Echo Chambers and Information Cocoons have become the subject of a multifaceted academic debate – ranging from the proper conceptualization and delineation of related concepts, to questions about their prevalence and uniqueness in the online environment, to arguments about their societal impact and the role of digital technologies. This study presents a systematic literature review that analyzes the existing research to synthesize relevant findings and build the missing foundations of these phenomena. This study follows a hermeneutic analytical approach to the literature to clarify and model the distinction between information cocoons and echo chambers. Furthermore, we summarize the selected literature and identify existing knowledge gaps to outline future research opportunities.

While the IS field has devoted significant effort to improving written communication to disseminate academic research findings, little attention has been given to the issue of soliciting feedback from practitioners about these communications. This paper explores the question of how to engage practitioners with written communication that aims to disseminate academic findings. Three empirical studies are undertaken, each analysing various types of written communication using the lens of argument. Our results suggest two archetypes for supporting arguments: a warrant-using approach and a warrant-establishing approach, each of which offers different ways to conceive of engaging with practitioner readers. Several proposals are offered as potential avenues for better engaging practitioners via written communication.

This paper proposes an extension of Fletcher and Huff’s (1990) argument mapping technique, which focuses on an examination of individual arguments, to depict the broader argumentative terrain of a theoretical discourse. To illustrate the utility of argument mapping as a literature review technique, we demonstrate an application of this approach to the domain of Technology Frames of Reference (TFR) research. We then compare the insights derived from this approach to those derived from a more traditional literature review of this domain. Findings of this comparison suggest that an argument-centred approach could contribute the following new insights into a theoretical domain: (1) provide a means of weighting contributions to a theoretical discourse by depicting these contributions in terms of levels of argumentation; (2) identify new “types” of argument-centred gaps in the literature; (3) offer a structural and progressive view of theory development in a particular domain that could be used to could be used to link and compare insights derived from competing theoretical lenses; and (4) propose a closer linkage between theory testing and theory building by focusing the testing on “arguable” aspects of a theoretical claim.

This paper addresses how technology-mediated mass collaboration offers a dramatically innovative alternative for producing IS research. We refer to this emerging genre as the crowdsourced research genre and develop a framework to structure discourse on how it may affect the production of IS research. After systematically traversing the alternative genre’s landscape using the framework, we propose a research agenda of the most substantial and imminent issues for the successful development of the genre, including contributor incentives, scholarly contribution assessment, anonymity, governance, intellectual property ownership, and value propositions. In addressing this research agenda, we reflect on what might be learned from other areas in which crowdsourcing has been established with success.

This special issue of European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) is dedicated to the memory of Heinz K. Klein who died in June 2008. We surmise that one of the best ways to remember him as a sc...

With the rise in the availability of scalable network technologies and resources, Application Service Providers (ASPs) have become increasingly more feasible sources for obtaining IS services. ASP research represents an opportunity to integrate previous research on outsourcing, applied in the area of ASP choice. Historically, outsourcing research has adopted many theoretical perspectives, including transaction cost, resource-based, resource-dependence, and knowledge-based. We apply these perspectives in the ASP context. When obtaining IS services through an ASP, factors other than cost and those explained by the resource-based and resource-dependent perspectives can become paramount. The knowledge-based perspective enables us to examine knowledge risk and integration requirements. Drawing upon past research and an exploratory study conducted with 35 respondents in 11 firms, an integrated, theoretical model is proposed, which combines the transaction cost, resource-based, resource dependency and knowledge-based perspectives. The model is used to explain the antecedent conditions useful for making decisions on IT sourcing through ASPs.

In order to apply office automation in a meaningful fashion, it is apparent that some understanding of the office is necessary. Most descriptive studies of the office have placed great emphasis on manifest office actions, suggesting that offices are the embodiment of these actions. The meanings of these actions or tasks, however, have been given scant attention. There exist a number of office activity or task taxonomies, but they do little more than provide a simple and limited structure through which to conceive of an office. From a social-analytic perspective this appears to be overly simplistic and misses the richness of social action in an office. Focusing on the overt and manifest aspects of the office may very well lead to its misrepresentation. This paper takes a critical look at the way offices are conceived in the office automation literature and suggests alternatives that may provide a better understanding of the real functions of an office.