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Transform or be transformed: the importance of research on managing and sustaining digital transformations
AI Processed Human Approved

How can organizations successfully manage and sustain digital transformations over the long term?

Noel Carroll, Nik Rushdi Hassan, Iris Junglas, Thomas Hess, Lorraine Morgan
Transform or be transformed: the importance of research on managing and sustaining digital transformations
European Journal of Information Systems · 2023
Key findings
  • Emphasizes the need for longitudinal research designs to observe how digital transformations unfold, normalize, and sustain over extended periods.
  • Identifies key research challenges, including the misuse of terminology, unexamined assumptions, root causes of failure, and the dark side of digital transformations.
  • Introduces the concept of an 'execution engine' to fundamentally adapt decision-making processes and performance rhythms for long-term transformation success.
  • Showcases four special issue papers focusing on healthcare value landscapes, CIO-CDO role alignment, prototype ambiguity in scaling, and microbusiness owner-manager mindsets.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, schedule a 30-minute meeting with your direct reports to discuss the 'execution engine' concept and brainstorm one specific process within your IT department that needs fundamental adaptation for long-term digital transformation success. Assign one person to draft a brief proposal by end-of-week.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, identify one digital initiative currently underway that is showing signs of slowing adoption or unexpected friction. Gather the project team for a 1-hour 'root cause analysis' session, focusing specifically on potential cultural or structural obstacles, not just technical issues, and document the top 2-3 hypothesized causes.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, review your organization's current digital transformation roadmap and flag any objectives that are solely focused on short-term adoption metrics. Draft a list of 3-5 questions to explore how these objectives will be sustained and normalized over the next 1-3 years, and schedule a preliminary discussion with your team by Wednesday.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, analyze your current research project's data collection plan. Identify if it allows for longitudinal observation of digital transformation normalization (beyond initial adoption) and, if not, sketch out one modification to incorporate this perspective in future data gathering or analysis.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, review existing public funding guidelines or incentives for digital transformation. Identify one specific criterion or reporting requirement that might unintentionally discourage longitudinal sustainability efforts and draft a brief memo suggesting a minor amendment to encourage long-term impact.
Digital Transformation, Managing, Sustaining, Research Agenda, Socio-technical Factors, Citizen Development
Using a Process Philosophy Perspective in Information Systems Research: Principles of Creative Evolution
AI Processed Human Approved

Why do traditional approaches to defining requirements cause large-scale IT projects to fail?

David Kreps, Frantz Rowe
Using a Process Philosophy Perspective in Information Systems Research: Principles of Creative Evolution
Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2024
Key findings
  • Formulated five foundational principles for process philosophy in IS research: heterogeneous multiplicity, immanence in a process, experience over abstraction, consciousness in duration, and relational ontology.
  • Identified entitative abstractions in traditional requirements engineering as a major contributor to large-scale IT project failures.
  • Emphasized the critical role of human consciousness, inner time, and free will in co-creating technology systems that adapt to evolving organizational contexts.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, schedule a 30-minute "process thinking" brainstorming session with your heads of engineering and product development to discuss a recent project that faced significant challenges, focusing on how evolving user needs and unforeseen contextual shifts, rather than static requirements, might have been the root cause.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, initiate a 15-minute stand-up with your development team to specifically ask them to articulate one instance from the past week where a change in the team's understanding or a user's evolving need led to a necessary adaptation of their work, and how they managed that 'flow'.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, review the 'success metrics' for your current key strategic initiatives and identify one metric that relies heavily on a static, predefined outcome. Then, draft a brief proposal to reframe that metric to capture ongoing adaptability and emergent value rather than just initial adherence to a plan.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, dedicate an hour to re-reading your current research proposal, specifically highlighting any language that treats concepts as fixed entities. Then, rewrite one paragraph to emphasize the dynamic, experiential, and relational aspects of your subject matter, incorporating the principles of creative evolution.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, identify one current policy or regulation within your domain that is narrowly defined by static criteria or historical precedents. Then, draft a one-page memo outlining how an update to this policy could incorporate principles of ongoing adaptation and feedback loops to account for emergent technological and societal shifts.
process philosophy, ontology, duration, consciousness, free will, requirements engineering
Yoga Sutra-Based Memory Analysis of Information Systems Implementation
AI Processed Human Approved

How do stakeholders' past negative experiences affect their trust and adoption of new technology?

