Julia Kotlarsky, University of Auckland

Jacqueline Corbett, Université Laval

Juliana Sutanto, Monash University

Thomas Kude, University of Bamberg

Yenni Tim, University of New South Wales

Sustainability is a moral and existential imperative of our time. As Information Systems (IS) scholars, we are aware of the immense impact of digital technologies on efforts and initiatives towards sustainable practice happening locally and globally. Furthermore, because digital phenomena lie at the heart of our discipline, IS researchers are well positioned to join these efforts. This Special Issue aims to champion new digital sustainability research programs targeting the planet’s most pressing sustainability challenges from the past decade. We hope it will contribute towards building novel collective knowledge and help shape digital sustainability research in IS.

Human society is approaching the edge of a dangerous precipice. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report unequivocally confirms that human activities have caused global warming, predicting that even with current commitments and mitigation efforts, it will be difficult to limit warming below the critical threshold of 2 o C. The planet’s air, land, and water continue to be threatened on several fronts, with research suggesting that the safe operating zone for six of the nine planetary boundaries has already been breached. Over the past decade, extreme weather events such as droughts, floods, fires and heatwaves have not only increased in frequency but also in magnitude. In addition to causing environmental impacts, these events have a significant impact on society, further complicating the pursuit of social and economic sustainability.

In 2020, about 724 million people were living in conditions of extreme poverty, with almost 30% of the world’s population suffering from some level of food insecurity. Equality for women and other marginalized groups continues to lag. The World Bank reports that 2.4 billion women globally do not have the same economic rights as men, and despite the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007, Indigenous Peoples around the world continue to suffer the intergenerational trauma of colonization. The trend towards urbanization endures, with cities struggling to ensure inclusive, resilient, and sustainable living environments for all residents. On top of all these challenges, violent conflicts have led to the forced migration of millions of people and the deaths of thousands of civilians. These alarming circumstances highlight the lack of progress towards the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.

As argued in a recent JAIS editorial on digital sustainability, the IS research community has a strong foundation to draw upon, ranging from research into Green IS to studies addressing significant societal challenges. The poor cannot eat technology, but the mindful design and use of technology can contribute to innovative solutions and positive impacts. In particular, we consider that the recent shift in the way IS research approaches digital phenomena offers new perspectives on the relationship between digital technologies and sustainability. Building on a contention that the classical view of an information system as representing and reflecting physical reality has become obsolete, there exists an opportunity for the IS community to drive a more inclusive agenda on digital sustainability, one that encompasses phenomena in which the impact of digital technologies and macro-level environmental, social, and economic objectives converge.

Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks contributions that delve into digital sustainability and encompass the development, deployment, and utilization of digital resources and artifacts toward improving the environment, society, and economic welfare.

Potential topics

• Design and development considerations
• Research that investigates the processes, principles, resources or capabilities required for the design and development of digital sustainability artefacts
• Intervention-based research that engages directly in enhancing sustainability practices within organizations or communities through effective leveraging of digital technologies
• Studies examining how the different inter- and intra-organizational actors involved in digital sustainability projects engage and interact as they develop, deploy, and govern digital solutions for macro-level sustainability agenda
• Explorations of the relationships between digital objects and the physical reality they shape/create in the context of social and environmental sustainability
• Use considerations
• Research examining how digital technologies support key organizational activities in the management of macro-level sustainability challenges
• Theoretical and/or empirical investigations of the interplay between sustainability initiatives and other digital agendas
• Studies of ‘computed human experiences’ with respect to sustainability
• Research on the challenges and opportunities for reclaiming and rejuvenating Indigenous cultures and knowledge through decolonized digital artefacts
• Management and governance considerations
• Studies exploring the governance of digital sustainability
• Research on the role of different actors in the digital sustainability ecosystem
• Studies on the sustainability agenda at the community and societal levels
• Policy implications related to digital sustainability
• Outcomes and consequences
• Studies that incorporate multiple aspects of digital sustainability performance
• Case studies of real-world impacts of digital sustainability on vulnerable or marginalized communities
• Research investigating alternative ways of measuring progress toward long-term sustainability objectives

Timeline

• February 20, 2024: Online information session (we invite potential authors to send us specific questions to address during this session)
• October 1, 2024: Deadline for paper submission
• February 1, 2025: First-round decisions
• June 1, 2025: Deadline to submit revised papers
• September 15, 2025: Second-round decisions
• February 1, 2026: Deadline to submit revised papers
• June 1, 2026: Provisional/Final decisions
• July 1, 2026: Deadline to submit final paper (if minor revision is required)

