Explore the vast range of titles available.

The sociotechnical perspective is often seen as one of the foundational viewpoints—or an “axis of cohesion”—for the Information Systems (IS) discipline, contributing to both its distinctiveness and its ability to coherently expand its boundaries. However, our review of papers in the two leading IS journals from 2000 to 2016 suggests that IS research has lost sight of the discipline’s sociotechnical character—a character that was widely acknowledged at the discipline’s inception. This is a problem because an axis of cohesion can be fundamental to a discipline’s long-term vitality. In order to address this issue, we offer ways to renew the sociotechnical perspective so that it can continue to serve as a distinctive and coherent foundation for the discipline. Our hope is that the renewed sociotechnical frame for the IS discipline discussed in the paper holds potential to contribute to the enduring strength of our diverse, distinctive, yet unified discipline. It also prompts members of the discipline to think more deeply about what it means to be an IS scholar.

Unethical information technology (IT) use, related to activities such as hacking, software piracy, phishing, and spoofing, has become a major security concern for individuals, organizations, and society in terms of the threat to information systems (IS) security. While there is a growing body of work on this phenomenon, we notice several gaps, limitations, and inconsistencies in the literature. In order to further understand this complex phenomenon and reconcile past findings, we conduct an exploratory study to uncover the nomological network of key constructs salient to this phenomenon, and the nature of their interrelationships. Using a scenario-based study of young adult participants, and both linear and nonlinear analyses, we uncover key nuances of this phenomenon of unethical IT use. We find that unethical IT use is a complex phenomenon, often characterized by nonlinear and idiosyncratic relationships between the constructs that capture it. Overall, ethical beliefs held by the individuals, along with economic, social, and technological considerations are found to be relevant to this phenomenon. In terms of practical implications, these results suggest that multiple interventions at various levels may be required to combat this growing threat to IS security.

The rise of social media has fostered increasing instances of deviant behavior. Arguably, the most notable of these is cyberbullying (CB), which is an increasing global concern because of the social and financial ramifications. This has necessitated a new line of research aimed at understanding and preventing CB. Although much progress has been made in understanding CB, little is known about how to prevent it, especially through the information technology (IT) design. Based on the need for a better causal theory and more effective empirical methods to investigate and mitigate this phenomenon, we leverage the control balance theory (CBT) for system design. Our model examines the causes of CB from several novel angles, including (1) the strong nonlinear influence of control imbalances on CB, and (2) using the concept of fit to understand how different design features of information technology artifacts influence factors such as deindividuation and accountability, thus affecting control imbalance. Using an innovative factorial survey method that enabled us to manipulate IT design features to obtain a nuanced view, we tested our model with 507 adults and found strong support for our model. The results show that IT design features create a strong CB opportunity for individuals who perceive that they are controlled by others. Whether this perception is real or imagined, it creates a sense of vulnerability, prompting them to engage in CB. We can thus propose specific IT design feature manipulations that can be used to discourage CB. These results should have salient implications for researchers and social media designers, especially in developing social media networks that are safe, supportive, responsible, and constructive.

The capacity of digital technology to afford both profound benefits and substantial harm means that careful stewardship of the development, deployment, adoption, and appropriation of digital technologies is required through the practice of digital responsibility. Digital responsibility entails three key aspects: accountability for both harmful and beneficial outcomes of engaging with digital technology, the obligation to enable positive outcomes of digitalization while safeguarding against possible negative consequences of the same, and dependability: a continuous commitment to maintaining accountability and obligation in the face of constantly emerging new digital artifacts and the consequences that flow from their deployment. In this editorial, we develop an organizing framework for investigating digital responsibility, identify different ways in which digital responsibility could manifest in IS research and practice, and summarize how the papers included in this special issue advance our understanding of digital responsibility.

Scholars are increasingly calling for a deeper understanding of cyberharassment (CH) with the goal of devising policies, procedures, and technologies to mitigate it. Accordingly, we conducted CH research that (1) integrated social learning theory (SLT) and self-control theory (SCT); (2) empirically studied this model with two contrasting samples, experienced cyberharassers and less experienced cyberharassers; and (3) conducted post hoc tests to tease out the differences between the two samples. We show that for less experienced cyberharassers, CH is largely a social-psychological-technological phenomenon; whereas, for experienced cyberharassers, CH is primarily a psychological-technological phenomenon. Our study makes a threefold contribution: (1) it shows the value of integrating two theories in a holistic and parsimonious manner to explain CH; (2) it shows that SCT alone is a more relevant framework for experienced cyberharassers, whereas a combination of SCT and SLT better explains less experienced cyberharassers; and (3) it reveals that the role of technology in fostering CH is crucial, regardless of the sample. The differential, yet consistent, findings demonstrate that addressing CH is contingent upon not only identifying theoretical approaches but also identifying the particular samples to which these theoretical approaches will be more suitable. Of several implications for practice, the most important may be that anonymity, asynchronicity, and lack of monitoring are the technology choices that foster CH, and thus these should be mitigated in designing social media and other communication technologies

