Although scale reuse is an important and efficient research practice, it may not always be the most appropriate practice. Mechanistically reusing scales developed for a particular context may lead to a variety of undesirable effects. One of the risks is that frequently reused scales can inadvertently begin to alter the definitions of related constructs. When this occurs, a full understanding of the constructs can be lost. Innovation diffusion is one area in which evidence suggests that this has occurred, specifically for relative advantage and compatibility. This article seeks to better understand the risks of mechanistic scale reuse within the information systems field, with a specific focus on the relative advantage and compatibility constructs. We review the information systems literature focusing on IT adoption and diffusion, examining the theoretical and empirical relationships between relative advantage and compatibility. Evidence from this review indicates that there may be both conceptual and empirical overlap between the two, which has led to inconsistent empirical and theoretical treatment of the constructs across studies. We also report an empirical examination of the domain coverage of the scales, which provides evidence that the scales a) exhibit a high degree of conceptual and empirical overlap and b) only represent a subset of their full conceptualization. We offer recommendations for researchers who wish to use these constructs in future work.

Churchman [1971] defines inquiry as an activity that produces knowledge. He examines the epistemologies of five schools of philosophy from the perspective of general systems theory, asking the question as to whether each is suitable as the basis for the design of computer-based "inquiring systems." He considers systems design and design theory in some detail. We believe that Churchman's inquiring systems can form the basis for the design of knowledge management systems and that the IS research community has hardly tapped the potential of inquiring systems in that regard. Mason and Mitroff [1973] brought inquiring systems into the IS literature early on, essentially making the work endogenous to the field. We argue that building on inquiring systems can contribute to developing IS as a discipline by maintaining continuity in research and developing a theory that IS can call its own. We believe that the lack of use of Churchman's work may be due to its lack of visibility in recent years and attempt to remedy that by summarizing the basics of the inquirers in some detail, trying not to interpret, but to remain faithful to the original. The paper encourages readers to study the original and develop their own notion of how the inquirers might be used in knowledge management work. There are probably as many different perspectives on how inquiring systems could support KMS as there are IS researchers willing to study them. We would like to encourage a proliferation of such perspectives.

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This paper explores the theoretical underpinning of data exchange research, specifically Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), over the period from 1993 to 2002. It identifies the underlying research paradigms applied to examination of data exchange, and determines conceptual and theoretical gaps in previous research on data exchange in interorganizational relationships (IORs). Sixty-eight articles are analyzed. Results suggest a predominant concern with the outcomes realized with EDI adoption and use. There appears to be a shift in emphasis from dyadic relationships to networks. As a majority of the studies are of the survey nature using single cross-sectional snapshots, the emphasis appears to be on short-term outcomes of EDI-enabled relationships. Implications of the findings are discussed.

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