The paper "A Method for Taxonomy Development and Its Application in Information Systems" by Robert C. Nickerson, Upkar Varshney, and Jan Muntermann addresses the fundamental problem of classifying objects in a domain into a taxonomy, which is crucial in many disciplines, including information systems (IS). The authors highlight that taxonomy development in IS has often been ad hoc, lacking a structured approach. They present a method for taxonomy development based on literature from other disciplines, emphasizing the importance of a taxonomy's qualities such as conciseness, robustness, comprehensiveness, extendibility, and explanatory power. The method is iterative and includes a meta-characteristic, which serves as the basis for choosing characteristics in the taxonomy. The authors also define objective and subjective ending conditions to determine when the taxonomy development process should terminate. The method combines conceptualization/deduction and empiricism/induction strategies, encouraging an iterative process to reach a useful taxonomy. The paper concludes with a demonstration of the method's efficacy by developing a taxonomy of mobile applications.The paper "A Method for Taxonomy Development and Its Application in Information Systems" by Robert C. Nickerson, Upkar Varshney, and Jan Muntermann addresses the fundamental problem of classifying objects in a domain into a taxonomy, which is crucial in many disciplines, including information systems (IS). The authors highlight that taxonomy development in IS has often been ad hoc, lacking a structured approach. They present a method for taxonomy development based on literature from other disciplines, emphasizing the importance of a taxonomy's qualities such as conciseness, robustness, comprehensiveness, extendibility, and explanatory power. The method is iterative and includes a meta-characteristic, which serves as the basis for choosing characteristics in the taxonomy. The authors also define objective and subjective ending conditions to determine when the taxonomy development process should terminate. The method combines conceptualization/deduction and empiricism/induction strategies, encouraging an iterative process to reach a useful taxonomy. The paper concludes with a demonstration of the method's efficacy by developing a taxonomy of mobile applications.