Ranjan Vaidya
Yoga Sutra-Based Memory Analysis of Information Systems Implementation
Communications of the Association for Information Systems · 2026
Key findings
  • The Yoga Sutra framework demonstrates that subliminal impressions (Samskara) formed by past unfair trade practices deeply influence stakeholder behaviors and technology adoption.
  • Contextual factors and research interviews function as triggers (Alambana) that evoke unpleasant memories, reinforcing distrust between system users, government boards, and private vendors.
  • Information system failures in developing contexts often result from a lack of adherence to core ethical and behavioral values rather than culture acting as a barrier.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, schedule a 30-minute discovery call with your Head of User Experience and your Chief Ethics Officer to brainstorm how to proactively identify and mitigate potential 'Samskara' (subliminal impressions) in upcoming system implementations by focusing on past negative stakeholder experiences.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, review the last three system user feedback reports for any recurring themes related to distrust or negative past experiences, and flag the top two recurring issues to investigate further for potential 'Alambana' (external triggers) in your current system.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, draft a brief (one-page) internal memo to your team outlining the concept of 'Samskara' and its potential impact on technology adoption, and request them to identify one instance in recent projects where past negative impressions might have influenced user behavior.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, begin drafting the introduction to your next research paper by clearly articulating the gap in current information systems research regarding the lack of focus on individual cognitive variations and Eastern philosophical perspectives on memory, using the Yoga Sutra framework as your proposed solution.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, initiate a discussion with your advisory board regarding the importance of embedding ethical and behavioral values into the design and implementation guidelines for all new government information systems, referencing the finding that failures often stem from a lack of adherence to these values, not culture.
Yoga, Information Systems, Memory, Behavioural Analysis, Samskara, ICT4D
Ethics-based ontology in ICT4D
AI Processed Human Approved

How do technology projects affect local communities, and what determines whether they succeed or fail?

Devinder Thapa
Ethics-based ontology in ICT4D
2025
Key findings
  • Establishes an ethics-based ontology in ICT4D that shifts focus from instrumental views of technology to lived human experience and moral responsibility.
  • Demonstrates through the OLE Nepal case study how embedding technology into local educational ecosystems, national curricula, and teacher practices leads to sustainable success.
  • Reveals through the OLPC Peru case study how top-down, context-unaware technological implementations erode local agency and lead to project failure.
  • Highlights key implementation challenges, including translating abstract philosophical concepts into practical design metrics and addressing Eurocentric biases in technology evaluation.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, schedule a 30-minute meeting with your ICT4D project leads to introduce the concept of an 'ethics-based ontology' and ask them to identify one project where technology is deeply integrated into user workflows and cultural practices. Assign them to bring initial thoughts on how the project's impact on lived experience and moral agency could be assessed in the next project review.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, review the support tickets and user feedback logs from the last quarter for your current ICT4D deployment. Specifically, look for recurring issues that are not purely technical but seem to relate to user frustration, resistance to adoption, or a perception of technology not fitting their daily routines. Flag these for further investigation with your team.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, identify your organization's most critical ICT4D initiative. Draft a brief memo outlining how you plan to evaluate its success not just on efficiency metrics but also on its impact on the dignity, agency, and cultural integrity of the end-users. Prepare to discuss this revised evaluation framework with your team by the end of the week.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, revisit the 'implementation challenges' section of the research paper and select ONE challenge (e.g., translating abstract concepts into practical design metrics). Begin drafting a short (1-page) proposal for how you might operationalize this concept for a future ICT4D project you are involved in, focusing on a tangible measurement.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, review existing national or organizational guidelines for technology procurement and deployment in development contexts. Identify sections that address user impact, cultural sensitivity, or long-term sustainability. Draft a short list of questions to investigate how these existing guidelines could be strengthened to incorporate considerations of lived experience and moral responsibility for technology's impact.
ICT4D, being-in-the-World, ethics of responsibility, ontology, development, philosophy
Role of Information Systems in Empowering Innovation Networks
AI Processed Human Approved

How can leaders set up and manage shared technology tools to support collaborative innovation across partner companies?

Sven-Volker Rehm, Lakshmi Goel, Iris Junglas
Role of Information Systems in Empowering Innovation Networks
MIS Quarterly Executive · 2015
Key findings
  • Identifies five key IS functionalities critical for innovation networks: collaborative work environments, knowledge maps, knowledge spaces, innovation procedure toolkits, and social media platforms.
  • Reveals that network success stems from pragmatically using a diverse set of accessible IS tools to form a shared infrastructure rather than relying on a single complex system.
  • Delivers nine practical guidelines for CIOs to manage IS infrastructure across the co-shaping, co-performing, and co-opting phases of open innovation networks.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, initiate a review of our existing IS tools to identify at least three readily accessible platforms (e.g., cloud-based project management, secure file sharing, internal wiki) that can be quickly configured to support a collaborative work environment for our next cross-company project, prioritizing ease of adoption for all partners.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, assess the user-friendliness and integration capabilities of our current knowledge management system and identify any gaps. Then, plan a quick training session for a pilot group of users demonstrating how to tag and categorize project-related documents to build a rudimentary 'knowledge map' for our innovation network.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, draft a brief outline of key innovation challenges and opportunities for our next external collaboration, and then identify which of the five identified IS functionalities (collaborative work environments, knowledge maps, knowledge spaces, innovation procedure toolkits, and social media platforms) would be most impactful in addressing these specific challenges, focusing on pragmatic tool selection.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, begin cataloging and categorizing the publicly available 'innovation procedure toolkits' or best practice guides that could be shared or adapted for our current project, focusing on those with clear, step-by-step instructions that can be easily integrated into a shared digital space.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, draft a short proposal for an initiative that encourages or provides resources for SMEs to adopt cloud-based collaborative platforms, specifically highlighting how these platforms can support cross-organizational knowledge sharing and innovation within their respective industries.
Open Innovation, Innovation Networks, Information Systems Infrastructure, Small and Medium Enterprises, Collaborative Work Environments, Medical Device Industry
Using Information Systems in Innovation Networks: Uncovering Network Resources
AI Processed Human Approved

How can collaborating companies use shared information systems to align resources and develop new products?

