People visit virtual communities to find trusted information (i.e. verifiable, accurate and reliable information) during disasters. Virtual communities are open spaces where people interact and share information. However, virtual communities often suffer from information pollution (including too much information and false or contradictory information) which decreases peoples' ability to find trusted information. Oddly, some virtual communities will develop useful practices for combatting information pollution during one disaster, but subsequently fail to effectively employ the same practices or adapt them in subsequent disasters. We conducted a longitudinal, exploratory cross-case study to better understand how and why this occurs. Using the lenses of organisational mindfulness/mindlessness, we find three factors: (i) organisational forgetting, (ii) blaming, and (iii) social fracturing that may cause virtual communities to act mindlessly and prevent them from containing information pollution during a disaster. Practically, virtual communities may avoid mindlessness by (i) codifying past successful practices and adapting them, (ii) monitoring the rhetoric of blame and building trust in authorities, and (iii) avoiding inconsequential debates and promoting shared values.

During a disaster, many people seek information from virtual communities. However, information overload, falsehoods and unrelated topics hinder information flow in virtual communities, putting disaster victims at risk. Given many disasters are generally of a short duration, we explore how virtual communities can quickly reconfigure themselves to respond effectively to a disaster. Drawing on risk society theory, our findings suggest reconfiguration is done via a series of cycles initially involving community members and subsequently featuring both community members and moderators working together to mitigate risks. We contribute to virtual community discourse on disaster response by showing how a virtual community can configure IT features to bring about change. Practically, we find transforming a virtual community from a normal to a disaster response mode requires (1) creating a controlled information hub, (2) promoting identity revelation and (3) allowing for temporary emergent hyperlocal leadership. While earlier IS research suggests that anonymity, openness and geographical dispersion are important for information dissemination in virtual communities, we suggest these practices may need to be changed during a disaster.

An emerging discourse centers on leveraging digital technologies to help organizations withstand disruptive events-building digital resilience, which involves ongoing collective endeavors utilizing assets and capabilities. However, a knowledge gap remains regarding how organizations proactively manage diverse resources to enact and develop digital resilience. We conducted an interpretive case study about how a New Zealand-based grocery retailer responded to the costliest tropical cyclone ever recorded in the southern hemisphere. We adopt a coordination theory to capture interactions within and outside the organization and how they changed adaptively during an unfolding disaster. Our preliminary findings uncovered four tensions in the evolving coordination mechanisms: balancing established plans and flexibility, designating and sharing roles, central support and local leadership, and formal and informal coordination mechanisms. Our research contributes to the digital resilience literature by illuminating the dynamic complexities of multi-stakeholder coordination mechanisms that are instrumental in enacting and developing digital resilience.

This study identifies micro-level value co-creation mechanisms that support the design of digital services. As services are now becoming digital—or at least digitally enabled—how to design digital services that enable value co-creation between a service provider and customers has become an increasingly important question. Our qualitative research study provides one answer to this question. Based on 113 in-depth laddering interviews analyzed using interpretive structural modeling, our study shows that value co-creation mechanisms differ between business-to-business and customer-to-customer digital service types. We identify five mechanisms to support value co-creation in the design of digital services: (1) Social use, (2) Customer orientation and decision making, (3) Service experience, (4) Service use context, and (5) Customer values and goals. We claim that firms can readily utilize these mechanisms to improve their customers’ service experiences.

Autonomous driving systems (ADS) operate in an environment that is inherently complex. As these systems may execute a task without the permission of a human agent, they raise major safety and responsibility issues. To identify the relevant issues for information systems, we conducted a critical and scoping review of the literature from many disciplines. The innovative methodology we used combines bibliometrics techniques, grounded theory and a critical conceptual framework to analyse the structure and research themes of the field. Our findings show that there are certain ironies in the way in which responsibility for apparently safe autonomous systems is apportioned. These ironies are interconnected and reveal that there remains significant uncertainty and ambiguity regarding the distribution of responsibility between stakeholders. The ironies draw attention to the challenges of safety and responsibility with ADS and possibly other cyber-physical systems in our increasingly digital world. We make seven recommendations related to (1) value sensitive design and system theory approaches; (2) stakeholders’ interests and interactions; (3) task allocation; (4) deskilling; (5) controllability; (6) responsibility (moral and legal); (7) trust. We suggest five areas for future IS research on ADS. These areas are related to socio-technical systems, critical research, safety, responsibility and trust.

