'Nut en nog eens nut'; Over retoriek, mythes en rituelen in informatiesysteemonderzoek

There has been much debate in the management sciences in general and the field of information systems in particular over the tradeoffs between rigor and relevance. Since it is viewed as a tradeoff, most of those debating the is-sues take up position on one side or the other. On the one hand, mainly to gain acceptance as an academic discipline the management sciences have stressed rigor. On the other hand, the business community severely criticizes university education and research for its lack of relevance. In this paper an ap-proach is proposed to achieve both rigor and relevance. Part of the response suggested can be described as application driven theory development, mean-ing that relevance may be attained starting off with a concrete problem in the context of an actual problem situation. Theory becomes part of the equation when the approaches used are generalized and made publicly available for use by others and with sufficient rigor to allow for validation. Academia and business have their own specific role in such research processes.

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