The main protagonist in Kazuo Ishiguro’s latest novel is Klara, an artificial friend whose existential goal is to be a child’s companion. Some aspects of this fictional narrative have begun to gradually enter our daily lives. Products reminiscent of Klara are available abundantly on the market: smart toys, adaptive learning applications, and companion robots. Children can relate to these products and perform activities together with them. Preliminary research has shown fundamental differences between existing technologies and these emerging children’s digital companions. However, we still do not know much about their benefits and risks. This paper explores different and even contradicting perspectives on the phenomenon. We present the discussion from four perspectives - 1) temporality, 2) use, 3) trust and ethics, and 4) sociotechnical design - and conclude the paper with an agenda for interdisciplinary IS research. The agenda points to the need for a psychological, medical, engineering, and temporal research community to understand this emerging sociotechnical phenomenon and design its future for the better.

The Covid 19 pandemic and the corresponding "lock-downs" have brought digital teaching at universities further to the fore. The experience gained over the past years and decades in e‑learning and blended learning by higher education institutions is helpful, but in most cases still insufficient for the purely digital teaching that is now required. During the winter term 2020/2021, the University of Münster and the South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences held an online course on "Fundamentals of Business Process Management" as part of their respective bachelor's degree programmes in Wirtschaftsinformatik (Information Systems). The lecture served as preparation for an international Winter School on the topic of the same name. The content was based on a recognised textbook. For the online lecture, corresponding video material prepared by the authors of the textbook and curated by the lecturers was used. While regular virtual feedback rounds (video conferences) were offered at the University of Applied Sciences to answer potential questions of the students, the course at the university was designed as purely online. The examination was taken at both institutions as an open book online exam via the respective teaching platform. The corresponding tasks were created by the lecturers in a division of labour, first on their own teaching platform and then transferred to the other.In this article, we report on this teaching module, which was carried out across the universities. Building on the experiences of the lecturers and the feedback from the students, we explain the challenges and lessons learned. We discuss possibilities for further development and give hints for the future design of corresponding courses.

Durch die Covid-19-Pandemie und die entsprechenden „Lock-Downs“ wurde der digitale Lehrbetrieb an Hochschulen weiter in den Vordergrund gerückt. Die in den vergangenen Jahren und Jahrzehnten gesammelten Erfahrungen im E‑Learning und Blended Learning-Bereich sind zwar hilfreich, für die jetzt geforderte rein digitale Lehre in den meisten Fällen aber noch unzureichend. Im Wintersemester 2020/2021 haben die Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster und die Fachhochschule Südwestfalen eine Online-Lehrveranstaltung zum Thema „Fundamentals of Business Process Management“ im Rahmen der jeweiligen Bachelorstudiengänge Wirtschaftsinformatik durchgeführt. Die Online-Vorlesung selbst diente als Vorbereitung auf eine darauf aufbauende seminaristisch angelegte internationale Winter School. Die Inhalte basierten auf einem anerkannten und gleichnamigen Lehrbuch, für die Online-Vorlesung wurde auf entsprechendes von den Lehrbuchautor*innen vorbereitetes und durch die Dozent*innen kuratiertes Videomaterial zurückgegriffen. Während an der Fachhochschule regelmäßige virtuelle Austauschrunden (Video-Konferenzen) angeboten wurden, um potenzielle Fragen der Studierenden zu beantworten, war der Vorbereitungskurs an der Universität als reine Online-Veranstaltung ausgelegt. Die Prüfung wurde an beiden Hochschulen als Open Book Online-Klausur über die jeweilige Lehrplattform abgelegt. Die entsprechenden Aufgaben wurden von den Dozent*innen arbeitsteilig zuerst auf der eigenen Lehrplattform (Moodle) erstellt und dann in die jeweils andere Lehrplattform übertragen. In diesem Artikel berichten wir von diesem hochschulübergreifend durchgeführten Modul und explizieren aufbauend auf den Erfahrungen der Dozent*innen sowie dem Feedback der Studierenden Herausforderungen und Lessons Learned. Wir diskutieren Möglichkeiten zur Weiterentwicklung und geben Hinweise für die zukünftige Gestaltung entsprechender Kurse.

One of the most significant recent technological developments concerns the development and implementation of ?intelligent machines? that draw on recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics. However, there are growing tensions between human freedoms and machine controls. This article reports the findings of a workshop that investigated the application of the principles of human freedom throughout intelligent machine development and use. Forty IS researchers from ten different countries discussed four contemporary AI and humanity issues and the most relevant IS domain challenges. This article summarizes their experiences and opinions regarding four AI and humanity themes: Crime & conflict, Jobs, Attention, and Wellbeing. The outcomes of the workshop discussions identify three attributes of humanity that need preservation: a critique of the design and application of AI, and the intelligent machines it can create; human involvement in the loop of intelligent machine decision-making processes; and the ability to interpret and explain intelligent machine decision-making processes. The article provides an agenda for future AI and humanity research.

Business Process Management is a boundary-spanning discipline that aligns operational capabilities and technology to design and manage business processes. The Digital Transformation has enabled human actors, information systems, and smart products to interact with each other via multiple digital channels. The emergence of this hyper-connected world greatly leverages the prospects of business processes – but also boosts their complexity to a new level. We need to discuss how the BPM discipline can find new ways for identifying, analyzing, designing, implementing, executing, and monitoring business processes. In this research note, selected transformative trends are explored and their impact on current theories and IT artifacts in the BPM discipline is discussed to stimulate transformative thinking and prospective research in this field.