Sven-Volker Rehm, Lakshmi Goel, Iris Junglas
Using Information Systems in Innovation Networks: Uncovering Network Resources
Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2017
Key findings
  • Inter-organizational information systems are essential for enabling networking capabilities and constructing unique, shared resource constellations at the network level.
  • Four core informational purposes of information systems—representation, sharing, architecture, and reach—facilitate the cross-boundary resource alignment process.
  • Creating IS-embedded network resources enables collaborating firms to establish sustainable competitive advantages that extend beyond individual firm boundaries.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, schedule a meeting with key innovation network partners to initiate discussions on standardizing or enhancing inter-organizational information system capabilities for resource visibility and alignment. Identify one critical shared process in an ongoing innovation project and task your team with exploring how a new information system feature could better represent and share partner resources for that process.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, review the existing inter-organizational information systems used by your company in innovation networks. Identify one area where information sharing or representation of partner capabilities is currently fragmented or manual, and develop a concrete proposal for a pilot project to improve this using a specific IS feature (e.g., a shared dashboard for resource availability).
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, identify one ongoing collaborative innovation project and map out the key physical, human, and organizational resources currently being leveraged from your network partners. Then, identify specific gaps in visibility or alignment of these resources and brainstorm one practical way an inter-organizational information system could be adapted or enhanced to address these gaps.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, begin drafting a qualitative interview guide for your next set of case studies, focusing on questions that explore how specific inter-organizational information system features (representation, sharing, architecture, reach) enable or hinder the alignment of physical, human, and organizational resources for new product development.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, research existing government grants or incentives that support the adoption and development of inter-organizational information systems for small and medium-sized enterprises involved in collaborative innovation. Draft a one-page summary of potential policy interventions to encourage such adoption for a discussion with relevant industry stakeholders.
Network Resource, Dynamic Capability, Networking Capability, Resource-based View, Innovation Network, New Product Development
On the Potential of Business Process Management for Digital Entrepreneurship: Findings from a Literature Review
AI Processed Human Approved

How can growing digital startups balance structured business processes with the flexibility needed to scale?

Tobias Wuttke, Thomas Haskamp, Michael Perscheid, Falk Uebernickel
On the Potential of Business Process Management for Digital Entrepreneurship: Findings from a Literature Review
Forty-Fourth International Conference on Information Systems · 2023
Key findings
  • Reconciles BPM and digital entrepreneurship literature by highlighting synergies such as process modularity, agility, and customer orientation.
  • Identifies key tensions between traditional process structures and the dynamic operational flexibility required by digital ventures.
  • Proposes three main research avenues: applying ambidextrous BPM in digital ventures, treating digital venturing as a business process, and developing capabilities to balance flexibility and structure.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, initiate a review of our current core digital processes (e.g., customer onboarding, product deployment) to identify specific components that could be modularized to allow for independent updates and scaling without disrupting the entire workflow.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, schedule a 30-minute meeting with a key team member from sales or customer support to identify one friction point in their daily workflow that could be addressed by a small, agile process improvement, rather than a large, monolithic system change.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, dedicate an hour to mapping out the critical decision-making points in our growth strategy and outline potential process 'switches' or 'modes' that can be activated or deactivated based on market feedback or scaling needs, embodying ambidextrous BPM.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, begin by identifying three specific digital venture growth challenges (e.g., rapid customer acquisition, international expansion) and conceptualize how treating the *process of venturing itself* as a business process (i.e., defining, measuring, and iteratively improving the venture creation and growth cycle) could be studied.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, draft a brief (one-page) outline of potential policy levers (e.g., startup support programs, digital skills training) that could foster the development of 'capabilities to balance flexibility and structure' within digital entrepreneurial ecosystems, focusing on practical implementation.
business process management, digital entrepreneurship, digital venturing, ambidextrous BPM, process innovation, literature review
Building the Processes Behind the Product: How Digital Ventures Create Business Processes That Support Their Growth
AI Processed Human Approved

How do fast-growing digital ventures build and adapt their internal business processes to support growth?

