This opinion paper addresses and contributes to the discourse on whether there is a central artifact that captures the essence of the information systems (IS) discipline. It argues that the IS discipline can, and should be, faithfully captured by an IS artifact. We offer a theoretical conception of the IS artifact by drawing upon General Systems Theory (GST). Key concepts of GST are distilled as meta-principles which inform our formulation of the IS artifact. We use the meta-principles of the IS artifact to develop salient assertions that theorize what an ‘IS’ is. To demonstrate the appropriateness of our conception, we illustrate how the assertions we developed are consistent with patterns related to emerging topics in IS research, notably, healthcare and IT, and Fintech. We formulate a research agenda on these emerging topics—based upon the conceptions developed in the paper—to guide future research. We conclude with the contributions and implications of our study, including the relevance for IT-enabled work in the era of the COVID-19 pandemic.

中文翻译：

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信息系统 (IS) 工件的可能概念化：一般系统理论观点

这份意见书针对是否存在能够捕捉信息系统 (IS) 学科本质的核心工件的讨论做出了贡献。它认为 IS 纪律可以而且应该被 IS 工件忠实地捕获。我们通过利用通用系统理论 (GST) 来提供 IS 工件的理论概念。GST 的关键概念被提炼为元原则，为我们制定 IS 工件提供了信息。我们使用 IS 工件的元原理来开发突出的断言，将“IS”是什么理论化。为了证明我们的概念的适当性，我们说明了我们开发的断言如何与 IS 研究中与新兴主题相关的模式一致，特别是医疗保健和 IT 以及金融科技。我们根据论文中提出的概念制定了关于这些新兴主题的研究议程，以指导未来的研究。我们总结了我们研究的贡献和影响，包括在 COVID-19 大流行时代与 IT 支持的工作的相关性。