Varun Grover, University of Arkansas

Arpan Kumar Kar, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi

Rajiv Sabherwal, University of Arkansas

Spyros Angelopoulos, Durham University

Hartmut Hoehle, University of Mannheim

Anik Mukherjee, Indian Institute of Management

The origins of generative AI (GAI) can be traced back to the 1950s, when Alan Turing proposed a test to determine whether a machine could be perceived as intelligent enough to generate responses to questions in a way indistinguishable from a human. Later, in the 1970s, researchers developed more advanced models capable of producing more realistic and coherent outcomes. Contemporary GAI models are based on state-of-the-art neural network architectures. They combine such architectures to develop large models that outperform existing benchmarked ones. Contemporary GAI solutions can produce large amounts of contextual outputs on any specific topic. They are highly trained and sophisticated, enabling users to produce various types of AI-generated content. Although GAI has been around for a while, recent developments have brought the potential of such solutions to the forefront. In particular, LLMs have the potential to transform the way we develop textual content and communicate with one another.

The ongoing discourse on GAI seems to extol the promises of AI and the dangers. Our goal for this Special Issue is to offer a careful examination of the challenges faced in managing this powerful set of technologies for individuals, organizations, and society. Many of the challenges around GAI concern data. As per a Forbes report, over 90% of internet data will be produced by GAI models, triggering serious concerns about harmful and abusive content generation. Most current GAI-triggered use involves chat-based digital assistants. While the outcome of GAI in these digital assistant-based applications is indeed remarkable, their effectiveness depends on the level of task specificity and the need for information synthesis.

At the individual level, a number of challenges exist on how to effectively use GAI to augment individual productivity. For instance, how can GAI-based interactions positively or negatively affect customer experiences, how can GAI augment (vs. replace) human skills, and broader questions of how over-reliance on GAI systems may adversely impact the cognitive inability of users and learners. At the organizational level, there are many challenges around governance. For instance, how can we govern the quality of content by GAI, how can the adoption of GAI lead to disruption, how do we set up appropriate governance structures to manage GAI projects, and how can we avoid unintended consequences of GAI adoption in firms? At the societal level, there are extensive challenges around misinformation, bias, and privacy. Our broad goal for the special issue is to attract papers that articulate the challenges theoretically and study them empirically, while making a strong contribution to the theory and practice in the deployment of GAI.

Potential topics

• Challenges in managing GAI for individuals, organizations, and society
• Impact of GAI on individual productivity and customer experiences
• Governance challenges related to content quality generated by GAI
• Misinformation and privacy issues at the societal level

Timeline

• August 31, 2024: Article Submission Deadline
• November 30, 2024: First Review
• July 31, 2026: Article Final Decision

Associate editors

• Shahriar Akter, University of Wollongong
• Hillol Bala, Indiana University
• Kevin Bauer, University of Mannheim
• Roberta Bernardi, University of Bristol
• Michael Chau, The University of Hong Kong
• Alain Chong, University of Nottingham Ningbo China
• Kieran Conboy, National University of Ireland Galway
• Yogesh Dwivedi, Swansea University
• Amany Elbanna, Royal Holloway University of London
• Weiguo (Patrick) Fan, University of Iowa
• Sumeet Gupta, Indian Institute of Management Raipur
• Karlheinz Kautz, RMIT University
• Stan Karaniosis, University of Queensland
• Yeongin Kim, Virginia Commonwealth
• Ajay Kumar, EM Lyon
• Marijn Janssen, TU Delft
• Agam Gupta, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi
• Shivam Gupta, NEOMA Business School
• Taha Havakhor, McGill University
• Mary Lacity, University of Arkansas
• Xin (Robert) Luo, University of New Mexico
• Patrick Mikalef, Norwegian University of Science & Tech
• Ilias O Pappas, University of Agder
• Uthaysankar Sivarajah, University of Bradford
• Kai Spohrer, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management
• Sujeet Sharma, Indian Institute of Management Nagpur
• Samuel Fosso Wamba, Toulouse Business School
• Amber Young, University of Arkansas

Aaron Baird, Georgia State University

Yusen Xia, Georgia State University

Rajiv Kohli, William & Mary

The objective of this special issue is to showcase how health analytics can be used to enhance theorizing in the field of IS. In addition to its contribution to deep analysis, the power of health analytics research lies in theory development that leverages the unique context of health care. Specifically, the special issue aims to foster research that addresses the question: How can the application and design of analytics methods identify insights from health data and extend IS theory?