Tobias Wuttke, Thomas Haskamp, Michael Perscheid, Falk Uebernickel
Building the Processes Behind the Product: How Digital Ventures Create Business Processes That Support Their Growth
Business & Information Systems Engineering · 2024
Key findings
  • Identified four distinct patterns of business process change in digital ventures: creating minimum viable processes, creating encapsulated processes, creating centralized control flow integrations, and creating centralized data flow integrations.
  • Revealed that digital ventures typically start with flexible, human-orchestrated processes supported by low-specificity tools before migrating to specialized enterprise systems to boost efficiency.
  • Showed how proxy communication tools and centralized analytics systems are used to reduce system complexity and eliminate data silos in maturing ventures.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, initiate a review of our current proxy communication tool usage and explore options for centralizing our analytics systems to proactively address potential data silos as we scale.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, identify one key operational process (e.g., sales lead qualification) that is currently human-orchestrated and explore if a 'minimum viable process' could be documented and supported by a low-specificity tool for immediate iteration.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, map out the current flow of data for our top 2 growth-driving products and identify one area where centralized data flow integration could significantly reduce friction and improve speed to market.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, begin compiling a list of digital ventures that have recently experienced rapid growth and categorize their initial process creation patterns based on the four distinct patterns identified in the research (MVP, encapsulated, centralized control, centralized data).
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, task a working group to investigate how current regulatory frameworks might be hindering the adoption of flexible, technology-enabled business processes in rapidly scaling digital ventures.
Business process management, Digital entrepreneurship, Digital ventures, Business process change, Enterprise systems
TIME TO TURN OFF THE LIGHTS: A SUCCESS FACTOR FRAMEWORK FOR ADVANCING HYPERAUTOMATION IN ORGANIZATIONS
AI Processed Human Approved

What are the key factors needed to successfully scale automation across an organization?

Lisa Straub, Christian Zeiß, Ulvi Ibrahimli, Christoph Tomitza, Benedikt Wirsing, Axel Winkelmann
TIME TO TURN OFF THE LIGHTS: A SUCCESS FACTOR FRAMEWORK FOR ADVANCING HYPERAUTOMATION IN ORGANIZATIONS
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • The survey results statistically supported all 15 success factors within the framework, achieving a high average agreement score of 6.05 out of 7, with 93.2% of respondents selecting positive agreement.
  • 'Leadership Commitment' (SF3) and 'Communication and Trust Building' (SF4) received the highest levels of overall agreement, indicating strong statistical support.
  • 'Strategic Partner Collaboration' (SF15) and 'Customer Integration' (SF13) received statistically supported relevance, although they had comparatively lower overall agreement scores.
  • The study's generalizability is limited by the German context of the initial qualitative interviews, a modest quantitative survey sample size (n = 103), and its reliance on subjective assessments rather than objective performance metrics.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, schedule a 30-minute alignment meeting with business unit heads to establish a joint 'Hyperautomation Governance Board' to audit all active shadow-IT automation tools (like RPA and low-code apps) and map them against your long-term IT integration roadmap to prevent fragmented technical debt.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, block out two hours to audit your current automation deployment backlog and draft a standardized 'API-First Integration Checklist' that your development team must use to ensure new automations do not bypass APIs and create system incompatibilities.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, select one high-volume customer-facing workflow and schedule a scoping call with a key strategic partner to co-design an integrated, automated data-sharing process, directly applying the 'Customer Integration' (SF13) and 'Strategic Partner Collaboration' (SF15) success factors.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, draft a research proposal and outreach email to target three non-German, US-based enterprises to secure pilot sites for a comparative case study that measures objective operational KPIs (such as transaction error rates and processing speed) to validate the subjective findings of the 15-factor framework.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, draft an amendment to your organization's IT Procurement Policy mandating that any new business unit purchasing low-code or RPA tools must submit a 'Systemic Compatibility and Trust Impact Assessment' addressing how the tool aligns with the enterprise IT architecture and employee trust-building guidelines.
Hyperautomation, Transformation Management, Organizational Change, Success Factor Framework, Affordance Theory
ARE THE REGULATORS WINNING THE FIGHT WITH ANONYMITY-ENHANCING COINS? STUDYING BINANCE’S EUROPEAN DELISTING OF MONERO AS A NATURAL EXPERIMENT
AI Processed Human Approved

How does delisting a privacy coin from a major exchange impact its price over time?

