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The Use of History in IS Research: An Opportunity Missed?

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Enacting Research Methods in Information Systems: Volume 1

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Abstract

History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present, and the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history that we make today. Henry Ford’s edict on history has, in a sense, become a cliché derided by some as the ignorant spoutings of a self-opinionated, but highly successful entrepreneur, and praised by others for its forthright condemnation of the way historians described the past. It is perhaps ironic that Henry Ford has himself become a historical icon, and that ‘Fordism’ attached as a label to the kind of industrial organisation he put into place and espoused.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. London School of Economics, London, UK

    Frank Land

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  1. Frank Land
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  1. London School of Economics and Political Science, UK

    Leslie P. Willcocks

  2. Oxford University, UK

    Chris Sauer

  3. University of Missouri-St Louis, USA

    Mary C. Lacity

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Land, F. (2016). The Use of History in IS Research: An Opportunity Missed?. In: Willcocks, L.P., Sauer, C., Lacity, M.C. (eds) Enacting Research Methods in Information Systems: Volume 1. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29266-3_9

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