Identifying Theories Used in North American IS Research: A Bottom-Up, Computational Approach

In an effort to shed light on the current stage of disciplinary evolution in the IS field, this study sought to systematically and objectively identify and document the theories that have been used in North American IS research, as well as to identify trends regarding the adoption of new theories and the rate of theory turnover. To this end, we used computational techniques to search more than 10 million Wikipedia article titles for candidate theory names, and contrasted the resulting list with the complete text of every research article published in three leading North American IS journals over a 24-year period. This process resulted in the identification of more than 300 unique theories that have verifiably appeared in these journals since 1990, along with their respective frequencies of appearance. Analyzing these frequency data revealed a strong upward trend in the number of unique theories appearing in North American IS research, as well as a significant, and likely unsustainable increase in theory turnover.