People with disabilities (PWD) often face social barriers, such as inaccessible environments, public misunderstandings, and stereotypes, which lead to their exclusion from societal activities. To address this issue, we collaborated with a disability research institute to carry out an action design research (ADR) project aimed at designing an immersive virtual reality (IVR) artefact to cultivate public awareness of the social barriers faced by PWD and foster inclusive attitudes and behaviours towards them. Using technology affordance as a lens, this study went through four interwoven ADR stages to co-design and refine the IVR artefact with researchers, disability groups, IVR and media experts, and end users representing the public. Reflecting on this design process, we distilled our learnings into four design principles to prescribe what and how to craft IVR artefacts for fostering disability inclusion. These principles can guide researchers and practitioners in developing similar IVR artefacts to help address similar problems. Our co-design process, which involved PWDs, enhances the existing understanding and practice of socially inclusive design-oriented research by providing empirical evidence of working with marginalised groups in developing emerging technology artefacts.

Abstract Public health surveillance based on data analytics plays a crucial role in detecting and responding to public health crises, such as infectious disease outbreaks. Previous information science research on the topic has focused on developing analytical algorithms and visualization tools. This study seeks to extend the research by investigating information practices in data analytics for public health surveillance. Through a case study of how data analytics was conducted for surveilling Influenza A and COVID‐19 outbreaks, both exploration information practices (i.e., probing, synthesizing, exchanging) and exploitation information practices (i.e., scavenging, adapting, outreaching) were identified and detailed. These findings enrich our empirical understanding of how data analytics can be implemented to support public health surveillance.

Information systems (IS) strategizing is particularly challenging for established organizations because of their historical conditions. The question of how established organizations can effectively manage their historical conditions in IS strategizing remains under-explored. To address this question, we conducted a case study tracing the history (1960–2020) of an established organization in the building and construction industry. Through the analysis, we found four systems: accounting management system, business communication system, knowledge management system, and community collaboration system, as the historical conditions that formed an IS imprint, which was later managed and reproduced during IS strategizing. Using the imprinting lens, we developed an understanding of: (1) the formation of the IS imprint at the organizational foundation; and (2) the reproduction of the IS imprint, considering imprint-as-resource and imprint-as-constraint during IS strategizing. We contribute to the literature by providing an understanding of how historical conditions inform IS strategizing in the long term and by applying the imprinting lens to uncover the process through which an IS imprint is strategically managed and reproduced beyond the founding phase. The insights developed from this study are transferable to similar organizational contexts for managing historical conditions in IS strategizing.

Wildlife management is becoming increasingly critical to improving the sustainability of biodiversity and the welfare of human beings. This paper uses affordance as a lens to explore the design of information systems that can assist in managing wildlife in protected areas. Through an action design research (ADR) study with a forest department, we develop and test design principles for a class of wildlife management analytics system (WMAS). We identify the initial design principles, including elements of the action potential, materiality, and boundary condition, and iteratively refine them based on an instantiation of WMAS through two iterations of design and implementation cycles. Through our work, we contribute to design knowledge by abstracting the artefacts, design principles in particular, and the ADR approach by generalising two new activities and corresponding principles when designing analytical models. Our findings can also be used to address a class of similar problems and systems in practice.

The recent pandemic has painfully reminded us of the need for IS design to be informed by possible futures and conscious of undesirable futures – Within months, many of the nice-to-have IS functionalities have become must-haves; Technology solutions in response to the pandemic have raised privacy and equality concerns. Although design science research fundamentally focuses on shaping artefacts and events to create a more desirable future, there has been limited guidance on how futures should be accounted for. This article addresses the gap by integrating insights from future-oriented IS research and futures research to develop guidelines for engaging with futures throughout the design science research process. The future-ready design research (FRDR) process prompts researchers to be more aware of futures, to foster the innovative foresight for actively pursuing the preferred future, and to espouse the responsible foresight for consciously avoiding undesirable futures. The guidelines are illustrated with a design science research project on outbreak analytics and the instantiated system’s subsequent adaptation and utilisation in COVID-19.

