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sibly even in the shorter run)' (Hirschheim and Klein, 2003, p. 239). This is, if anything,
a mild conclusion, given that they also comment that the field is in 'a state of fragment-
ation, and [suffers from] a number of significant communication gaps' (Hirschheim and
Klein, 2003, p. 241). Their paper notes other issues including a major 'disconnect' between
IS and organisational management. They highlight management's willingness to set IT
issues aside as being peripheral to organisational interests, and suggest that this must
be a serious concern for the discipline (Hirschheim and Klein, 2003, p. 251). A further
claim is that management sees IS research directions as problematic, and as 'devoid of
any practical relevance' (Hirschheim and Klein, 2003, p. 253).
The most frequent reaction to the perceived problems has been to suggest that IS needs
to focus on identifying and consolidating its core body (or bodies) of knowledge in the
interests of establishing and maintaining field coherence (Benbasat and Zmud, 2003;
Hirschheim and Klein, 2003). While it seems certain that this would generate considerable
benefits within the field, this paper takes a different tack, arguing on Bourdieu's prin-
ciples that IS needs to consider its relations with external parties as critical. What is re-
quired is an increase in visible cultural capital, in the form of concepts and ideas that
relate directly to external interests. It is argued that theory development and research
at the portfolio or organisational level, where IS structures shape and constrain organ-
isational possibilities and are beginning to be influential in broader societal terms, is the
most promising way to achieve this. Put in the broadest terms, the loss of IS visibility
reflects a lack of significant cultural capital in the form of publicly accessible ideas; this
can best be addressed through developments at the level of general theory.
The value of cultural capital
This section discusses Bourdieu's concepts of social fields and power, and their relevance
to a consideration of theory development in general. The value of theory for the mobil-
isation and coordination of the intellectual resources within a field is highlighted, and
illustrated with some brief examples from other disciplines.
Bourdieu's conception of social structures is a perspective in which social fields are seen
as embedded within a broader field of power. Fields can themselves comprise sub-fields
and so on, down to whatever level of analysis is selected (Swartz, 1997). In the construc-
tion developed in this paper, IS is a sub-field within the field of academic disciplines,
themselves embedded within a yet-broader field of education. The endemic underlying
struggle for power between individual disciplines is manifest in contemporary experience
through competitions for prestige, for new and/or higher quality students, and for
funding (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997).
The idea that academic disciplines are in competition with each other is certainly not
new. But as tertiary education has come to be seen more as an economic rather than social
issue, the issues of relative performance and standing within the academy have assumed
far greater salience than previously (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997). Placed in this context,
Bourdieuan theory implies that struggles for relative prestige are endemic and inevitable,
and that the current focus on economic factors will tend to intensify the severity of the
battles being waged. Though such struggles are not necessarily to the death, it is in his
view inevitable that the advancement of a field must be at the expense of one or more
others (Bourdieu, 1980).
Bourdieu's approach in this regard is consistent with other findings concerning recogni-
tion and the value of image. That a politician's image is at least as important as the
policies he or she stands for has become a commonplace observation in political analysis
(Pratkanis and Aronson, 2001). While this trend has been deprecated, it has nevertheless
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