The growing availability of expansive social media trace data (SMTD) offers researchers promising opportunities to create rich depictions of societal and social phenomena. Despite this potential, research analysing such data often struggles to construct novel theoretical insight. This paper argues that holistically incorporating temporality enhances data collection and data analysis, subsequently facilitating process theory construction from SMTD. Recommendations to integrate temporality are outlined in the proposed Temporal Dynamics Framework and Methodology (TDFM). We apply the TDFM to investigate the temporal dynamics of mental health discourse on Twitter (now X) across different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, theoretically framed in the context of innate psychological needs satisfaction. The findings reveal dynamic shifts in social media use, indicating that different phases of the pandemic triggered changes in the needs motivating, and being motivated by, social media use. This illustrative case reflectively evaluates the TDFM's usefulness in contextualising SMTD collection, analytical strategies, and process theory construction by incorporating a dynamic perspective on time.

We explore the potential of values-based digital games in value formation, habit formation and sustainable transformation of individuals, and ultimately sustainable organizations and societies. Literature suggests that “play” is the formation of values particularly in our early years. Play is often facilitated by digital games. Many digital games include violence, leading to aggressive behavior in real life, whereas playing prosocial digital games leads to kind and helpful behavior. We propose that this influence of digital games, if harnessed, can in the long-term lead to sustainable individuals. To demonstrate this long and broad view, including time delays in achieving the desired solution, we discuss values-based digital games from a systems view. We explore systems view at macro, meso, and micro levels using a combination of Causal Loop Diagrams and Stock and Flow Diagrams. The proposed models further reinforce the potential of values-based digital games in forming sustainable societies.

In the context of game-based learning, learning is often limited to basic literacies such as math and reading, even though several educational institutions acknowledge the importance of Values education. In this paper, we discuss how to bring values into a game. We discuss the design and implementation of a customisable version of the popular board game, Snakes and Ladders to teach values to the young (ages 0-8). Values refer to “a centrally held, enduring belief which guides actions and judgements across specific situations…”. This implies that there is an inherent element of choice or decision-making in demonstrating one’s values. We discuss the process of adapting the Snakes and Ladders board game to a physical artefact by applying a Values-based Transformative Games Design Model, and further digitizing the artefact to make it more accessible. A prototype of the digital artefact is presented to demonstrate the concept. The Insider Action Game Design Research methodology is applied to create a physical artefact given the researcher’s involvement in volunteer work on values-based education for the young. The findings of this research are of immediate benefit to those wishing to introduce a digitized version of a simple and popular board game to teach values to young children. The values-based questions used in the game are easy to adapt so the game has the potential to be extended to various other basic literacies, as well as different types of values such as sustainability and cultural values. The Values-based Transformative Games design model can also be adapted and improved with further research.

The concept of the user has persisted in information systems research and practice since the field’s inception in the 1950s. However, the roles that people play and the activities they perform have changed considerably over time. People now engage with digital technologies for all kinds of activities and in all kinds of ways, including for both personal and professional purposes. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to reconceptualize the term “user.” We discuss the various activities that people engage in with digital technologies, the myriad roles they play, and an essential shift in what the term “user” means. Users might be active in shaping how a particular information system is used, they might be partners with an information system, they might be used by an information system, and they may spend sizable parts of their lives living essentially within information systems. We conclude by discussing the implications for the IS discipline of reconceptualizing the term “user.”

