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been accepted as a fact of political life, and attention has shifted towards trying to estab-
lish principles for the conduct of public debates that will ensure an image is reasonably
commensurate with the underlying reality. It is in any case accepted that all political
candidates, whatever moral stance they take toward image-making, must ensure that
their public image is a positive one (Pratkanis and Aronson, 2001, p. 140).
While the effects of image on the reputation and visibility of an academic field are neither
as obvious nor as immediate as in politics, its relevance is easy to show. A review of the
literature concerning research methods reveals, for instance, that there is a well-defined
hierarchy of disciplines based originally on their relative scientific 'purity' (Kline, 1995).
In this the natural sciences rank above the social sciences, and physics ranks first among
the natural sciences. This has led to a situation where the term 'physics envy' has been
coined to describe the tendency for researchers in other disciplines to attempt to emulate
physicists as closely as possible in their selection of research methods. The endless debates
on whether qualitative methods should be deemed adequately rigorous are testament
to the power of this particular piece of cultural capital (Sutton, 1997). The need for
qualitative researchers to justify their approaches at the most basic level continues to
contrast with the lack of such a requirement for quantitative researchers.
Changes in governmental and social perspectives on education have also had an effect
in this context. Image becomes a critical issue when performance is judged on the power
of the discipline to attract new students, to acquire funding from external sources, and
to achieve research targets. All of these issues are affected by the strength and clarity
of the discipline's public profile, which must be sufficiently recognisable to ensure that
it is familiar to students, parents, investors, and research participants alike. Introna
(2003, p. 236) comments in this regard that 'the status of IS as an academic discipline is
… a political [question] from the start', and the effects of the political aspect seem indis-
putable. Academics choose appropriate research topics, seek funding in approved ways,
and write appropriate types of research papers in accordance with the need to satisfy
externally defined performance targets (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997).
Theory as symbolic capital
Factors inhibiting an interest in theory development abound. Theoretical papers are
generally judged to be difficult to conceptualise, difficult to write, and difficult to have
published (Hirschheim and Klein, 2003). The performance value placed on rigorous re-
search, numbers of publications and the pursuit of funding are further disincentives,
both for the individual academic and for the discipline as a whole. From this perspective,
it could even be argued that the IS field has a motive to discourage its leading academics
from participating in theory development.
Theory development is inherently an objective to which standard management criteria
for evaluation are ill suited. Targets for volumes of publications, the amounts of research
funding obtained, and the numbers of new students signed up for courses can be spe-
cified, their achievement monitored, and funding rewards calculated, an outcome that
accords very well with the contemporary passion for quick evaluation (Laverty, 1996).
The investment of time and effort in theory development is in contrast always risky;
not only does the activity produce nothing measurable; it may not even generate a viable
'product' (Aronowitz, 2000). The time spent in the pursuit of theory could therefore be
considered wasted from some perspectives.
Yet Bourdieu's analysis, considered in conjunction with circumstantial evidence from
other fields such as physics and sociology, suggests that the development of grand theory
can be invaluable, at least from the broader disciplinary perspective, and that information
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