State of the Art of the State of the Art - A study of the research method "review" in the information systems discipline

The world-wide increasing amount of literature makes it necessary to describe, to synthesize, to evaluate, to clarify, or to integrate the results of papers in a particular field of research. Today, the process of conducting a literature review is seen as a scientific procedure, which should be guided by appropriate research methods. This paper analyzes the achieved research level in the information Systems discipline from a methodological point of view. As a sample we use all articles from the column ,,State-of-the-Art" of the journal WIRTSCHAFT-SINFORMATIK. The study shows that this research method is common in Information Systems research. However, several important aspects for further development are identified: (1) Until now no mathernatical-statistical analysis has been used. (2) Research methods used in the primary papers are not taken into account by reviews. (3) No explicit objectives are discussed by about one third of the articles in the sample. (A) The selection of literature used as a basis for the review is not explicated in any article. (5) About one half of the reviewed articles do not discuss further research questions.