Looking back at my time as a doctoral student, my own academic upbringing happened to be relatively in line with a developmental trajectory that has been discussed for the information system (IS) field as a whole: from topics, to methods, to theories. While the field’s early years were characterized by a fascination and open exploration of the then new topic of corporate computing (Klemmer, 1973), the field needed to overcome difficulties in terms of methodological quality (Banville and Landry, 1989) before eventually being challenged to pay more attention to its theoretical development (Zmud, 1998). So by the end of my dissertation, albeit a decade later, I too was facing increasing scrutiny not only on what I did and how I did it, but on why I did it (i.e. what is my theoretical contribution). At the time, however, guidance on what theory was and how to use it was scarce in our field and only few notable exceptions provided—more or less explicit— direction (with Gregor, 2006; Grover et al., 2008; Markus and Robey, 1988; Truex et al., 2006; Weber, 2003 being the ones that had the biggest influence on me at the time). So I was quite happy to turn to the debates in our reference fields such as management or sociology. In particular, I worked through the various special issues and sections in the Academy of Management Review and the Academy of Management Journal with great joy, the papers of which continue to play a big role in our understanding of theory today as evidenced by the many references from this stream of work also present in Rivard’s essay. The only thing I was left to wonder was why similar reflections and debates on theory and theorizing were not as common in the IS community as they had been elsewhere. No surprise then that I was delighted when the IS community began to increase its attention to matters related to theory and theorizing through papers such as Hovorka et al. (2013), Lee (2014), or Weber (2012) (this, again, being the convenience sample of papers that struck a chord with me then). Since the dawn of the 2010s, we have seen a number of theory tracks (such as at ECIS, ICIS, and HICSS), special issues (most recently at MIS Quarterly), commentaries (such as Avison and Malaurent, 2014), editorials (e.g. Leidner, 2020; Rai, 2017, 2018), doctoral seminars (such as Suzanne’s and my own), studies (e.g. Burton-Jones et al., 2017; Larsen and Bong, 2016; Niederman and March, 2019), and panel discussions on everything that moves the theorist’s heart. This lively debate now offers a broad variety of perspectives and ideas to provide aspiring young contributors the foundations and impulses that were so sorely lacking a decade ago.

中文翻译：

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理论三连冠

回首我读博士的时候，我自己的学术成长恰好比较符合信息系统（IS）领域整体的发展轨迹：从主题、到方法、再到理论。虽然该领域早期的特点是对当时的企业计算新主题（Klemmer，1973）的迷恋和开放探索，但该领域需要克服方法学质量方面的困难（Banville 和 Landry，1989），然后最终受到挑战更多地关注其理论发展（Zmud，1998）。因此，在我的论文结束时，尽管十年后，我也面临着越来越多的审查，不仅是我做了什么以及我是如何做到的，还有我为什么这样做（即我的理论贡献是什么）。然而当时，在我们的领域中，关于什么是理论以及如何使用它的指导很少，只有少数显着的例外提供了——或多或少明确的——方向（与 Gregor，2006；Grover 等，2008；Markus 和 Robey，1988；Truex 等., 2006; Weber, 2003 是当时对我影响最大的）。所以我很高兴转向我们参考领域的辩论，例如管理学或社会学。特别是，我非常高兴地阅读了《管理学院评论》和《管理学院期刊》的各种专刊和栏目，这些论文在我们今天对理论的理解中继续发挥着重要作用，许多参考文献就证明了这一点从这一工作流中也出现在里瓦德的文章中。我唯一想知道的是，为什么类似的关于理论和理论化的反思和辩论在 IS 社区不像在其他地方那样普遍。毫不奇怪，当 IS 社区开始通过 Hovorka 等人的论文增加对与理论和理论化相关的问题的关注时，我很高兴。(2013)、Lee (2014) 或 Weber (2012)（这又是当时引起我共鸣的论文的便利样本）。自 2010 年代初以来，我们看到了许多理论轨道（例如 ECIS、ICIS 和 HICSS）、特刊（最近在 MIS Quarterly）、评论（例如 Avison 和 Malaurent，2014）、社论（例如 Leidner, 2020; Rai, 2017, 2018)，博士研讨会（例如 Suzanne 和我自己的），研究（例如 Burton-Jones 等人，2017；Larsen 和 Bong，2016；Niederman 和 March，2019 年），以及关于所有让理论家感动的事情的小组讨论。这场激烈的辩论现在提供了广泛的视角和想法，为有抱负的年轻贡献者提供了十年前严重缺乏的基础和动力。