide academically grounded treatments of the most significant sociotechnical phenomena. Given the force, pace and generativity of contemporary ICT development, we assume an increasing need for the IS field to display agility in the way it considers emerging phenomena and either rejects or adopts them as significant for the field. This paper explores the IS field response to mobile ICT as an example of such need for academic agility. A bibliometric study of the basked of eight journals from 2000 to 2010 reveals that the IS field still needs to find ways of responding to developments in a more agile manner.