Information Systems Journal最新文献

To remain competitive, many organisations are undertaking agile transformations in pursuit of agility. Information technology (IT) plays a pivotal role in supporting organisational agility; thus, it is essential that organisations select the right IT projects in a timely manner to deliver. In practice, though, organisations have struggled with effective decision-making in the IT planning process, especially in competitive environments where there is a need for agile decisions. To guide organisations on how they can transform their IT project selection (ITPS) process to become more agile, we examine two large and well-established Australian organisations and their digital-only subsidiaries launched as agile organisations in start-up style. We explain how the parent companies conduct ITPS and contrast this with the digital-only subsidiaries, highlighting the strengths and challenges each approach presents for agility. We provide an ITPS agility framework that identifies five dimensions that can enable or inhibit agility. These are: ITPS funding approach, number of ITPS decision-makers, granularity of ITPS work-packages, frequency of ITPS process and duration of ITPS process. Our findings indicate that the traditional approach that the parent organisations have taken with these ITPS dimensions has inhibited agility, whereas the ITPS dimensions have been configured to enable agility in their digital-only subsidiaries. We recommend that those responsible for agile transformations of ITPS within their organisations fund teams instead of projects, delegate ITPS decision-making authority, make faster and more frequent ITPS decisions about work-packages that are smaller in scope, and use agility in the right places, as ITPS does not always need to be agile.

The relationship between digital transformation and regulation is complex and bidirectional: regulation both drives and responds to changes in the technology landscape. Moreover, regulatory efforts to shape industry-level digital transformation often produce unwanted outcomes. Existing theories are insufficient for examining this complex relationship between regulation and digital transformation. Our case study of the Finnish taxi industry illustrates these complexities. The industry underwent a legal reform intended to legalise Uber-type solutions while restricting certain other solutions. By drawing on the notion of regulatory ambiguity and mechanism-based explanation, we show how ambiguity arises from the imprecise regulation in connection with conflicting regulation and technological uncertainties. We model the regulatory ambiguity mechanism consisting of the interconnected elements that, by affecting each other and working together, drive unintended changes in the technology landscape. We theorise regulatory ambiguity as a condition that emerges when regulations are imprecise, inconsistent, or evolving. This ambiguity shapes the technology landscape and related industry-specific practices, impacting digital transformation. Our research contributes to the literature on digital transformation and on the regulation of technology. We identify and analyse the regulatory ambiguity mechanism, providing information systems (IS) researchers with a novel framework to examine the role of regulation in digital transformation. We also conceptualise regulatory impact as a lens for future IS research.

To embark on a digital transformation journey, organisations should prepare and adapt their workforce to meet the continuous need for skill adjustments. This paper reports insights from the journey of one organisation—Johnson & Johnson—that developed an employee skills inference platform based on artificial intelligence with the objective of creating a digital-first workforce capable of thriving amid the new reality of continuous digital innovation. We describe the challenges J&J faced during the deployment of the platform and the activities they undertook in response to these challenges. Based on that, we identify three organisational practices critical for the successful deployment of AI: blueprinting the future workforce, managing ethical data work across borders, and compensating for AI blind spots. From Johnson & Johnson's experience, we derive several important lessons for other organisations interested in using AI to develop a digital-first workforce.

Digital transformation (DT) has become an important theme in information systems (IS) and adjacent fields (Carroll et al. 2023; Hanelt et al. 2021; Kraus et al. 2021; Piccoli, Grover, and Rodriguez 2024; Schallmo et al. 2024; Van Veldhoven and Vanthienen 2022; Verhoef et al. 2021; Vial 2019). This is of course unsurprising given the widespread interest in how digital technologies occasion change in markets, societies at large, and the political landscape (Bareikytė et al. 2024; Cowburn 2024; Davidson et al. 2023; Faik, Barrett, and Oborn 2020; Majchrzak, Markus, and Wareham 2016; Tana, Breidbach, and Burton-Jones 2023). Coming to terms with these changes, their outcomes, and unintended consequences is, therefore, both important and timely. However, fully understanding these phenomena questions extant theories (Nambisan et al. 2017; Yoo 2013; Yoo, Henfridsson, and Lyytinen 2010; Yoo et al. 2024) and warrants us to pause and more carefully consider how IS as a field has tackled ‘DT’ and what challenges this entails (see also, Markus and Rowe 2021).

This special issue comes down to two motivations that made us organise and call for papers. One motivation is rooted in the abovementioned observations that cumulatively point to the diverse reverberations that digital technologies have across levels, processes, and actors altogether raising important questions for scholarship about DT (Baiyere et al. 2023; Yoo, Henfridsson, and Lyytinen 2010; Yoo et al. 2024). We, as a field, need to reflect on the implications of the assumptions shaping the narratives around DT. For example, DT has become shorthand for “change” driven by digital technology (see also, Markus 2004). Further, DT has also been discussed as being desirable to contemporary organisations, which implies that the discussion exhibits a favourability bias (Davidsson 2015, 2017). Revisiting underlying assumptions is important to avoid perceptions of DT as, for example, a ‘misnomer’ (Kane 2018). Put differently, revisiting these assumptions was one key aspect that we had in mind when we were working on the call for papers for this special issue, which emphasises ‘frontiers’ in research about DT. We wanted our special issue to foreground shifting baselines (Davison and Tarafdar 2018) where phenomena related to DT gradually overflow our conventional concepts and models and call for novel conceptualizations (Mousavi Baygi, Introna, and Hultin 2021). We sensed a need for studies and theorising that developed our understanding of DT in terms of its contents, levels of analysis, and processes that would contribute to widening our conceptu

Information systems (IS) research often seeks to deliver practical impact in addition to the traditional requirement for theoretical contribution. While an admirable goal, it is nevertheless a challenging prospect, as key questions remain around how best to facilitate a relationship between IS academic and practitioner communities. To explore this issue, we analyse multi-case study data from interviews with 24 IS practitioner doctorates, industry contact points, and senior IS academics who sought to create a joint field between academia and practice during their research. Our findings reveal several boundary spanning activities needed to traverse field boundaries and maintain the joint field's existence across the stages of proof-of-concept, proof-of-value, and proof-of-use. Building on insights from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, we further discuss how IS practitioner doctorates operationalised capital, doxa, and habitus to achieve varying degrees of practical impact in their work. Action-oriented recommendations are presented to support practical impact going forward including creolised messages and the mobilisation of capital to change inter-field relationships. By adapting Bourdieu's Theory of Practice to the engaged scholarship discourse in IS, we contribute new insights into how the academia-practice gap might be addressed.

In this study, we examine how the Industrial Internet of Things platform ADAMOS successfully entered the German mechanical engineering market using a consortium-based approach. By establishing a joint venture among industry incumbents, ADAMOS followed consortium governance that separated platform ownership from platform operation. In so doing, ADAMOS navigated the complexities of market entry and overcame many challenges typical to business-to-business (B2B) markets. Drawing from the case, we develop a four-step framework for effective business-to-business platform market entry: (1) Spinning out a neutral legal entity, (2) designing a valuable platform core, (3) seeding the supply side with internal offerings, and (4) opening the platform to broader audiences. Based on this description, we discuss lessons learned and provide actionable recommendations for platform operators considering a consortium-based approach for their business-to-business platform market entry.