Co-creating for Context in the Transfer and Diffusion of IT

Ephemerality should be a significant concept for the information systems (IS) discipline but has not been developed as such. On the one hand, ephemerality is considered a characteristic of the IS “core” and focus, of data, information, and knowledge, and of digital material and the experience of digital technologies. On the other, IS reference to ephemerality is relatively scarce, and use of the term tends to implicitly rely upon the dictionary definition only. As a result, ephemerality is not well defined in the IS literature. Our aim in this study is to contribute to broader and deeper IS understanding of ephemerality. This is important because systems of people and technology are reformulating the meaning of ephemeral. Reformulating our understanding of ephemeral can improve our understanding of diverse, fast-paced, and quickly changing contexts for transfer and diffusion of digital technology. While our ultimate focus is ephemeral in digitalised contexts, our overarching focus is ephemerality as a standalone concept. We conduct an interdisciplinary review of the temporal and material qualities of the ephemeral in disciplines including sociology, philosophy, organisation studies, performance studies, new media studies, and IS. Out of this review, we propose a definition for ephemeral and develop a conceptual framework of ephemeral dimensions and characteristics, in which ephemerality is not only characterized by short-lived, unstable duration, but also by repetition, recombination, and durability. We conclude by briefly situating the framework in an IS context.

Descriptive theories tell us how to understand the world better and prescriptive theories tell us how to make the world better. Design theories are of the latter kind but usually involves a product or process artifact to create changes as well. Despite a focus on utility, there is little evidence about how design theories become adopted after their development. We know too little about how design theories are applied, adopted, adapted, and emerge and change over time. We present a study of an organizational change design theory that was adopted in 108 different organizations. The results indicate that the theory was adopted As-Is in 25% of the cases. But it was adapted in various ways for use in the remaining organizations. Our analysis of these cases provides a typology of eight categories of adoptability. Among these, organizations most commonly adapted the recommended organizational strategy. As a result of these and other findings we show how design theory adoption is a continuous co-creation process between design theorists and design adopters.

Information Systems Development (ISD) is at the heart of the diffusion of information technologies. It is constantly reshaped by new developments and changing environments. The appearance of extra-organizational platform capabilities and the emerging shift in business and society from a goods-dominant to service-dominant logic (SDL) represent such a development. SDL offers a holistic perspective with an emphasis on value co-creation in service ecosystems that goes beyond the traditional boundaries of organizations. In this capacity, it lends itself to a study of ISD as service ecosystems of value co-creation in such an environment. On this background, we investigate the following research questions: How is value co-creation in ISD projects that transcend traditional organizational settings managed and performed, and how does SDL provide plausible explanations to understand such contemporary ISD? For this purpose, we present a case of ISD in the context of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) which engaged various groups of actors including Pacific Islander youth in the development of a digital game to raise attention about climate change and use the foundational concepts of SDL to demonstrate how value is co-created by a diverse group of actors in such a setting.

Reflecting the IFIP 8.6 theme of “cocreating for context,” this conceptual contribution proposes a model designed to support co-creation within an unfolding context of varying internal and external conditions as a digital transformation (DT) strives to achieve its goals. It proposes a digital transformation progress model (DTPM) that combines a work system perspective with ideas related to DT, including DT initiative, DT success, phases of DT, and tangible and intangible resources for change that affect DT initiatives. The model expresses the combined impact of the favorability of five categories of resources for change at any point in a DT initiative’s trajectory. The categories are momentum, capabilities, forces, drivers and impediments of change, and catalysts of change. Potential uses of the DTPM and follow-on research are discussed briefly.

User engagement is critical for the successful adoption and use of mobile health apps, but it is also influenced by a variety of factors that are not always easily accessible or quantified by designers in practice. The goal of this paper is to facilitate the application of activity theory and the communicative ecological framework to uncover various socio-cultural contexts for user engagement designs using the Design Process Engagement Enhancement System (DECENT) toolkit. The DECENT toolkit is an innovative theory-based design tool and associated method that includes socio-cultural filtration and a socio-cultural checklist that are augmented in the phases of the user-centered design model. This paper presents a set of consolidating concepts to guide future design practice which broaden designers’ knowledge of mobile health app designs for user engagement. Finally, to fully explain and design for user engagement in mobile health, an integrated approach incorporating a variety of technological and socio-cultural factors is presented.

