Authors:Ahmed Abbasi et al. Abstract: Data science has been described as the fourth paradigm of scientific discovery. The latest wave of data science research, pertaining to machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), is growing exponentially and garnering millions of annual citations. However, this growth has been accompanied by a diminishing emphasis on social good challenges—our analysis reveals that the proportion of data science research focusing on social good is less than it has ever been. At the same time, the proliferation of machine learning and generative AI has sparked debates about the sociotechnical prospects and challenges associated with data science for human flourishing, organizations, and society. Against this backdrop, we present a framework for “data science for social good” (DSSG) research that considers the interplay between relevant data science research genres, social good challenges, and different levels of sociotechnical abstraction. We perform an analysis of the literature to empirically demonstrate the paucity of work on DSSG in information systems (and other related disciplines) and highlight current impediments. We then use our proposed framework to introduce the articles appearing in the JAIS special issue on data science for social good. We hope that this editorial and the special issue will spur future DSSG research and help reverse the alarming trend across data science research over the past 30-plus years in which social good challenges are attracting proportionately less attention with each passing day. PubDate: Sat, 04 Nov 2023 18:45:34 PDT
Authors:Travis Greene et al. Abstract: Advances in reinforcement learning and implicit data collection on large-scale commercial platforms mark the beginning of a new era of personalization aimed at the adaptive control of human user environments. We present five emergent features of this new paradigm of personalization that endanger persons and societies at scale and analyze their potential to reduce personal autonomy, destabilize social and political systems, and facilitate mass surveillance and social control, among other concerns. We argue that current data protection laws, most notably the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, are limited in their ability to adequately address many of these issues. Nevertheless, we believe that IS researchers are well-situated to engage with and investigate this new era of personalization. We propose three distinct directions for ethically aware reinforcement learning-based personalization research uniquely suited to the strengths of IS researchers across the sociotechnical spectrum. PubDate: Sat, 04 Nov 2023 18:10:12 PDT
Authors:Marcel Ruoff et al. Abstract: Governments and health organizations are increasingly using dashboards to provide real-time information during natural disasters and pandemics. Although these dashboards aim to make crisis-related information accessible to the general public, the average user can have a hard time interacting with them and finding the information needed to make everyday decisions. To address this challenge, we draw on the theory of effective use to propose a theory-driven design for conversational dashboards intended for crisis response that can improve users’ transparent interaction with these dashboards and facilitate access to crisis-related information during crises. We instantiate our proposed design in a conversational dashboard for the COVID-19 pandemic that enables natural language interaction in spoken or written form and helps users familiarize themselves with the use of natural language through conversational onboarding. The evaluation of our artifact shows that being able to use natural language improves users’ interaction with the dashboard and ultimately increases their efficiency and effectiveness in finding information. This positive effect is amplified when users complete the onboarding before interacting with the dashboard, particularly when they can use both natural language and mouse interaction. Our findings contribute to research on dashboard design, both in general and in the specific context of crisis response, by providing prescriptive knowledge for extending crisis response dashboards with natural language interaction capabilities. In addition, our work contributes to the democratization of data science by proposing design guidelines for making information on crisis response dashboards more accessible to the general public. PubDate: Sat, 04 Nov 2023 18:10:12 PDT
Authors:Raghava Mukkamala et al. Abstract: The UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) is pursuing a social media strategy to inform people about displaced populations and refugee emergencies. It is actively engaging public figures to increase awareness through its prosocial communications and improve social informedness and support for policy changes in its services. We studied the Twitter communications of UNHCR social media champions and investigated their role as high-profile influencers. In this study, we offer a design science research and data analytics framework and propositions based on the social informedness theory we propose in this paper to assess communication about UNHCR’s mission. Two variables—refugee-emergency and champion type—relate to the informedness of UNHCR champions’ followers. Based on a Twitter sentiment and attitude corpus, we applied a five-step design science analytics framework involving machine learning and natural language processing to test how the emergency type and champion type impact social communication patterns. Positive and neutral sentiment dominated the tweets of the champions and their followers for most refugee-emergency types. High participation-intensity champions emphasized high-intensity emergencies with tweet patterns reflecting dominant positive or neutral sentiment and sharing/liking attitudes. However, we found that sports figures effects were limited in spreading UNHCR’s message, despite their millions of followers. We demonstrate the power of data science for prosocial policy based on refugee crisis awareness and instantiate our methods and knowledge contributions in a research framework that derives knowledge, decisions, and actions from behavioral, design, and economics of information systems perspectives. PubDate: Sat, 04 Nov 2023 18:10:11 PDT
