The 2021 impact factor for ISJ was 7.767, for 2022 it was 6.4. These are some of the highest impact factors of any IS Journals. See past ISJ impact factors and the Editor’s comment on impact factors here. The next impact factor (2023) will not be available until around mid June 2024.

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the IT workforce management practices of auticon, a pioneering international IT consultancy firm from Germany that employs autistic individuals as its core workforce to deliver economically and socially sustainable IT services. Our analysis of auticon‘s approach allows us to distil four key workplace inclusion lessons for companies on how to best integrate neurodivergent professionals in the workplace and three lessons relevant to the IT industry on its journey to become more equitable and inclusive.

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ABSTRACT

Violence against women (VAW) is an endemic phenomenon that adversely affects the entire female population, even those who might not have directly experienced violence. This paper examines VAW’s adverse effects on all women’s employment capabilities by imposing restrictions on mobility in public spaces, a fundamental resource required for capability development. Drawing upon the new mobilities paradigm, this study also posits that information and computer technologies (ICTs) can enable virtual mobility, which could reduce women’s reliance on mobility in public spaces to develop employment capabilities. Country-level data from the WomanStats Project, the World Bank and the International Labor Organization are used to test the propositions. Implications for viewing virtual mobility as a resource to develop women’s employment capabilities in the presence of VAW are discussed.

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Information Systems Journal, EarlyView. Source

ABSTRACT

Social virtual world (SVW) platforms face a critical challenge to retain a sound base of active users, which is key to their success and requires a deep understanding of how much (lean usage) and how exactly (rich usage) users’ usage behaviours occur in these platforms. While both lean and rich usage are pivotal considerations in the SVW context, prior research has primarily assumed an omnibus conceptualisation of SVW usage that does not differentiate subtypes of usage. This results in limited knowledge about the sophisticated relationships and differences between lean and rich usage, making it difficult to reconcile inconclusive findings regarding how SVW usage is affected by its antecedents (e.g., commitment). In this paper, we draw upon the tripartite view of system usage to substantiate lean and rich usage constructs in the SVW context. Then, based upon the sociotechnical perspective (particularly the concepts of multifinality and equifinality) and the literature on SVW usage, we develop a research model to investigate the curvilinear relationships between lean usage (manifested in the extent and breadth of usage) and rich usage (represented by task variety and cognitive absorption), and the differential effects of two commitment components (affective and calculative commitment) on rich versus lean usage in the SVW context. Using two-wave field survey data from 312 users of Second Life (a pioneering SVW platform), we find sophisticated (linear/quadratic) relationships between lean and rich usage constructs: the extent of usage triggers the breadth of usage and task variety, and has a convex (U-shaped) relationship with cognitive absorption; the breadth of usage is positively related to cognitive absorption and has a concave (inverted J-shaped) relationship with task variety. Furthermore, we confirm that affective commitment positively affects both lean and rich usage, whereas calculative commitment directly triggers only lean usage (the breadth of usage) but not rich usage. These findings have important theoretical implications for the research on SVW usage and commitment and provide useful insights for SVW practitioners to promote users’ prolonged and active usage behaviours.

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ABSTRACT

Artificial intelligence (AI) is advancing continuously. However, full delegation to an AI application is often not possible or desirable due to technical limitations, ethical concerns or legal issues. Augmented intelligence systems, where humans and AI work together jointly, have been proposed to improve decision making in complex, uncertain and failure-intolerant environments. Yet, this raises questions about how compatible human and AI knowledge are, and whether translating between the two increases decision making intelligence, or whether it effectively limits AI applications’ capacity for computational agency and human agents’ capacity to consider uniquely human knowledge. We explore this notion by looking at augmented intelligence in terms of systemic intelligence and mutual learning. Building on an emergence perspective, we perform a case study of an augmented intelligence system for image-based diagnostics in the radiology branch of a medical care centre. Our findings indicate a strong distinction between specialists’ and non-specialists’ intelligence augmentation with AI. This distinction fuels generative cycles which produce iteratively more sophisticated algorithms, human representations and practical routines. Drawing on this analysis, we propose three stages by which new forms of intelligence emerge from the addition of AI recommendation tools, specifically, intelligence by propagation, intelligence by specialisation and intelligence by articulation.