The perennial issue of information value creation needs to be understood in the contemporary era of a more networked user environment enabled by information technology (IT). This mixed‐methods study investigates information value cocreation from the social informatics perspective to surface sociotechnical implications for IT design and use, since cocreation is inherently social and technology‐mediated. Specifically, the cocreation of software as an information‐intensive product is examined. Data on the cocreation of Xiaomi's MIUI firmware were collected from two sources: 49 interviews of staff and user participants and web crawling of the cocreation platform. They were analyzed with interpretive analysis, topic modeling, and social network analysis for triangulation. Findings indicate three sociotechnical information practices co‐constituted by information, IT, people, and their activities. Each practice is instrumental in rapidly and continuously converting external information into cocreated information value. The adsorption information practice attracts new and diverse external information; the absorption practice integrates external and internal information rapidly by involving users; the desorption practice allows rapid adoption of the cocreated product so that information value can be realized and demonstrated for further cocreation. Critically analyzing these practices reveals unanticipated or paradoxical issues affecting the design and use of common cocreation technology such as discussion forums.

Social media assume a role in activism by enabling the powerless to voice widely shared grievances and organise unequally distributed resources. However, the predominant focus on the episodic effect of social media in the digital activism literature presents a limited understanding of how social media can play a role at different level of grassroots involvement and for movement continuity. By adopting a multidimensional empowerment perspective and extending the temporal scope in examining social media-enabled social movements, this study expounds on the logic of connective action (in contrast to the conventional logic of collective action) to offer a theory of social media empowerment. The study builds on a case study of an environmental movement to derive two key contributions: (1) it extends our knowledge of grassroots organising through a conceptualisation of the processes of how social media can allow individuals to assume a more proactive role in driving a social movement and (2) it provides a new understanding of the use of social media to sustain activism over time through the conceptualisation of social media empowerment mechanisms. A framework for social media empowerment in social movements is offered with implications for the mobilising practices of grassroots leaders and organisations.

Knowledge embodiment, taking a social informatics perspective, refers to the transformation of knowledge into a form in which its value becomes evident. Knowledge embodiment in robotic systems with artificial intelligence (AI robotic systems) actualizes the value of knowledge much more powerfully than other entities, potentially altering the connections among people or even displacing professionals. To understand the effects of knowledge embodiment in AI robotic systems on connections among people and technology, this study addresses 2 cumulative research questions: (i) What is the nature of knowledge embodiment, that is, how are knowledge and AI robots assembled for knowledge work? (ii) How does knowledge embodiment affect connections among people and technology (that is, social informatics)? A case study of a large hospital that has employed different AI robotic systems in many parts of its healthcare service provision process indicates 4 forms of knowledge embodiment, each with a distinct focus. Further, a social informatics analysis suggests four ways knowledge embodiment affects connections among people and technology and reveals related social and institutional issues that go beyond technological determinism. Implications of these findings for research on social informatics and information science are discussed.

Green information technology (IT) initiatives cannot be implemented in isolation if they are to have a significant and lasting impact on environmental sustainability. Instead, there is a need to harness the collective IT resources of the diverse stakeholders operating in the interorganizational business networks that characterize the contemporary business landscape. This, in turn, demands an appropriate leadership structure. However, the notion of “green leadership” has not received adequate research attention to date. Using a case study of green IT implementation at China Mobile, the world's largest mobile telecommunications provider, this study seeks to shed light on the underlying process through which green leadership is achieved and subsequently enacted to facilitate collective green IT initiatives. With its findings, this study presents a process theory that complements the dominant, internally‐oriented perspective of green IT and provides practitioners with a useful reference for leveraging the collective IT resources of their network partners to contribute toward preserving the environment for future generations.

The operational agility literature suffers from a lack of clarity in terms of the process or underlying mechanisms through which operational agility is achieved. Drawing on the information processing view of the firm, this study attempts to address this gap by examining the process of operational agility development. A process model of developing information processing capability for operational agility is proposed. As the model suggests, operational agility is achieved through a two-step process – the construction of IT-enabled information processing network and the implementation of organizational control – to enhance the right information processing capability. We further identify three types of information processing capability – information sensitivity, information synergy and information fluidity – that enable operational agility. Furthermore, a five-step practical guide for developing information processing capability for operational agility is provided for practitioners. This is achieved by conducting a case study of Haier, one of the largest household appliance manufacturers in China. This paper concludes with a discussion of the potential contributions and directions for future research.

