Management theories have been developed so far by avoiding normative argument. The avoidance has caused serious problems in the implementation of corporate governance, where legal argument dominated. This paper discusses that the legal logic that director must rely on to protect themselves at the shareholders' derivative suit, that the rigid control systems that are prescribed in the internal control act (JSOX) do not permit flexible actions and kaizen in the organizations, and that the organizations of top management that are prescribed in the corporate law do not permit speedy and flexible decisions.

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This paper is a revised and extended version of "Rigor vs. Relevance: Research on Management & Information Systems (IS) and its Stand Point" presented by the author at 62th annual conference, JSIM in 2011. This paper focuses on the "Reference Discipline (RD)" problem. Firstly, after reviewing RD issue, we analyze newspaper articles and academic papers for over 20 years, in order to identify core areas of IS research. Secondly, we discuss Japan specific issues related to RD.

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This paper deals with the investigation of theoretical contributions of research for Management Information Systems (MIS) by employing a comparative studies focusing on engineering methodologies for information science. At first, we summarize the origin and the state of the arts of MIS, and discuss the development of information engineering in Japan by focusing on their important role for supply of human resources, and also their limitations. Then we select three dominant technical journals in the USA to extract key words from papers in these journals. The frequencies of key words in papers are used to compare the trends of researches between MIS and OR, MS. Finally, we discuss the important tasks and novel fields of MIS by considering the overall commoditization of information technology.

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The purpose of this paper is to clarify the diffusion of declarative knowledge about management studies. We consider that this purpose is useful to the premise of the discussion of "Rigor vs. Relevance". Therefore, using web survey, we reveal the status of diffusion of the knowledge of management studies. In addition, we analyze the difference in the amount of knowledge by the profile factors.

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Rigor vs. Relevance problem has been discussed in IS domain for a long time. It has been a major theme in our society recently. There are many papers been published and discussed about it. We revisit it and extend the discussion with literature survey. We conclude that we should employ wider view and classify researches to theoretical and practical to resolve rigor and relevance conflict. We recommend publishing two journals, one is for academic and pursue theoretical rigor, and another is for practical and practical implication should be appreciated.

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This paper explores a research stance emphasized to have relations with education and practice, where researcher can attempt to satisfy both academic rigor and practical relevance of research in our information systems discipline. Firstly, the paper clarifies that each academic rigor and practical relevance is an evaluation criterion from different view point and/or dimension, and that just enhancing academic rigor is not enough to directly satisfy practical relevance. Secondly, we discuss why the "research-education-practice triangle" approach satisfies both of them. Lastly, we verify how the approach has satisfied them, through a REA case study in Accounting Information Systems discipline.

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In this article, management information research focused on "practical theory" is reconsidered. The existing studies show that empirical studies are not sufficient to understand practice. Based on Husserl's arguments, analyzing practice from actor's subjective conscious experience seems important. Moreover, discussion of Schutz, who applied Husserl's theory to social science, shows different characteristics of consciousness in "practice" and "theorization", a set of criteria for "theorization" based on practice, and characteristics of social science. Through these arguments, it is clear that management information research for practical theory and social science needs to construct concepts based on the relations of "social actions", and should focus on revealing human consciousness and informational functions in organizational communication.

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This study aims to reexamine of the identity of organizational routine studies which is one of reference disciplines of AIS. Generally, routines are understood as recurrent behavioral patterns, and making changes in organizational routines is regarded as a theoretical issue. This study proposes that organizational routines should be taken as preconditions for decision-making which afford a clue to members within an organization when accomplishing a work; furthermore, an inquiry about design principles for organizing work practices activated by routines should be viewed as an authentic theoretical issue. Additionally, this study provides some practical implications, through a case study of an aircraft service.

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Recently, the research-practice gap has become a major issue in human resource management (HRM) studies. Some studies insist that HRM studies have to be carried out based on rigorous theoretical accounts. Other studies propose that HRM studies have to be relevant to management. Both assume that HRM studies can pursue rigor or relevance by building on universal facts. However, there are no universal facts that are available. In contrast, this study advocates the critical analysis of how "HRM works". We analyze business process re-engineering through the introduction of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package. This analysis indicates how our practices are constructed by the distinctiveness of HRM.

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The purpose of this paper discusses a dispute of marketing methodology, and protecting a case study with practical view. This paper indicates new position of case study which is adopted marketing study and business study as valid methodology. Simultaneously, this paper shows practical view will be turned down a divide of rigor and relevance.

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