Authors:Christina Soh et al. Abstract: Although the pace of digital transformation (DT) has been accelerating in more organizations, there is still much uncertainty about the ways organizations can achieve the intended outcomes from such efforts. Rather than just focusing on the transformation outcomes, our paper suggests that a more fruitful approach would be to conceptualize DT as a journey that often encounters contradictory tensions. We adopt paradox theory to explain the dynamics through which organizations can manage these tensions while driving their DT efforts. Drawing on extensive review of the DT literature and preexisting research cases of three organizations’ experiences with the DT process, we developed the concept of DT pathways. DT pathways are the varied journeys experienced by organizations as they make strategic shifts - leveraging digital technology and evolving the organization’s business model. We show how DT pathways emerge as organizations adopt different DT strategic intent, actions, and responses to a range of paradoxical tensions. We outline three potential pathways—virtuous, moderate virtuous, and vicious DT pathways—and their attending predictive propositions, which can serve as a guide for managers and researchers involved in DT efforts and research. PubDate: Sat, 04 Nov 2023 18:10:10 PDT
Authors:Silviana Tana et al. Abstract: Digital technologies are reshaping both organizations and our lives as members of society. The resulting changes are often referred to as “digital transformation” (DT)—a concept that has proven difficult to define and explain theoretically. This is especially true because the nature and scope of DT is evolving beyond clearly defined organizational boundaries. Today, information technology (IT) is becoming increasingly accessible and relevant for many more members of society, creating the potential for previously unseen transformations beyond organizations. Accordingly, new theoretical lenses are needed to explain how a broader set of social actors instigate and are affected by transformative change induced by IT. We conceptualize DT as collective social action, a novel lens that aims to expand the focus of DT research beyond organizations as its unit of analysis, with a complementary perspective centered on social actors, their actions, and their impact. We delineate a typology of digital transformation as collective social action that considers the locus of transformation (what'), types of social actor(s) (who'), and the underlying mechanisms (how'). Collectively, the four ideal types constitute a new theory to help apprehend, explain, and predict how DT as collective social action occurs within and outside formally defined organizational boundaries. PubDate: Sat, 04 Nov 2023 18:10:09 PDT
Authors:Jørn Braa et al. Abstract: With societal challenges, including but not limited to human development, equity, social justice, and climate change, societal-level digital transformation (SDT) is of imminent relevance and theoretical interest. While building on local-level efforts, societal-level transformation is a nonlinear extension of the local level. Unfortunately, academic discourse on digital transformation has largely left SDT unaccounted for. Drawing on more than 25 years of intensive, interventionist research engagement with the digital transformation of public healthcare information management and delivery in more than 80 countries in the Global South, we contribute to theorizing SDT in the form of a design theory consisting of six interconnected design principles. These design principles articulate the interplay and tensions of accommodating over time increased diversity and flexibility in digital solutions, while simultaneously connecting local, national, and regional/ global efforts. PubDate: Sat, 04 Nov 2023 18:10:08 PDT
Authors:Ioanna Constantiou et al. Abstract: Digital transformation has become a dominant phenomenon of interest among information systems scholars. To account for this phenomenon, it is imperative to develop a theoretical understanding of its processes and objects. We adapt a seminal organizational theory that conceptualizes organizations as interpretation systems to a possible future of organizations. We theorize digital transformation as a progressive replacement of humans by digital technologies in performing an organization’s fundamental activities underpinning the processes of scanning, interpretation, and learning that encompass an organization’s interaction with its environment. As a result, organizations cease to be human interpretation systems and instead turn into digital enactment systems, where digital technologies, instead of humans, nearly autonomously create and act upon information. We illustrate this digital transformation theory using the example of high-frequency trading. This transformation redefines the relationship among organizations, information, and the environment, changing the role of humans and reshaping strategic decision-making. Thus conceived, digital transformation offers a concrete way of theorizing and accounts for deep implications on the nature of organizations and organizing in the digital age. PubDate: Sat, 04 Nov 2023 18:10:07 PDT