In recent years India has become the information technology (IT) offshoring destination of choice for many Western organizations. From the perspective of vendor organizations in India, however, the IT offshoring phenomenon is more than just a business relationship with Western firms. It is also embedded within the context of the longstanding imbalances of power in the relationship between the West and the East, the implications of which have been largely ignored in empirical work on offshoring within the information systems (IS) discipline. Drawing on concepts from postcolonial theory and using data from our ethnographic fieldwork, we explore the experiences and responses of one Indian vendor organization to asymmetries of power in its relationship with Western client organizations. Our analysis demonstrates how a postcolonial reading and interpretation of IT offshoring adds an important new dimension to previous IS research and also helps to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the strategies deployed by vendor organizations.

The research presents a theoretical and empirical analysis of an e-Government system implementation. The resource-based view and the enactment concept were leveraged as a theoretical sense-making lens to study the system through its planning, development and operation phases. Consequently, a process model of resource enactment was developed to theorize how organizational resources were mobilized for successful implementation. It was found that the environmental climate at each phase gave rise to a particular focal capability. This was developed through the symbiotic enactment of a focal resource in conjunction with other complementary resources. Specifically, knowledge, social and leadership resources were found to be pertinently enacted in developing the focal capabilities. When observed across the phases, such symbiotic enactment of complementary resources followed a co-evolutionary path. The empirical research was conducted through a qualitative case analysis. This research would therefore be of interest to both academics and practitioners as it contributes to cumulative theoretical development and provides practical grounded insights to inform and advance e-Government system implementation.

Abstract Information systems (IS) projects involving multiple organizations are very common today. Knowledge integration in such projects is a complex task of integrating diverse knowledge bases across organizations that may possess distinct strategic goals and even conflicting interests. Prior research has indicated that social capital, a resource based on social relationships, positively influences knowledge integration and interorganizational relationships, but the exact nature of the interaction has been unclear. Based on an in‐depth case study, this article examines a four‐organization (three clients and one IT service provider) collaborative IS project wherein the clients were business partners for 7 years when they embarked on the project. The study explicitly identifies the roles through which social capital can be leveraged for knowledge integration in a collaborative IS project. Findings suggest that social capital can be leveraged as a motivator, an integrator, and a facilitator during the various stages of a collaborative IS project.

Abstract In this article, the author examines an enterprise resource planning (ERP) adoption process in a particular case setting to explore the knowledge management challenges encountered, specifically challenges related to the sharing and integration of knowledge, and the ways that social capital is used to overcome these challenges. More specifically, the author relates the different sources and effects of social capital to the different implementation phases, with their differing knowledge management challenges. By doing so, he highlights the relative importance of the bridging and bonding aspects of social capital that vary during different phases because of the different types of knowledge that become more or less important over the lifecycle of the project—embrained, embodied, encultured, embedded, and encoded.

Abstract Information systems (IS) project failure is a costly and common problem. This is despite advances in development tools and technologies. In this article, we argue that one reason for this is the failure of project post‐mortems to generate constructive “lessons learned” from previous projects. Over time, the ineffective practices would persist in the organization, rendering it resistant to change. The attribution theory literature serves as one of the few promising theoretical bases to explain why project post‐mortems fail. A case study of a project post‐mortem undertaken for an abandoned electronic procurement system project is discussed and analyzed. We identify five antecedent conditions of attribution error: the presence of self‐appointed mindsets, the general persistence of negative beliefs, memory decay, selective recall of project events and the influence of power dynamics within the organization. We discuss the research and practical implications of these findings and suggest how the problem of attribution error may be minimized in project post‐mortems.

Abstract The resource‐based view suggests that organizations achieve and maintain competitive advantage through effective deployment of firm‐specific resources and capabilities. Because of volatile market conditions, researchers now focus on the development of dynamic capabilities that allow firms to react and create change in these dynamic environments. Despite the growing acceptance of the dynamic capabilities perspective in information systems research, the process of how organizations develop capabilities to influence the overall process of strategy formation and implementation in a dynamic and volatile environment (e.g., the information communication technology industry) is still underexplored. To address the knowledge gap, this article draws on an in‐depth case study of the capability development experience of a call center in strategic transformation from an in‐house customer service department to an outsourced customer service provider. We use Montealegre's (2002) process model of capability development as our analytical framework and extend it beyond the organizational perspective to include a project‐level (business unit) perspective. By adopting a dual‐level analysis, researchers and practitioners may obtain a more detailed and complete view of an organization's capability development, hence allaying criticism of the resource‐based view as a vague and tautological concept.