This special issue places analytics at the forefront of IS research so that health care researchers can make a theoretical contribution to IS research. Through this special issue, we hope to provide an opportunity for emerging and innovative health analytics research to be published that will showcase how new forms and combinations of theoretical reasoning, methods, and data can contribute to theory building. Our hope is that this special issue will contribute to deeper descriptions, explanations, and predictions of emerging health phenomena relevant to IS scholars as well as demonstrate to clinicians and patients opportunities that will enrich health care management and delivery. We welcome research at the intersection of traditional and emerging approaches, exploratory research, phenomenon-based research, novel methods, and data from any relevant source (with IRB approval, as needed). While we are open to discoveries of all kinds, we expect application of rigorous methods, presentation of persuasive reasoning, and inclusion of strong evidence.

Health analytics can be generally described as generating insights from health data through analysis. Significant and impactful work in health analytics is emerging in the IS literature, but there are also significant opportunities to leverage health analytics research to contribute to theorizing in IS. For instance, while interesting findings within IS have been presented in the context of health analytics use in hospitals and clinical diagnostics or care, many health analytics research contexts have yet to be exploited in IS research. The diversity of data and contexts within which to conduct health analytics research is substantial and such diversity is currently underrepresented in IS journals. We propose that health analytics research can advance beyond presentation of context specific models and methods. We see considerable promise in applying such innovative approaches to the enhancement of IS theory, particularly in explaining IS-enabled mechanisms, through research conducted in the health analytics context.

Potential topics

• Heterogenous treatment effects in areas such as health care performance, social determinants of health, use of patient generated health data, and offering or pricing of health care, pharmaceutical, medical device, or insurance products.
• AI/ML based tools that can reduce information asymmetry, improve decision-making, or optimize information flows.
• Unstructured data analysis, such as of digital trace data, images, or user-generated content, that yields insights about topical or trend dynamics.
• Impact of, or disparities in, health analytic capabilities or investments by hospitals, clinics, or less frequently considered entities such as laboratories, pharmacies, medical device manufacturers, public health agencies, or charitable organizations.
• Integration of personal device data to analyze trends, identify public health issues, and efficacy of treatments.
• Any interesting or creative area we have yet to research in-depth in IS, such as topics in genomics, signal processing/telemetry, clinical trials, or epidemiology.

Timeline

• February 1, 2023: Extended abstract submission deadline
• March 1, 2023: Extended abstract decision
• August 1, 2023: 1st round full paper submission deadline
• October 1, 2023: 1st round full paper decision
• January 15, 2024: 2nd round full paper submission deadline
• March 1, 2024: 2nd round full paper decision

Associate editors

• Corey Angst, University of Notre Dame
• Hilal Atasoy, Rutgers University
• Sezgin Ayabakan, Temple University
• Ofir Ben Assuli, Tel Aviv University
• Sangeeta Shah Bharadwaj, Management Development Institute
• Langtao Chen, Missouri University of Science and Technology
• Yichen Cheng, Georgia State University
• Anton Ivanov, University of Illinois
• Juhee Kwon, City University of Hong Kong
• Nakyung Kyung, National University of Singapore
• Shaila Miranda, University of Oklahoma
• Abhay Mishra, Iowa State University
• Sunil Mithas, University of South Florida
• Min-Seok Pang, Temple University
• Sujeet Sharma, Indian Institute of Management Tiruchirappalli
• Sriram Somanchi, University of Notre Dame
• Junbo Son, University of Delaware
• Ankita Srivastava, Bentley University
• Monica Tremblay, William & Mary
• Hongyi Zhu, The University of Texas at San Antonio

Jan Recker, Universität Hamburg

Sutirtha Chatterjee, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Janina Sundermeier, Freie Universität Berlin