The adoption and implementation of Conversational AI applications such as AI chatbots in the workplace is rapidly growing. The success of integrating AI chatbots into organisations critically depends on employees’ use since AI technology evolves through machine learning and analysis of use data. Since trust is a key aspect that determines technology continuous use, this research questions: How employees experience trust in Conversational AI and how it impacts its continuous use? To answer the research question, we conducted qualitative inductive research using rich empirical data from a large international organisation. The findings highlight that employees developed three forms of trust, namely, emotional, cognitive and organisational trust. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

The combination of chatbots with live chats supported by human agents creates a new type of man-machine coordination problem. Prior research on chatbot interactions has focused mostly on the interaction between end users and chatbots and there is limited research on the interaction between human chat agents and chatbots. This study aims to fill this gap contributing to the body of research on coordinating humans and artificial conversational agents by addressing the Research Question: How can the handover between chatbots and chat employees be handled to ensure good user experience? The study aims to contribute to the emerging discipline of Human-Centered AI providing insights on how to create AI-enabled systems that amplify and augment human abilities while preserving human control by identifying key aspects that need to be considered when integrating chatbots in live chat workflows.

This short paper reports on an ongoing study related to automation journeys in public sector organizations. From interviews with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) consultants, we highlight and discuss the specific capability of “making technology work” by referring to and using a core capability framework. The capability of making technology work, which we see as needing attention from both suppliers and customers if the adoption of the automation technology should be successful. We argue that this capability becomes a crucial capability; from the start of the journey and after arriving at the destination, if successful, co-creation should happen and be continuously a fact.

Modern business leaders know it is important to be able to work fast, adapt to change, and build on existing solutions. This is especially true of digital business, where the high rate of change creates a continuous stream of new problems and new opportunities. Many have called for business leaders to adopt more ‘agile’ structures and processes that embrace change, transparency, and employee empowerment. Now a new complementary approach called ‘inner source’ is emerging to help address this. Inner source does not only embrace speed and change; it also lays out techniques for globally distributed agile teams to systematically store and reuse solutions in a shared, organization-wide repository. This paper explores this new management concept – where it came from, what it means – and illustrates its value in large organizations. Building on a number of illustrative cases, we explain how certain business leaders have brought the principles and practices of inner source to their respective organizations.

In this article, we argue that the lack of theoretical definition in the literature related to open-source governance opens the floor for multiple possibilities to define it. Therefore, the existence of a baseline to refer to a robust governance solution is deemed crucial. We posit that defining vertical product domains as a benchmark to measure governance solutions robustness helps in theory advancement in governance literature. The creation of vertical product domains is the output of successful open-source projects due to the transformation of open sourcing. We develop a conceptual understanding to precisely define the vertical domains in open-source projects and future agenda for open source governance theory advancement.

Since The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emerged in 2015, they have become a guide for managing present sustainability challenges. However, we have limited knowledge about inter-organizational goal setting for digital transformations towards sustainable development. Recognizing this shortcoming, we report an in-depth case study of an inter-organizational digital transformation and the challenges of setting goals towards promoting progress on SDGs in environmental assessments. An environmental assessment is an obligatory procedure securing environmental concerns are considered before a decision is made, either for individual projects or public plans and programs. From analyzing the activities in environmental assessments, we outline their distinct digitalization goals and the stakeholders’ associated experiences. These findings extend preliminary research on what drives digital transformation in environmental assessment and highlight environmentally responsible activities where information systems can make a difference. The paper discusses how these findings show a further need for research on the digital transformation of environmental assessment.