Discourse on enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems acceptance is rife among MIS scholars as they seek to comprehend the underlying psychological and environmental factors influencing user adoption behavior. Researchers are especially keen to understand why the utilization of ERP among organizational members often remains at a perfunctory level. As such, the objective of this case study on GlobalMNC's SAP implementation experience hopes to address this concern by exploring ERP users' motivational dynamics from an Expectancy perspective. Specifically, this article investigates the components of Effort-Performance Expectancy, Performance-Outcome Instrumentality and Outcome Valence as experienced by ERP users and the potential managerial actions affecting each corresponding motivational factor that may result in counter-productive dissonances.

Abstract As knowledge gains currency as a critical resource in the information‐intensive economy, organizations have doubled their efforts to extract value from knowledge management endeavors, including the creation of interorganizational knowledge alliances. One particular aspect of such knowledge partnerships that has gone unnoticed in academic research is the presence of conflicts in knowledge activities. By adopting a conflict perspective of knowledge management in an interorganizational context, this study arrives at a two‐dimensional framework that defines knowledge conflicts in terms of their type and nature. Central to this article is the fundamental notion that conflicts form an integral part of knowledge management, and depending on how they are managed, conflicts may be formidable partners or dangerous adversaries in the corporate quest for a holistic knowledge strategy.

As e-government plays an increasingly dominant role in modern public administrative management, its pervasive influence on organizations and individuals is apparent. It is, therefore, timely and relevant to examine e-governance—the fundamental mission of e-government. By adopting a stakeholder perspective, this study approaches the topic of e-governance in e-government from the three critical aspects of stakeholder management: (1) identification of stakeholders; (2) recognition of differing interests among stakeholders; and (3) how an organization caters to and furthers these interests. Findings from the case study point to the importance of (1) discarding the traditional preference for controls to develop instead a proactive attitude towards the identification of all relevant collaborators; (2) conducting cautious assessments of the technological restrictions underlying IT-transformed public services to map out the boundary for devising and implementing control and collaboration mechanisms in the system; and (3) developing strategies to align stakeholder interests so that participation in e-government can be self-governing.

Continuous organizational transformation is becoming a common phenomenon as public agencies rapidly embrace new information technologies (IT) to streamline and re-invent their obsolete operations. However, due to the overwhelming extent of the necessary changes as well as the sheer diversity of stakeholders involved in transforming corporate functions, practitioners are finding it difficult to manage the level of dynamism required in the effort. In an attempt to shed some light on the phenomenon of managing e-transformation, this paper examines in-depth an e-government initiative. Through the study of how one organization in the public sector adapts to the dynamic customer relations brought about by e-transformation, the case serves to identify the governing factors for successful organization–stakeholder relations, and how these may have a bearing on the development of effective e-transformation strategies. An important contribution of this study is the proposal of a development model of relationships in organizations for an understanding into how organization–stakeholder relationships can be efficiently managed to bring about an effective overhaul of business processes.

In this paper we examine the phenomenon of Y2K as an example of cross-functional knowledge integration. We start with the observation that although an enormous amount of investment was made for year 2000 (Y2K) readiness, a smooth millennium rollover has ended with widespread debates about the worthiness of the investment. These debates not only reflect a common perception that the Y2K investment has been a waste of money, but also indicate that organisations often fail to learn from what they have done in the past in order to prepare for future actions. A case study of a multinational investment bank's Y2K program was conducted to analyse its main features and conceptualise the underlying cross-functional knowledge integration process. Based on our findings, we identified the following as the main processes involved in knowledge integration: (1) the penetration of different boundaries to obtain required knowledge and support; (2) the expansion of different paradigms to achieve shared understanding; (3) the reconfiguration of organisational memory to create new organisational routines and knowledge.