Robin Renwick, Rob Gleasure
ARE THE REGULATORS WINNING THE FIGHT WITH ANONYMITY-ENHANCING COINS? STUDYING BINANCE’S EUROPEAN DELISTING OF MONERO AS A NATURAL EXPERIMENT
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Hypothesis 1 (delisting will cause an immediate negative price impact) was STATISTICALLY SUPPORTED: Monero's price was significantly lower (estimated at 63% to 72% lower) post-delisting compared to its synthetic counterfactual.\n- Hypothesis 2 (the negative price impact will diminish over time) was NOT SUPPORTED: Rather than recovering, the negative price impact intensified when longer time lags of up to 200 days were examined.\n- Limitations: The findings are restricted to a single delisting event of one specific privacy coin (Monero) and use trading price as an imperfect proxy for perceived value.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Audit our organization's digital asset holdings and treasury to identify any exposure to privacy coins like Monero, and immediately initiate a migration plan to convert these assets to compliant, liquid cryptocurrencies to avoid permanent valuation loss from regulatory delistings.
  • IT Manager: Update network monitoring tools and firewall rules to detect and block any Monero nodes, mining scripts, or wallet connections on company-owned infrastructure to prevent compliance violations arising from tightening centralized exchange regulations.
  • Business Strategist: Review our payment gateway integrations and product roadmap to remove Monero or other privacy coins as accepted payment methods, and pivot our privacy-focused initiatives toward compliant layer-2 scaling solutions (like Zero-Knowledge rollups) that satisfy regulators.
  • Researcher: Draft a new research proposal to apply the synthetic control method to other privacy-centric assets (like Zcash or Dash) across different geographic regions, incorporating decentralized exchange (DEX) trading volumes to test if the value shifted off centralized order books.
  • Policymaker: Draft an amendment to the national crypto-asset regulatory framework to mandate that all registered centralized exchanges delist anonymity-enhancing coins, citing this empirical evidence that exchange-level bans are highly effective at permanently reducing these assets' market value and liquidity.
Cryptocurrencies, Monero, Privacy, Regulation, Natural Experiment, Synthetic Control Method
ACTOR-NETWORKS IN CORPORATE DIGITAL SUSTAINABILITY INITIATIVES
AI Processed

How do IT and sustainability departments interact to shape corporate digital sustainability initiatives?

David Stanlein, Lea Püchel, Enni Alina Juntunen, Tobias Brandt
ACTOR-NETWORKS IN CORPORATE DIGITAL SUSTAINABILITY INITIATIVES
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • The case study supported that sustainability management acts as a stabilizer by establishing structural frameworks, securing senior executive backing, and fostering interdepartmental knowledge sharing.
  • The analysis supported that IT/IS management often acts as a destabilizing force by imposing resource limitations, prioritizing short-term operational goals, and withholding full active engagement.
  • The research demonstrated that the corporate digital sustainability actor-network remains unstable due to unresolved conflicts between sustainability goals and IT efficiency metrics.
  • A limitation of these findings is their reliance on a single-case study of a German insurance company with an interview sample dominated by IT-department stakeholders.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Schedule a 30-minute meeting with the Head of Sustainability to co-design and integrate a 'sustainability impact score' directly into the IT department's project prioritization framework, ensuring green metrics are evaluated alongside traditional cost and efficiency KPIs.
  • IT Manager: Review your team's current project backlog and formally assign a senior systems engineer as the dedicated 'Green IT Liaison' to attend the sustainability working group's bi-weekly meetings, ensuring technical resource constraints are communicated early.
  • Business Strategist: Draft a charter for a joint IT-Sustainability Steering Committee that outlines a shared governance model, specifically defining a conflict-resolution protocol for when short-term IT cost-cutting clashes with long-term carbon reduction targets.
  • Researcher: Draft a research proposal for a multi-case study targeting non-financial sectors (such as manufacturing or retail) that intentionally oversamples sustainability managers to address the IT-biased, single-case limitation of the existing literature.
  • Policymaker: Initiate a draft for a voluntary corporate digital sustainability reporting template that requires firms to disclose how their IT infrastructure procurement policies align with national green transition targets.
digital sustainability, actor-network theory, case study, IT/IS alignment, IT/IS management
STRUCTURING READINESS FOR AI INNOVATION: THE ROLE OF THE DESIGN CHALLENGE BRIEF AS A COORDINATION AND GATEKEEPING ARTEFACT
AI Processed Human Approved

How can teams evaluate whether an artificial intelligence project is ready to launch?

Jennifer Hehn, Franziska Anna Röckel, Benjamin van Giffen
STRUCTURING READINESS FOR AI INNOVATION: THE ROLE OF THE DESIGN CHALLENGE BRIEF AS A COORDINATION AND GATEKEEPING ARTEFACT
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • The study outlines a preliminary three-phase qualitative model for establishing AI project readiness: divergent exploration, negotiation/translation, and convergent alignment, though these findings are descriptive and lack statistical testing.
  • The Design Challenge Brief is shown to act as a gatekeeping artifact that structures readiness reviews and allows teams to selectively revisit earlier project assumptions without resetting the entire process.
  • The study is limited by its small qualitative sample of five projects and its setting within a structured, university-led innovation lab, which may restrict generalizability to less-structured corporate settings.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Draft and mandate a standard 'Design Challenge Brief' template that all AI project champions must complete and get approved before receiving formal project launch funding.
  • IT Manager: Gather your AI project team for a 1-hour workshop to map your current pre-project planning stage to the three phases of divergent exploration, negotiation/translation, and convergent alignment, explicitly documenting how you will handle fluid data availability.
  • Business Strategist: Audit your pipeline of proposed AI initiatives and flag any project that has not yet completed a collaborative 'Design Challenge Brief' to prevent launching projects with high uncertainty around non-deterministic outcomes.
  • Researcher: Draft a research proposal and survey instrument to test the generalizability of the three-phase AI readiness model across a quantitative sample of 100+ corporate AI projects outside of academic lab settings.
  • Policymaker: Integrate a 'Design Challenge Brief' gatekeeping requirement into your public sector AI procurement and funding frameworks to ensure public agencies evaluate data readiness and outcome uncertainties before awarding AI contracts.
AI innovation, readiness work, design challenge brief, boundary objects, gatekeeping
NAVIGATING THE TWIN TRANSITION: A PARADOX PERSPECTIVE ON CONCURRENT DIGITAL AND SUSTAINABILITY CHANGE
AI Processed

What tensions arise when pursuing digital and sustainability goals together, and how do organizations manage them?