Authors:Yenni Tim et al. Abstract: In this editorial, we explore the role of IS in shaping the capacity to recover from exogenous shocks. Based on a synthesis of existing literature, we discuss the interplay between IS and resilience, as examined by various streams of research, and consolidate these insights under the banner of “digital resilience.” Our exploration culminates in a new conceptual framework of digital resilience from which we formulate avenues for future research. Through this work, we aim to encourage and support further research and practical strategies focused on digital resilience, ultimately strengthening our collective capacity to navigate the diverse disruptions of our shared future. PubDate: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:29:31 PDT
Authors:Sofie Wass et al. Abstract: We develop principles that facilitate socially inclusive design-oriented research with marginalized groups. Building on the recognition that the research process must be informed by theoretical perspectives about social inclusion, our effort begins with an empirical investigation of a multiyear research project that designed several IT-based solutions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We treat the efforts to design each solution as a “case,” capture primary data from multiple sources, and analyze it in light of three facets of social inclusion drawn from prior work: self-determination, belongingness, and social capital. The findings are interpreted to derive five principles for a socially inclusive design-oriented research process: (1) respecting multi-perspective problem ownership and integrated solution design, (2) surfacing emic contributions to guide artifact design, (3) leveraging the support network to shape artifact design and refine research conduct, (4) customizing design-evaluate cycles with inclusive practices, and (5) pursuing authenticity in research collaborations. We elaborate each principle with connections to different facets of social inclusion, guidelines suggested by our empirical investigation, and a mapping against contemporary design-oriented research approaches. The five principles suggest key directions to facilitate a socially inclusive design-oriented research process when working with marginalized groups. The paper concludes with a discussion of implications for IS scholars, and pointers for using design-oriented approaches for greater social inclusion of marginalized populations. PubDate: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:29:30 PDT
Authors:Stacie Petter et al. Abstract: Individuals who have experienced harm (also known as victims) by people, organizations, or adverse events sometimes use social media to share their experiences with others, search for information, and find social support. While some observers offer support and engage in inclusion toward victims on social media, other observers blame victims for their plight and participate in revictimization and exclusion. Victim blaming, which can lead to social exclusion, disproportionately impacts those in society who are already at risk for exclusion and may perpetuate existing racial, ethnic, gender, and economic inequalities. This research provides a theoretical framework to identify reasons why observers engage in such wide-ranging responses to victims on social media. Specifically, we consider social inclusion and exclusion at the confluence of a social phenomenon (victim blaming), a theory (just world theory), and an information technology artifact (social media) among a specific type of actor (observers). Our theoretical framework of social media inclusion and exclusion is informed by just world theory and considers how social media functionalities can promote social media inclusion or exclusion. We also offer research questions to stimulate future research related to social media inclusion, social media exclusion, and just world theory. PubDate: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:29:29 PDT
Authors:Érica S. Siqueira et al. Abstract: While most studies on digital financial inclusion highlight its positive aspects, we focus on the surveillance phenomenon by investigating the role played by microcredit agents who operate digital financial platforms. We combine the concepts of surveillance capitalism and platform capitalism within the digital financial inclusion process and propose a surveilled inclusion model that considers the role of human agents interacting with clients to expand the network effects and control of the digital platform in a dialectic interplay. We combine an instrumental/in-depth case study and critical hermeneutics as methodological strategies to produce results that help to uncover the hidden agenda of social fintech organizations that use digital platforms to provide microcredit. In addition, we expand Zuboff’s concept of surveillance capitalism by including the role of microcredit agents who reinforce the imprisonment of clients in endless cycles of payment and credit renewal. PubDate: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:29:28 PDT
Authors:Daniel Curto-Millet et al. Abstract: Are social inclusion and social exclusion opposed' Through a three-year ethnography of an open source civic crowdsourcing platform aiming for generalized social inclusion, we show they are not. We argue that social inclusion and exclusion have a paradoxical relationship: ongoing tensions exist between them, and information systems shape those tensions. We find that design choices have crucial influence over the capacity of information system interventions to include and exclude and propose a framework for designing IS-based social inclusion interventions. The framework encompasses four types of strategies (positive discrimination, integrative oscillation, equitability and iterative inclusivity) for managing the paradoxical link between inclusion and exclusion through IS design. We also present the notion of “collectives” as a new way of thinking about exclusion criteria. PubDate: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:29:28 PDT