As the gravity of the impact of climate change on everyday life grows ever more relevant, green technology involving sustainability are also garnering more attention, and, in turn, more sophisticated IT solutions are needed. In this paper we review existing literature on the diffusion and transfer of technology in households in order to strengthen and prepare the future adoption of more IT-oriented sustainability solutions of green IT. We find that a large portion of household studies have taken place in the farming and agricultural sector of developing countries. We find that a large portion of the studies propose implications from a government policy perspective. We also find that a large portion of studies confirm factors influencing the diffusion and adoption coming from diffusion theory. Another significant portion takes a socio-cultural approach perspective. Finally, we find that collaboration, co-creation and participation seem to be effective in furthering the transfer and diffusion of sustainable and green technology in households. We discuss the implications of these different approaches when tackling the diffusion of green IT and propose taking a pluralist and design-oriented perspective since no single perspective or approach so far has resulted in large-scale technology transfer or diffusion to households.

The spread of information technology is now visible at every turn, considering organizations, individuals, and society as a whole. Organizations, aside from the current problems associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, highlight digitalization as one of their main priorities. However, technology and digitalization do not only apply to organizations, but also to the lives of individuals and communities. After all, many places today are faced with major challenges arising from global environmental shifts, rapid urbanization, and ageing infrastructure. On the other hand, digitalization may bring new opportunities and is already establishing the concept of smart cities and communities. At the organizational level, the goals of digitalization are more or less clear, however, the question arises about the goals at the level of society. Climate changes are certainly one of the areas that society cannot ignore. Smart cities and communities can make a significant contribution in this area; however, goals must be set appropriately. Many studies focus on the importance of smart city development, but there is a lack of research linking smart city development (including society as a whole) with quality of life, sustainable development, and a green future. At the same time, adopting digital solutions is becoming increasingly difficult due to rapidly evolving innovations and the difficulty of managing the complexity of intertwining technologies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to shed light on the intertwining of these aspects and highlight the factors that can ensure sustainable development in smart communities.

This paper explores the emergent public value that is negotiated by members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem that include the public sector, private sector and digital entrepreneurs as they work to set up a community for start-ups. The paper employs the theoretical lens of ‘public value’ [34] to explore the various forms of public value for different stakeholders involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem certain notions of public value are negotiated. The paper focuses on the case study of Bahrain’s national digital entrepreneurship initiative and particularly on how the Startup Bahrain platform was developed. The analysis focuses on the nature of public and private sector collaboration and how this involves an emergent set of public value within national ICT initiatives. The paper highlights the nature of stakeholder’s environment and perspectives of public value, the digital platform as contributing to public value, and the entrepreneurial community’s negotiated public value.

‘Solutions’ are often deployed as interventions without lasting benefit to communities and stakeholders. In the case of water, a basic need and necessity for living and a part of goal 6 of the sustainable development goal, poor water monitoring systems have been one of the reasons for water wastage around communities. The inadequate control of water in and out of the storage has been a part of the cause of water wastage. In Anchor University Lagos, there has been a constant wastage of water. The extents of water in the tanks are likewise not ascertained for proactive measures for enough provision. This is besides the fact that the quality status of the water cannot be asserted before consumption by students. The above-identified issues have therefore become the motivation for this research project. In this paper, considering the ineffectiveness of the current quality control system in Anchor University Lagos, an IoT-based water quantity control- and quality assurance system was implemented following a build, process, and experimental methodology. The system alerts on the possibility of water shortage and the safety of water for consumption. Different sensory modules were connected to raspberry pi 3 devices, a micro-controller, to enable the IoT-based system to function properly. Informed by UTAUT, data was retrieved and analyzed from the sensors through the micro-controller and displayed onto an android based application for end-users. A users’ acceptance survey was carried out, influenced by UTAUT, to ascertain the performance and effort expectancy analysis of the system alongside the contextual social influence and the facilitating conditions. We observed a favourable disposition of end-users in welcoming and engaging. More significantly, the belief the users have to expectancy regarding leveraging the system for water quantity and the degree of impact that influencer will have. Further contextual studies shall incorporate the daily consumption rate of water volume to capacity management.

As the world aims to start ‘getting back to normal’ following the hopeful decline of the pandemic, many organisations and employees are questioning whether they will ever return to the old normal, where work for many was conducted within a designated office space. Drawing upon data from a wider study utilizing diary data of 29 participants that was conducted in the early stages of the lockdown, this short paper aims to highlight findings that not only suggest that individuals struggled with managing technology and work, but also that individuals were beginning to develop more control over their use of technology. This short paper ends by highlighting future research that the authors aim to develop.