Daria L. Stumkat, Jan Stockhinger
NAVIGATING THE TWIN TRANSITION: A PARADOX PERSPECTIVE ON CONCURRENT DIGITAL AND SUSTAINABILITY CHANGE
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • The study qualitatively identifies four persistent tensions in the twin transition: cost efficiency vs. sustainability impact, IT as enabler vs. IT as concern, individual values vs. organizational inertia, and fast IT iteration vs. slow sustainability institutionalization, though these are exploratory and not statistically tested.\n- The findings reveal that actors manage these paradoxes through a portfolio of splitting, suppressing, adjusting, and opposing responses, which often remain fragmented rather than coordinated.\n- Successful navigation was shown to occur gradually through sequencing and formalizing responses (such as in UI/UX accessibility standards), indicating that twin transition synergies are an outcome of continuous paradox management rather than a starting condition.\n- The study's findings are limited by its exploratory nature and single-case, cross-sectional design at one European IT service provider, meaning they are not statistically generalizable.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, update your organization's 'Definition of Done' (DoD) for all software release pipelines to mandate that any major code deployment must include a documented estimate of its cloud carbon footprint (using tools like Cloud Carbon Footprint) alongside traditional speed and cost metrics.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, during your weekly sprint planning, introduce one concrete green-coding or UI accessibility standard (such as optimizing image compression to reduce data transfer energy) to the active backlog, demonstrating to your team how to integrate sustainability into fast-paced IT iterations.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, review your active digital transformation roadmaps and replace any assumptions of automatic 'twin transition' synergies with a formal risk register that explicitly maps out where digital speed and carbon-reduction goals conflict, scheduling a sequenced timeline for which priority takes precedence at each milestone.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, draft a research proposal for a longitudinal, multi-sector quantitative survey targeting CIOs across Europe to statistically test the generalizability of the four identified twin-transition tensions beyond the single-case IT service provider context.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, initiate the draft of a voluntary 'Green IT Integration' compliance guide that provides businesses with standardized templates to formalize digital-sustainability KPIs, helping them move from fragmented employee-led initiatives to structured, audit-ready corporate reporting.
Twin transition, Twin transformation, Paradox theory, Tensions, Paradox navigation, Digital transformation
ORCHESTRATION PARADOXES IN NATIONAL QUANTUM COMPUTING INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS
AI Processed Human Approved

What competing tensions and trade-offs do leaders face when guiding national quantum computing ecosystems?

Jori Taipale, Olli Tyrväinen, Tuure Tuunanen, Joel Mero, Teiko Heinosaari
ORCHESTRATION PARADOXES IN NATIONAL QUANTUM COMPUTING INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Organizing tensions were identified as the most frequent paradox, specifically focusing on the trade-offs between collaboration vs. resource competition and guidance vs. flexibility.
  • Performance tensions emerged regarding resource allocation between software vs. hardware development and building a shared vision vs. individual firm survival.
  • Belonging tensions highlighted a 'godfather' paradox, where the ecosystem must balance the state's role as a major supportive funder and customer with the ultimate goal of corporate independence.
  • Learning tensions were characterized by the challenge of managing multi-talent knowledge development versus narrow technology specialization.
  • The study is limited by its single qualitative case context in Finland with a small sample of 15 informants, requiring caution when applying these findings to other national contexts.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Schedule a 9:00 AM meeting with your lead enterprise architect to audit your current quantum-readiness roadmap, establishing a formal policy that divides software development and hardware access investments 50/50 to hedge against the performance tension of committing prematurely to a single unproven hardware stack.
  • IT Manager: Create a bi-weekly 1-hour 'Quantum Cross-Training' slot in your team's calendar starting this Friday, pairing your specialized quantum physics PhDs with your generalist cloud engineers to address the learning tension between narrow technical specialization and broad-based systems integration.
  • Business Strategist: Perform a revenue dependency audit to calculate the percentage of your quantum business unit's funding derived from state grants versus commercial clients, and draft a pitch deck for two private-sector pilots to actively transition away from 'godfather' state-funding reliance.
  • Researcher: Draft a pre-competitive collaboration agreement template to send to a peer researcher at a competing institution, outlining a shared framework for baseline algorithm testing while clearly defining IP boundaries to manage the tension of collaboration versus resource competition.
  • Policymaker: Draft a revision for the upcoming national quantum funding round guidelines that introduces a 'co-investment requirement,' mandating that state-funded consortia secure at least 25% of their budget from private corporate buyers to counter the 'godfather' dependency paradox.
Ecosystem orchestration, Paradox theory, Quantum computing innovation ecosystem, Explorative case study, Interpretive qualitative research
TOWARDS DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR TEACHING INDUSTRY 4.0 COMPETENCIES TO CS/IS STUDENTS
AI Processed

How can educators effectively teach modern industrial software skills without expensive physical equipment?

