BI Views: Connection, Immersion, and Fusion Through the Lens of Emergence

In the debate on the core of Information System (IS), El Sawy identified three faces of IS views: connection, immersion, and fusion. However, no research has further elaborated these concepts. For this task, we adopted the characteristics of the old concept of “emergence” to better describe and explain the shifts in IS from connection to immersion and finally towards fusion. A police organization is examined as a case study, and its Business Intelligence (BI) system and users and their interaction in solving daily tasks are observed. The study took place during two different time periods in 2009 and 2011. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used, including a survey and interviews. Two main user groups were identified in the police organization: viewers and analysts. The results of this study showed that in the context of viewers BI is in connection view and is slowly emerging into immersion. On the other hand, in the context of analysts BI is positioned in immersion view and, based on emergent properties, we concluded that there is potential for a slow emergence towards fusion once more capabilities are integrated in the BI system used by the analysts.