Employees working from home (WFH) during the COVID-19 pandemic turned to an array of information and communications technologies (ICT) to support at-home job performance. This study documents the role of ICT in enabling these workers and managers to abruptly transition to WFH and explores the barriers and challenges they faced in working remotely. The goal of the study is to address the research question: How did ICT availability affect the relationship between personal work environment factors (i.e., job role, stress, and family-work conflict) and job performance while WFH due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic? We also report on how workers adjusted their ICT usage (hardware, software and Internet access) when moving to remote work. We then compare workers’ ICT usage, job performance, and personal stressors across manager and non-manager roles. Our findings from survey responses from 545 workers in 36 countries record a range of personal and professional challenges employees faced when forced to WFH, including whether employer ICT support has successfully met their needs. Our findings will inform employer efforts to establish new WFH policies.

Research on health information systems is gaining momentum, given the importance of the topic in curbing various healthcare issues which are challenging the African health system. The relevance of the topic is reflected in the exponential growth of technological innovations for health and scientific research that assesses their impact. This plethora of research avenues poses a situation of missing evidence on the state of the art of the topic in its diversity. In this research, we report on an overview of research on health information systems across Africa, outlining key insights such as current trends and institutions addressing the topic. We examined 353 articles collected in the Scopus database, and screened them using the biblioshiny. Based on the findings, we ascertained the intricacy of the topic and pinpointed key areas for future research. The outcomes of our research provide information for practitioners engaged in understanding the advancement and state of the art of technology for healthcare in Africa, and research analysis for scholars and researchers on health technologies in Africa.

Social media communication is integral to framing an effective crisis response but is generally impacted by high volumes and an overload of information and misinformation, i.e., infodemic conditions. The social media connection content (i.e., information) and connection type (i.e., communications strategies) that are shared between actors (e.g., emergency response organisations and the public) underpins the development of trusted shared situational awareness for effective crisis management. This study investigates how local public health organisations use Facebook to mitigate COVID-19 misinformation and create effective trusted shared situational awareness. We show how the nature of the event and social media temporal characteristics can create information objective-subjective tensions and create misinformation on public health social media channels. This undermines an agreed and accurate representation of reality that is expected of trusted, shared situational awareness. We conclude that developing communications strategies to manage information objective-subjective tensions becomes especially important during an evolving crisis scenario where situational awareness and knowledge are developed over time and information and advice may change in response to a changing crisis conditions.

Social media has been extensively used for the communication of health-related information and consecutively for the potential spread of medical misinformation. The aim of this study was to perform a bibliometric analysis of the current literature from Scopus database to discover the prevalent trends and topics related to communication regarding healthcare emergencies via social media. To accomplish this task, the research work has been carried in form of defending three research questions related to most impactful sources, most impactful publications and most impactful authors. The adopted methodology has been successful towards answering the research questions in the light of our collected dataset of Scopus articles.

Facebook and platforms such as Second Life3 and Roblox5 have contributed to the late interest in Metaverse. The metaverse is a three-dimensional virtual world inhabited by avatars of real people. After the prolonged pandemic people have got engaged more with the metaverse and used social metaverse platforms such as VRchat to communicate and interact. However, the lack of regulation that controls content creation on the Metaverse, and the democratized environment have presented a rich environment for people not only to escape stress but also to find an outlet for this stress by cyberbullying other avatars. In this conceptual paper, we are proposing a conceptual model based on the stress-strain model that explains the relationship between technostress elements and cyberbullying. This paper is also a call for policymakers and metaverse social platform owners to put clear policies to prevent cyberbullying on these platforms.

The study intends to examine the relationship between religious polarisation and message diffusion on social media. Communal and religious messages are shared heavily on social media such as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Twitter (Purnell & Horwitz, 2021). The diffusion of such messages translates into real-life crises many times. The study aims to collect and use the tweets collected using a Twitter API to examine the relationship. We plan to encode the religious polarity of messages manually as religious polarisation is a complex subject. The study uses the diffusion of innovation theory (Rogers, 1962) to understand the diffusion of religiously polarised messages on Twitter. In the study, we propose to test if religious polarisation diffuses more than non-polarised tweets and whether negatively polarised tweets disseminate more than positively polarised tweets. The proposed hypotheses will be tested using Twitter data which will collected usingTwitter API about a religious congregation. The paper aims to contribute to understanding the diffusion of religiously polarised messages on social media and hence to policymakers and governing bodies to mediate the spread of hatred and communal messages on social media.