Felix Salcher
TOWARDS DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR TEACHING INDUSTRY 4.0 COMPETENCIES TO CS/IS STUDENTS
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Eight design principles were established, emphasizing virtualization, containerization, and problem-based learning cases as alternatives to expensive learning factories.\n- Preliminary course evaluation yielded positive descriptive feedback, with a mean rating of 4.43 out of 5 across satisfaction categories.\n- No formal statistical significance tests were performed due to the pilot nature of the study and the small, specific evaluation sample.\n- The pilot is limited by a very small sample size (9 respondents from a single cohort) and relies on subjective student perceptions rather than objective competency-based assessments.\n- Students noted difficulty adapting to the course's fast pace and programming requirements, highlighting a need for aligned prerequisites.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Direct your enterprise architecture team to draft a transition plan to replace physical IT hardware training labs with virtualized, containerized sandbox environments (e.g., Docker/Kubernetes) to reduce infrastructure costs and align onboarding with modern Industry 4.0 software architectures.
  • IT Manager: Review the programming prerequisites of your junior developers and assign them a structured, hands-on troubleshooting task using a containerized microservice mock-up on Monday morning to assess their readiness for complex Industry 4.0 integration projects.
  • Business Strategist: Reallocate a portion of next quarter's talent development budget away from high-cost physical equipment training and toward scalable, software-based virtual simulators to cost-effectively build digital twin and data architecture competencies.
  • Researcher: Draft a research proposal to conduct a multi-institution comparative study on these eight design principles, incorporating objective pre- and post-intervention technical testing rather than relying on subjective student feedback to measure competency gains.
  • Policymaker: Create a state-level educational grant initiative that incentivizes higher education institutions to update computer science curricula with virtualization-based Industry 4.0 frameworks, shifting funding priority away from physical learning factories.
Design Principles, Design Science Research, Industry 4.0, Smart Manufacturing
THE ANATOMY OF A DESIGN CHALLENGE FOR INITIATING AI INNOVATION
AI Processed Human Approved

How should teams structure initial challenges to successfully launch AI projects?

Franziska Anna Röckel, Benjamin van Giffen, Andreas Janson, Jennifer Hehn
THE ANATOMY OF A DESIGN CHALLENGE FOR INITIATING AI INNOVATION
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • The study empirically validated a structural anatomy for the Design Challenge consisting of four robust elements (verb, object of innovation, target group, context) and three plastic elements (internal data, technology, potential), which was supported across all 42 cases analyzed.
  • The robust elements were validated to successfully create a stable, shared identity and common direction among diverse team members, acting as a center of authority.
  • The plastic elements were shown to successfully absorb technological uncertainty, providing a flexible framework for teams to negotiate and adapt to AI's emergent capabilities over time.
  • The qualitative analysis identified three distinct nuances in shaping the 'object of innovation' (modular, abstract, and space) that guide teams toward either incremental or more radical innovation pathways.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Mandate that all upcoming AI project proposals use a standardized 'Design Challenge' charter template structured around the 4 robust elements (verb, object of innovation, target group, context) and 3 plastic elements (internal data, technology, potential), explicitly forbidding teams from locking in a rigid technical architecture in their initial pitch.
  • IT Manager: Gather your interdisciplinary project team for a 60-minute workshop on Monday morning to co-create a 'Design Challenge' statement, explicitly defining the stable 'robust' elements to align the business and tech members, while leaving the 'plastic' elements (like specific data sources and AI models) open as flexible targets to be negotiated as the project progresses.
  • Business Strategist: Review your company's AI project portfolio on Monday morning and intentionally rewrite the 'object of innovation' for each project: frame them as 'modular' if you need predictable, incremental improvements, or rewrite them as 'space-based' (e.g., focused on broad capabilities) if you want to push the team toward radical, disruptive business model innovation.
  • Researcher: Update your qualitative coding scheme for ongoing field studies of AI adoption to track how frequently and at what project stages teams modify the 'plastic' elements (internal data, technology, potential) versus the 'robust' elements of their project charters to measure the empirical threshold where technological uncertainty triggers project misalignment.
  • Policymaker: Revise the application guidelines for the upcoming public AI innovation grant cycle to replace rigid 'technical specifications' requirements with a mandatory 'Design Challenge' framework, scoring applicants on the clarity of their robust elements (target group, context) and the adaptive flexibility of their plastic elements (data and technology integration plans).
Design Challenge, AI Innovation, Boundary Object, Anatomy, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Problem Formulation
WHEN WE CANNOT STOP THE DATA FLOW: THE EMOTIONAL LIFE OF DATA IN A CHILDREN’S DAYCARE CENTER
AI Processed

How does continuous digital reporting affect emotional pressure, trust, and staff autonomy in childcare centers?