Only few European research institutions have managed to implement structural changes and modernise their management towards higher gender equality. At the same time, gender equality is recognised to be an essential component towards achieving innovativeness and better performance. The EQUAL-IST project (“Gender Equality Plans for Information Sciences and Technology Research Institutions”) was aimed at addressing this challenge by designing and implementing tailored Gender Equality Plans (GEPs) in the six involved STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) research institutions from Finland, Germany, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, and Ukraine. In order to increase acceptance, minimise potential resistances, and ensure sustainability of the interventions promoting gender equality initiated within the project, it was decided to follow a participatory approach to GEP design. This approach means that internal stakeholders were engaged in the GEP design, including decision-makers, academic and non-academic staff members, and students. In order to support this approach, an innovative online crowdsourcing platform, called CrowdEquality, was developed and applied within the project. Internal stakeholders from the involved research institutions were invited to collectively use the developed platform during the following processes: (i) identification of specific challenges related to gender equality, which exist in the research institution (‘problems’); (ii) generation of promising initiatives (‘solutions’) that could address each of the identified challenges; and (iii) voting on the selected feasible ideas. This article reports on the course and outcomes of using the CrowdEquality platform for the participatory GEP design within the EQUAL-IST project. Furthermore, it is reflected in the article on the challenges faced and lessons learned during the platform development and operation. The article provides valuable insights to the research institutions willing to apply a participatory approach to GEP design.

While Business Process Management (BPM) was originally focused on Information Technology as a key factor driving the efficiency and effectiveness of organizational processes, there is now a growing consensus among practitioners and academics that BPM represents a holistic management approach that also takes such factors as corporate governance, human capital, and organizational culture into account. Studies show that the BPM practice faces a shortage of competence supply that stems from a shortage of qualified BPM professionals. At the same time, there is a distinct underrepresentation of women in technology-related fields; it has been suggested that gender stereotypes are one of the reasons for this underrepresentation. The goal of this research paper is, thus, to better understand the role of gender in the BPM competences supply. In this study 10,405 LinkedIn profiles of BPM professionals were analyzed using a text mining technique called Latent Semantic Analysis. Twelve distinct categories of supplied BPM competences were identified and it was investigated how far gender biases exist among BPM professionals. The nature of BPM-related competences is discussed, together with the differences in their presentation by male and female professionals, which indicate potential existence of gender stereotypes. Further, it is discussed how the apparent underrepresentation of women among BPM professionals can be addressed to close the competence gap in the field. The study contributes to both the call for research on human capital in the BPM field, and the calls for research on gender and gender stereotypes in technology-related fields.

This book examines how information systems research and education can play a major role in contributing to solutions to the Societal Grand Challenges formulated in The Millennium Project (millenium-project.org). Individual chapters focus on specific challenges, review existing approaches and contributionstowards solutions in information systems research and outline a research agenda for these challenges. The topics considered in this volume range from climate change, population growth, global ICT availability, breakthroughs in science and technology and energy demand to ethical decision-making, policymaking, gender status and transnational crime prevention. It is the first book to present ideas on how the Information Systems discipline can contribute to the solution on this wide spectrum of grand societal challenges.

Teaching information systems has been an international challenge for many years now, due to a number of reasons: changing technology, increasing number of applications, addition and modification of pertinent methodologies, to name just a few. Beyond this, the interest from students has been moving up and down over the years, with a recent new high caused by many Gen Y students. This report derives from 20+ years of experience in teaching information systems and summarises our findings as well as our current approach. The latter is characterised by two fundamental decisions: to provide novices with hands-on experience in dealing with information system concepts from day one, and to deliver a reality check on whether someone has chosen the right study subject and, if so, what to expect in study terms and courses to come.

While Business Process Management (BPM) originally strongly focused on Information Technology as a key factor driving the efficiency and effectiveness of organisational processes, there is a growing consensus that BPM represents a holistic management approach that also takes factors like corporate governance, human capital and organisational culture into account. Focusing on human capital, our exploratory study examines competences supplied in the BPM field and how far they represent the holistic nature of BPM. Further, our study tries to understand, whether the BPM field, which is traditionally perceived as very technical, is not immune to the challenge of female underrepresentation. Addressing underrepresentation of women in BPM would help to mitigate the existing competence shortage in the field that stems from the lack of qualified BPM professionals. Thus, we take a gender perspective in analysing 10,405 BPM-related LinkedIn profiles using a text mining technique called Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). We identify 12 distinct categories of competences supplied by BPM professionals, which, in general, reflect the interdisciplinary nature of BPM, ranging from technical to managerial and domain-specific competences. Analysis of the gender distribution shows that women are underrepresented among the BPM professionals under study and, in particular, among those representing most of the identified categories of competences.

The Supply Chain Operations Reference (SCOR) model for supply chain design is often perceived as too general by researchers and practitioners. The article describes a possible solution to this by elaborating a configurative approach to SCOR model-based supply chain design. It provides evidence for specific requirements from literature and practice. Based on these requirements, a set of design principles is proposed and evaluated by exemplarily demonstrating the configuration approach. A configurable SCOR model may counteract the heterogeneity of SCOR model extensions and modifications in literature and practice and may be the foundation for a tool-supported instrument in the area of configurative supply chain design. Keywords : Supply chain design, reference model, SCOR model, configuration