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ABSTRACT

During a disaster, many people seek information from virtual communities. However, information overload, falsehoods and unrelated topics hinder information flow in virtual communities, putting disaster victims at risk. Given many disasters are generally of a short duration, we explore how virtual communities can quickly reconfigure themselves to respond effectively to a disaster. Drawing on risk society theory, our findings suggest reconfiguration is done via a series of cycles initially involving community members and subsequently featuring both community members and moderators working together to mitigate risks. We contribute to virtual community discourse on disaster response by showing how a virtual community can configure IT features to bring about change. Practically, we find transforming a virtual community from a normal to a disaster response mode requires (1) creating a controlled information hub, (2) promoting identity revelation and (3) allowing for temporary emergent hyperlocal leadership. While earlier IS research suggests that anonymity, openness and geographical dispersion are important for information dissemination in virtual communities, we suggest these practices may need to be changed during a disaster.

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ABSTRACT

Over the past four decades, scholars in information systems (IS) have explored the intricacies of social inclusion/exclusion within IS (SI/E in IS). Despite 40?years of investigation, there remains a notable absence of a systematic analysis of the accumulated knowledge in SI/E within IS research. Addressing this gap, our research aims to organise the literature, identify trends and gaps and propose future research directions for SI/E within IS. Recognising SI/E as an umbrella concept, we employ ontological analysis, offering a comprehensive depiction of the domain’s scope, boundaries, key constructs and relationships. We construct an ontology of SI/E within IS and employ it to compare literature from 20 established IS journals with a broader range of publications—from this analysis, we examine 4211 articles and code 897. This analysis unveils potential research avenues and highlights the distinctive focus of IS scholarship in SI/E compared with other fields. The ontology aids in conceptualising the research landscape and guiding future investigations in SI/E in IS.

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Information Systems Journal, EarlyView. Source

ABSTRACT

Information systems (IS) research often seeks to deliver practical impact in addition to the traditional requirement for theoretical contribution. While an admirable goal, it is nevertheless a challenging prospect, as key questions remain around how best to facilitate a relationship between IS academic and practitioner communities. To explore this issue, we analyse multi-case study data from interviews with 24 IS practitioner doctorates, industry contact points, and senior IS academics who sought to create a joint field between academia and practice during their research. Our findings reveal several boundary spanning activities needed to traverse field boundaries and maintain the joint field’s existence across the stages of proof-of-concept, proof-of-value, and proof-of-use. Building on insights from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, we further discuss how IS practitioner doctorates operationalised capital, doxa, and habitus to achieve varying degrees of practical impact in their work. Action-oriented recommendations are presented to support practical impact going forward including creolised messages and the mobilisation of capital to change inter-field relationships. By adapting Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice to the engaged scholarship discourse in IS, we contribute new insights into how the academia-practice gap might be addressed.

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ABSTRACT

In this study, we examine how the Industrial Internet of Things platform ADAMOS successfully entered the German mechanical engineering market using a consortium-based approach. By establishing a joint venture among industry incumbents, ADAMOS followed consortium governance that separated platform ownership from platform operation. In so doing, ADAMOS navigated the complexities of market entry and overcame many challenges typical to business-to-business (B2B) markets. Drawing from the case, we develop a four-step framework for effective business-to-business platform market entry: (1) Spinning out a neutral legal entity, (2) designing a valuable platform core, (3) seeding the supply side with internal offerings, and (4) opening the platform to broader audiences. Based on this description, we discuss lessons learned and provide actionable recommendations for platform operators considering a consortium-based approach for their business-to-business platform market entry.

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