The central theme of this paper is that information technology (IT) can serve to create ethical organizations endowed with virtuous characteristics, and that such ethical organizations can innovate better in today's dynamic market environment. Drawing on the notion of virtue ethics propounded by the Greek philosopher Aristotle, we theorize that core organizational IT affordances influence the development of organizational virtues, which in turn influence organizational improvisational capabilities and innovation. We propose the \"IT-virtues-innovation\" (IVI) model and test it using a cross-organizational survey of 250 employees from various organizations in the United States. Our findings largely support our proposal that IT affordances positively influence organizational virtues, which then influence organizational improvisational capabilities, thus improving organizational innovation. This paper contributes to the understanding of organizational innovation by articulating the strategic usefulness of IT-enabled organizational ethics, and it explains how IT-enabled ethical competence (virtues) influences strategic competence (improvisational capabilities and innovation).

The authors of this paper believe that scholarly work on knowledge management (KM) has largely overlooked ethical considerations. As such, this paper argues for the infusion of ethical considerations into knowledge management (KM) research. Using the lens of the classical ethical theories in philosophy, this paper revisits key areas of KM-knowledge creation, storage and access, transfer, and application-and generates relevant research questions in each of these areas. The paper highlights the importance of examining ethical issues related to KM, and offers an illustrative set of ethically-informed research themes and questions that can potentially be investigated by future studies. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

The sociotechnical perspective is often seen as one of the foundational viewpoints—or an “axis of cohesion”— for the Information Systems (IS) discipline, contributing to both its distinctiveness and its ability to coherently expand its boundaries. However, our review of papers in the two leading IS journals from 2000 to 2016 suggests that IS research has lost sight of the discipline’s sociotechnical character—a character that was widely acknowledged at the discipline’s inception. This is a problem because an axis of cohesion can be fundamental to a discipline’s long-term vitality. In order to address this issue, we offer ways to renew the sociotechnical perspective so that it can continue to serve as a distinctive and coherent foundation for the discipline. Our hope is that the renewed sociotechnical frame for the IS discipline discussed in the paper holds potential to contribute to the enduring strength of our diverse, distinctive, yet unified discipline. It also prompts members of the discipline to think more deeply about what it means to be an IS scholar.

In this study, we investigate information system (IS) failures by leveraging a novel construct—dissonant relational multiplexity (RM)—to develop a unique perspective of these failures. Dissonant RM exists when two organizational stakeholders have multiple types of relationships that are in conflict. To investigate the salience of dissonant RM in IS failures, we use a case study combined with the analysis procedures of the grounded theory methodology (GTM) to examine a major failure in enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation. Our analysis and theorization highlight that RM became increasingly dissonant in the relationships between key organizational stakeholders because of a shift in technological frames that represent cognitive perceptions about technology. Further, a key insight from our findings is that the move to dissonant RM occurred through a process that we term relational unbalancing. In addition, we also found evidence of an opposing relational balancing process that was used by stakeholders to address dissonant RM. Such stakeholder efforts were often undermined by inherent constraints in the implemented technology. The relational balancing efforts were not productive, and the dissonant RM continued to exist, ultimately contributing to the failure of the ERP implementation. Our study shows that IS failures are characterized by elements of both determinism and indeterminism, are undoubtedly sociotechnical in nature, and are shaped by technological constraints and stakeholder perceptions of those constraints. From a practical standpoint, our study highlights the importance of managing multiplex stakeholder relationships in an IS implementation process, especially when the multiplexity is shaped by the technology.

The rise of electronic markets (EM) and e-commerce came with the promise of disintermediation. Yet, from aggregators to authenticators, the online landscape today is scattered with intermediaries such as EBay and Verisign, aiming to streamline e-commerce transactions and building consumer trust in EM. The central theme of this paper is to understand the contextual factors that lead to consumers' need to trust intermediaries. In developing our arguments, the paper synthesizes perspectives from information economics, transaction cost economics, and literature on institution-based trust to develop the EM-Trust Framework. Drawing from information economics, the paper contends that EM embody certain inefficiencies, which in turn contribute towards heightening consumer uncertainty, especially under conditions of high information specificity. Heightened consumer uncertainty subsequently reduces consumer trust in EM. It is only in the face of uncertainty and a loss of trust in EM that consumers transfer their need to trust in intermediaries. However, the transference of trust is complete only if agency costs from intermediation lie within consumer thresholds. A mini-case of online mortgage marketplaces is used to illustrate the EM-Trust Framework, thus creating threads for more insightful investigations in the future.