Authors:Ester Gonzalez et al. Abstract: Social inclusion has become a pressing issue for organizations wishing to close the inequality and disparity gaps associated with underrepresented or disadvantaged groups. The challenge is becoming particularly critical in higher education institutions suffering from low retention rates and low graduation rates among first-generation college students (FGCS). In response to the challenges imposed by the notion of social inclusion, some universities and colleges are exploring the use of social networking technologies such as social media (SM) in ways that can impact social inclusion. In order to improve the understanding of how social networking technology affects the social inclusion of FGCS, we conducted a case study in a public, Hispanic-serving institution in the United States. We used technology affordance theory to reveal various affordances actualized by FGCS and various outcomes resulting from those affordances. To explain how the actualization of different strands of affordance produces certain outcomes, our analysis of 102 FGCS’ narratives followed an established five-step framework for identifying generative mechanisms, revealing three SM user types—Community Builders, Scholars, and Information Seekers—and four actualized affordances, namely interconnection, inspiration, insightfulness, and intense comfort, which are conceptualized into three generative mechanisms: identity booster, academic growth, and self-care. Our results provide insights into SM usage for social inclusion outcomes. By revealing how technology use can promote social engagement and mitigate exclusion experienced by FGCS, this study contributes to the broad social inclusion research on technology and disadvantaged communities. PubDate: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:29:27 PDT
Authors:Priyanka Pandey et al. Abstract: This study moves beyond the conventional focus on technology access, adoption, and participation in communities, and instead presents a perspective on digital inclusion as a complex process of both empowerment and subjugation. Drawing on Foucault’s theorization on subjectivity and power, our case study of community health workers in rural India reveals that the adoption of an mHealth application simultaneously subordinated and strengthened the subjectivity of the community health workers. The study explicates the process through which the health workers oscillated between the enhancement of their individual efficacy, and their submission to institutionalized power as facilitated by the mHealth application during their everyday work practices. Thus, by shifting the focus from “who” is digitally included to “how” they become digitally included, our research provides a fresh perspective that enriches and deepens the discourse of digital inclusion. It generates both theoretical and practical implications for anyone interested in understanding digital inclusion from a more granulated and practice-based perspective. PubDate: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:29:26 PDT
Authors:Nicholas Roberts et al. Abstract: False claims and misinformation on social media have substantially increased in the last few years. Some people have incorrectly interpreted such content as the truth, sometimes to the extent that it transforms their view of reality and subsequently leads to actions that cause harm and suffering. Despite the burgeoning body of research on misinformation on social media, we know little about the process by which social media-driven misinformation shapes and reinforces false beliefs that result in detrimental outcomes. Building on insights from dramaturgical tragedy, theories of truth, and research on social media, we develop a process theory that explains how social media-driven misinformation transforms a person’s view of reality in a way that leads to detrimental human action. PubDate: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:29:25 PDT
Authors:Tapani Rinta-Kahila et al. Abstract: Cognitive automation powered by advanced intelligent technologies is increasingly enabling organizations to automate more of their knowledge work tasks. Although this often offers higher efficiency and lower costs, cognitive automation exacerbates the erosion of human skill and expertise in automated tasks. Accepting the erosion of obsolete skills is necessary to reap the benefits of technology—however, the erosion of essential human expertise is problematic if workers remain accountable for tasks for which they lack sufficient understanding, rendering them incapable of responding if the automation fails. Though the phenomenon is widely acknowledged, the dynamics behind such undesired skill erosion are poorly understood. Thus, taking the perspective of sociotechnical systems, we conducted a case study of an accounting firm that had experienced skill erosion over a number of years due to reliance on their software’s automated functions. We synthesized our findings using causal loop modeling based on system dynamics. The resulting dynamic model explains skill erosion via an interplay between humans’ automation reliance, complacency, and mindful conduction. It shows how increasing reliance on automation fosters complacency at both individual and organizational levels, weakening workers’ mindfulness across three work task facets (activity awareness, competence maintenance, and output assessment), resulting in skill erosion. Such skill erosion may remain obscure, acknowledged by neither workers nor managers. We conclude by discussing the implications for theory and practice and identifying directions for future research. PubDate: Tue, 05 Sep 2023 00:29:24 PDT
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