An enquiry into property-goal type definitions of the term "information system"

Abstract

After reference to IS authors such as Lay [7J it becomes evident that there is as yet no unified definition of the term "information system." This research has attempted to extract, from the relevant literature, the supposed properties and expected goals of information systems that would enable the formation of such a definition. A questionnaire was designed to investigate support for the properties and goals suggested by the IS literature. Kendall association coefficients for the scores obtained were then determined to measure the levels of consensus among samples of 32 academics and 32 practitioners, both individually and as groups. The goals and properties of an information system were separately examined in order to approach an acceptable definition which Lay [7] claims is thus far lacking among academics and practitioners . In the group of 32 academics, highly significant (p << 5%) consensus was found between the IS properties identified in the literature and claimed by the respondents. The same was found for the group of 32 IS practitioners. Highly significant agreement between the groups of respondents was also found. In short, little doubt exists that these IS professionals have a very well developed idea of what an IS should exhibit in terms of properties and goals. However, very little ability on their part formally to define an information system was observed.