Exploring the critical agenda in information systems research

This special issue of the Information Systems Journal (ISJ) is dedicated to critical information systems (IS) research that involves a wide range of diverse research endeavours that explore the terrain beyond functionalist and positivist approaches, with the aim to transform IS practice and IS-organization relationships. Critical IS studies share with critical management studies (CMS) deep scepticism 'regarding the moral defensibility and the social and ecological sustainability of prevailing conceptions and forms of management and organization' (Adler et al., 2006), conceptions and forms made possible to a large degree by IS research and practice. Critical IS studies aim at revealing, criticizing and explaining how the development and use of IS in organizations and society in the pursuit of efficiency, rationalization and progress also increase social control and domination, with potential detrimental consequences for some stakeholders and society as a whole.