In this editorial I want to introduce a new manuscript genre for EJIS. This new genre is called “Clinical IS Research” and adds to the existing set of genres that was introduced some years ago (Te’eni et al., 2015). The addition of this new genre follows the publication of the first issue of EJIS this year which was a special issue entitled “Clinical Research from Information Systems Practice”. The editors of this special issue define clinical IS research as “a research genre that generates knowledge from, and establishes the effectiveness of, practitioner-researcher interventions in achieving desired outcomes in information systems development, use, and management practice contexts” (Baskerville et al., 2023, p. 2). The editors say that their goal is “to move practitionerresearchers within the Information Systems discipline from being commentators and consumers of Information Systems research to having an active voice in producing research to inspire others within the field (Baskerville et al., 2023, p. 8). I agree entirely with this goal. I believe that we, as IS scholars, need to engage with practitioners more effectively. One way of doing this is to encourage practitioners who have the required research training to contribute their knowledge and expertise to our academic journals. This new genre on clinical IS research is described on the EJIS website as follows:

Many organisations embrace crowdsourcing to enhance innovation, problem-solving and value creation. While crowdsourcing in the past has been limited to just one organisation, crowdsourcing can be enhanced through collaborative practices that include sharing resources and value exchange in a 'crowdsourcing ecosystem'. However, the factors that influence the emergence of a crowdsourcing ecosystem are not yet well understood. To better understand these factors, our paper focuses on the emergence phase of crowdsourcing ecosystems. We conducted a case study of not-for-profit sector collaborative crowdsourcing projects to identify the internal and external influencing factors. We identify four major categories – preparedness, challenges, scope, and risks, along with 23 sub-categories. We believe our findings might be helpful for scholars and practitioners regarding the effective design of collaborative initiatives for crowdsourcing.

Purpose This paper aims to highlight the importance of the study of emotions in the successful implementation of information systems projects in developing countries. This paper studies one emotion, namely, anger, and discusses its detrimental impact on information system interventions. This paper suggests that controls are necessary for the management of anger emotion. Design/methodology/approach This research study explores the case of an Indian agricultural marketing board that implemented an information systems project on the integration of agricultural markets. The data was collected through semistructured interviews from four stakeholder groups. This paper uses a qualitative approach and analyzes the data using thematic analysis. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice is used to study emotions in the case. Findings This paper finds that anger is the prominent emotion displayed at public sector organizations in India. This paper permeates all aspects of public organizations and has a detrimental impact on successfully implementing the information systems projects. Successful implementation of the information systems (IS) projects in India will need to have a framework for managing the anger emotion. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper within the information systems discipline that focuses on anger and its detrimental impact on successful IS interventions. A unique contribution of this paper is a framework for the study of emotions. This paper also introduces the idea of controls for emotional management.

For those of you who have submitted manuscripts to EJIS previously, you will see that we are now allowing authors to submit slightly longer manuscripts than before. The previous guidance stated that a typical paper should be between 5000 and 8000 words (13,000 words for review articles), inclusive of the abstract, tables, references, figure captions, footnotes, endnotes. There are a few reasons for making this change. First, we discovered that many first submissions are well over 8,000 words. Hence the limits were not being consistently enforced anyhow. Second, 8,000 words may not be sufficient for many qualitative papers. Third, having limits that are inconsistently enforced creates a submission landscape where those who don’t know the “rules of the game” are disadvantaged. Junior scholars, for example, might follow the rules only to find out later that they have not sufficiently explained their research. Senior scholars, by contrast, might exceed the recommended word limit, knowing that there will be few, if any, consequences for doing so. Hence, this can create an inconsistent review experience. Fourth, having a 10,000-word limit for the main text, but excluding references, means that the recommended limit of review articles is about the same as before. Although we are increasing the EJIS word limit, please do not take this as an invitation to write poorly. EJIS reviewers and editors do not like waffle, nor do they like unnecessary repetition. Hence, I hope to continue receiving well-crafted papers with little repetition. I am grateful to Crispin Coombs, one of our senior editors, for raising this issue at the recent board meeting.