Monideepa Tarafdar, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Pervasive digitalization has influenced practically all aspects of the human experience and our institutions in business, society, and government. Diverse areas such as organizational management and strategy, urban affairs and city planning, healthcare, entertainment, safety, politics, and transportation have all been inexorably shaped by digital technologies. Such technologies have created non-trivial and non-reversible changes to our individual and collective behaviors, our institutions and organizations, as well as to human society and our planet at large. But with great power also comes great responsibility. The transformational changes from digitalization are neither unequivocally positive nor negative; more often than not, they are laden with ethical tensions between the contrasting outcomes they engender. For example, personal data digitalization can help individuals live longer and heal their lives, but it also challenges individual rights, obligations, and our sense of dignity. Social media allows us greater connectivity and access, upholding the democratic principle of collective voice, but also becomes a vehicle for manipulating public opinion and spreading fake news and falsehood. Emerging technologies such as shared electric vehicles are coining a revolution in the mobility and energy sector, but also increase fears of labor substitution. The datafication of everyday behaviors has led to new healthcare opportunities but also increased surveillance. The wide embracement of Artificial Intelligence (AI) propels new opportunities for automation and decision-making, but also raises thorny ethical issues in terms of accountability, privacy, fairness, discrimination, and further biases. These observations surface the fact that digital technologies invoke competing narratives: the transformational and innovative powers of digital technologies often contrast dysfunctional outcomes of digitalization, such as social endangerment or loss of human voice and autonomy. While digital technologies promise an exciting future, we have been cautioned that “the journey to the fully pervasive digitized world is also likely to be perilous” and “as much as the potential benefits of digital technology are real, so too are the risks and complexity that ride with them.” Therefore, the key question that we must ask is: how can we positively leverage the transformational powers of digital technologies without falling prey to their possible dysfunctional outcomes? We believe that the answer to this complex question partly lies in the consideration of an important construct: responsibility. Responsibility allows us to evaluate transformational digital technologies in a balanced manner, by factoring in both harmful and positive outcomes from the engagement with such artifacts. Responsibility has become a salient term in this digital age, inspiring new streams of research such as corporate digital responsibility and responsible innovation. Forcing us to engage in meta-ethical reflection, responsibility is crucial to addressing some of the dysfunctional outcomes associated with the rapid proliferation of digital technologies – thus allowing for normative action consistent with human values and ethical defensibility. As information systems researchers, it must be on us to better understand the concept of responsibility as it pertains to the enablement of positive outcomes of the ongoing digitalization of our everyday lives while safeguarding the human experience against possible negative consequences of the same. We term this concept “digital responsibility”, which we believe can serve as an organizing construct of research that aims to inform the balancing of ethical and humanistic tensions pertaining to the rapid proliferation of digital technologies. Notably, focusing on digital responsibility allows us to challenge the often-embraced utopic narrative of digitalization – thus problematizing our vision for this special issue. Digital responsibility is antithetical to “mindlessness” in designing and implementing digital technologies, which is often associated with the inability “to cope gracefully with changing, complex situations characteristic of high-risk domains.” The lens of digital responsibility necessitates that we embark upon rigorously analyzing, explaining, predicting, as well as influencing, the potential costs, duties, and obligations of decisions that relate to the development, implementation, and use of digital information and communication technologies. Following such observations, unpacking the phenomenon of “digital responsibility” should be of utmost concern to IS researchers – and this is the central theme of this special issue.

Potential topics

• Designing and using digital technologies for and with responsibility
• Considerations of accountability, liability, fairness, and/or responsibility for digital technology design, implementation, and use
• Theoretical perspectives and/or empirical insights on the (un)intended social, ethical, and ecological consequences of digital technologies
• Theoretical underpinnings of the concept of digital responsibility, such as from an ethical theory perspective
• Design of digital technology to address social, ethical, and/or ecological challenges
• Individual, organizational, institutional, or societal strategies for leveraging IS for social, ethical, and/or ecological challenges and innovations
• The role of digital technology in promoting social, ethical, and ecological advancements
• Applications of emerging digital technologies (e.g., AI) to social, ethical, and/or ecological realms
• Societal, ethical, and ecological consequences of emerging digital technologies
• (Un-)ethical issues of IS and the data they generate
• Dignity, respect, and moral behavior in a digital world
• Social support and inclusion enabled by or embodied in digital technologies
• The balance of contradicting implications of IS (e.g., IS as a means for social change vs. IS for manipulating public opinion)
• The affordances of existing and emerging digital technologies for enacting digital responsibility

Timeline

• November 3, 2023: Deadline for paper submissions
• March 1, 2024: First-round review decisions
• May 1, 2024: Hybrid Paper development workshop
• July 11, 2024: Deadline for submission of revised papers
• October 1, 2024: Second-round review decisions
• December 8, 2024: Deadline for submission of revised papers
• February 1, 2025: Provisional decision and final round of comments
• February 27, 2025: Deadline for submission of revised papers
• March 1, 2025: Notification of final decisions

Associate editors

• Jose Benitez, EDHEC Business School
• Alexander Benlian, TU Darmstadt
• Roberta Bernardi, University of Bristol
• Michelle Carter, Washington State University
• Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic, University of New South Wales
• John D'Arcy, University of Delaware
• James Gaskin, Brigham Young University
• Julia Kotlarsky, University of Auckland
• Oliver Laasch, ESCP Business School
• Shan Pan, University of New South Wales
• Hannes Rothe, University of Duisburg-Essen
• Saonee Sarker, Lund University
• Olgerta Tona, University of Gothenburg
• John Tripp, Clemson University
• Tuure Tuunanen, University Jyväskylä