Lea Püchel, Tobias Brandt
WHEN WE CANNOT STOP THE DATA FLOW: THE EMOTIONAL LIFE OF DATA IN A CHILDREN’S DAYCARE CENTER
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • This is a qualitative, ethnographic case study, meaning it does not test quantitative hypotheses or report statistical significance values.
  • The qualitative data supports a sequential three-stage framework showing how digital opportunity transitions into perceived control and safety, data reassurance dependency, and ultimately internalized data-driven surveillance.
  • In the highly digitalized center, continuous digital updates successfully provided a feeling of safety but created an addictive loop where any absence of data was interpreted as a signal of risk.
  • Educators did not openly resist the system but instead practiced adaptive, situated compliance, adjusting their timing, tone, and messaging to meet platform expectations.
  • The comparative boundary case with lower-intensity digital reporting demonstrated that a slower communication rhythm can temper the emergence of the full data-dependency cycle.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, reconfigure your enterprise communication and tracking platforms to aggregate non-critical status updates into a single daily digest at 4:00 PM, rather than allowing real-time push notifications, to actively break the expectation of continuous monitoring.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, audit the daycare platform's dashboard interface and replace all default automatic 'No Data' warning flags or empty progress bars with a neutral status indicator to eliminate the false perception of operational risk during quiet hours.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, draft and distribute a 'Communication Cadence Agreement' to clients that explicitly sets the expectation of only two digital updates per day, actively framing this slower rhythm as a premium service feature that ensures staff are focused on active care rather than screens.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, draft a research proposal to conduct a comparative diary study of frontline workers in relationship-heavy sectors like eldercare, specifically measuring the psychological friction and time spent on 'situated compliance' tasks versus actual patient care.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, draft a policy amendment for child and eldercare labor standards that prohibits the use of real-time telemetry and continuous digital logging frequency as metrics for assessing staff performance and regulatory compliance.
Data work, future of work, reporting systems, relational data, data dependency
NONPROFITS' DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: UNDERSTANDING ORGANISATIONAL IDENTITY DYNAMICS
AI Processed

How does digital transformation affect a nonprofit's identity, and how are resulting internal conflicts resolved?

Maria Julia Torres, Lea Pchel, Markus P. Zimmer, Tobias Brandt
NONPROFITS' DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: UNDERSTANDING ORGANISATIONAL IDENTITY DYNAMICS
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Digital transformation in nonprofits is a cyclical, five-period recursive process (comprising internal alignment, strategy production, democratization, implementation, and resistance/re-anchoring) rather than a linear transition (Supported by qualitative case analysis).
  • Unlike for-profit firms where digital transformation fundamentally redefines identity, a nonprofit's core values-based identity remains stable, whereas only the methods of how they work are challenged and reconfigured (Supported by qualitative case analysis).
  • Transitioning from foundation-setting to a proactive digital role triggers organizational resistance and identity dissonance, as new digital structures and departments challenge existing activist culture and localized power dynamics (Supported by qualitative case analysis).
  • Momentum in a nonprofit's digital transformation is re-established not by resolving technical deficits, but by re-anchoring the digital strategy within a moral narrative against a common value-based antagonist (Supported by qualitative case analysis).
  • The study's generalizability may be limited due to its focus on a single, large-scale, globally federated nonprofit, and the patterns of resistance might vary in smaller or less decentralized organizations (Acknowledged study limitation).
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Meet with your internal communications lead on Monday morning to rewrite the launch narrative of your current digital initiative; frame the IT upgrades not as a 'system migration for efficiency,' but as a vital strategic weapon designed to help your activists defeat the organization's primary external adversary.
  • IT Manager: Identify the regional office or department most resistant to the new software rollout and schedule a 30-minute call with their team leader on Monday morning to ask how the system can be configured to protect their local autonomy, rather than forcing a standardized corporate workflow.
  • Business Strategist: Review your draft digital strategy document first thing Monday morning and audit its vocabulary; strip out commercial, for-profit terminology like 'customer acquisition,' 'user monetization,' and 'ROI,' replacing them with values-driven terms like 'supporter mobilization' and 'mission impact.'
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, draft a outreach email to directors of three small, community-based local charities to pitch a comparative study, testing if the five-period recursive digital transformation model identified at Greenpeace holds true in non-federated, resource-constrained nonprofit settings.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, update your organization's digital funding policy and grant application templates to remove mandatory 'commercial viability' metrics, instead requiring applicants to demonstrate how the requested digital grant will reinforce and scale their core mission-based values.
Digital Transformation, Organisational Identity, Nonprofits, Case Study, Greenpeace International
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