Social media content on climate change and geological hazards show an exponential increment in recent years. The citizens’ narratives about threats to ecosystems are largely mobilized by protests against resource exploitations or disaster rescue operations. This database is less captured or reported for gaining insights about participants’ competency in influencing the climate policies. The proposed study aims to address the knowledge gap on how to improve the climate policies by enabling e-participation from the citizens. Required data for the study is collected from Twitter social media content pertinent to climate and metaphorical analysis of resilience issues with an automated system. Sentiment analysis and community detection of Twitter content are carried out using a program developed in R. The people have expressed trust in the rehabilitation and other efforts by the government during the flood. Though the people show trust, anger and disgust are also part of the opinions. Despite the diverse attitudes and beliefs, the people exhibited an interest in inclusiveness. In its entirety, the study captured factors influencing the competency of e-participants in influencing the climate change issues effectively. Policy recommendations for improving the citizens’ competency for meaningful e-participation on climate issues are provided.

Metaverses refer to virtual worlds which enable the interaction between users and simulate people, places and things of the physical world. The wider use of metaverses can disrupt how we interact and bring a plethora of implications for businesses and society. While the term metaverse received increased attention recently due to the interest of tech giants, researchers have been exploring virtual world interactions for over a decade. In light of new exciting metaverse implementations, it is necessary to consolidate information via existing research on how the use of metaverses can transform businesses. As a first step, this paper outlines the methodology to be followed by future researchers aiming to shed light on metaverse and business transformation. It proposes a framework to assist authors in organizing existing literature on metaverses and guide them in identifying future research avenues.

The Indian economy, driven by multiple digital initiatives in the past couple of years, is considered as a fast-growing economy among developing countries. In digital initiatives, Blockchain is one of the promising technologies with potential to transform organizations in particular public sector organizations. There are concerns related to the nature of Blockchain technology and benefits offered by the same in organizational settings. This study attempts to identify critical factors influencing Blockchain technology adoption in public sector organizations. This research attempts to develop a theoretical framework for value based Blockchain technology adoption by integrating task-technology-fit theory, transaction cost theory, and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) in Indian public sector organizations. The proposed research framework may provide insights to public sector organizations, technology service providers, academicians and researchers. Researchers may collect data from public sector organizations to test the proposed research framework using structural equation modeling or other statistical models. This is a working paper and intends to further test the proposed theoretical model as the ongoing work.

The growing use of smartphones is boosting the demand for such digital services in the financial space. The digital financial transaction is gaining popularity all over the globe; however, there are numerous challenges as well at the global level, especially for a person not familiar with changing technology. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to access the level of awareness of digital financial transactions among digital payment users in India. Authors have used the recall method to access the level of awareness. The structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data from 208 individuals having a sufficient level of literacy to operate a digital transaction. The data was analyzed using SPSS software. The finding shows that Indian users have a moderate level of awareness of digital financial transactions. The level of awareness was high among the male respondents. There are some significant differences between researchers’ demographic and personal characteristics and their levels and actions with regard to digital payment. The implications provided in the study will not only help scholars in further research in the concerned area but also for policymakers and managers in formulating policies and strategies to promote the adoption of digital financial transactions. The study also sets the future research agenda.

With the potential for significant effects on financial systems, societal order, and organizational strategy, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies stand as a potentially major disruptive force (Rossi et al. 2019). As such, Information Systems Research should focus resources on this still emerging technology. The objective of this research is to identify and analyze what research has found since these technologies have emerged in the last decade. An inductive study was conducted where articles from the AIS Basket of 8 journal list in the domain of cryptocurrencies and blockchain were examined and categorized into emergent themes. These themes were analyzed and supplemented with other research. Resultantly, the ramifications for future trends in research were discussed.