Australasian Journal of Information Systems

Digital Transformation: An Enterprise Transformation Theory Perspective

Rahul Kumar — 2024-09-04

Digital Transformation (DT) has emerged as one of the most talked-about phenomena of the decade. The rush of things around DT also exposes its challenges towards effectively integrating digital technologies into the scheme of things. The proliferating literature on DT offers a fragmented understanding and is unclear about the constituents and configuration of the phenomena. The above concerns primarily arise from insufficient theoretical grounding and deficiencies in the extant conceptualizations. To address these concerns, the article posits an over-arching research question to examine the phenomena while theoretically uncovering its foundational elements. Accordingly, the study resorts to the enterprise transformation framework to explicate the transformative aspects based on a two-phase analysis. The first phase adopts a text-mining approach for uncovering the latent themes underlying the DT scholarship, followed by a qualitative approach involving content analysis. We finally propose a theoretically motivated conceptualization of the tenets of DT. We specifically investigate the phenomenon's scope, ways, means, and ends. The proposed framework is further validated following a multi-case analysis. Our conceptualization grounds and establishes the significance of foundational elements having a theoretical basis for identifying DT. Our examination offers an implementation guide for the practice, which we delineate subsequently.

Risks of e-commerce Recommender Systems: A Scoping Review

Eranjana Kathriarachchi — 2024-11-22

While recommender systems (RS) used in e-commerce have improved significantly providing customers with a personalised shopping experience, scholars have constantly raised concerns over the risks associated with e-commerce RS. However, a lack of methodological synthesis of risk-generating events associated with e-commerce recommender systems has curtailed systematic investigation of the risks of e-commerce RS. This paper presents a scoping review aimed at addressing this gap by synthesising different risk-generating events involved with the use of e-commerce RS as reported in the literature that could affect the welfare of customers who use those systems. Accordingly, peer-reviewed research studies published from 2003-2023 were extracted from the SCOPUS database and EBSCOhost platform for review. Sixty-two publications with evidence on risk-generating events of e-commerce RS were considered for the review. Twenty risk-generating events were identified through the review. These events were mapped with the corresponding risks based on existing frameworks on risks of e-commerce. We were able to identify several risk-generating events that had not previously been considered in conceptualising the risks of e-commerce RS. Further, we identified the plurality of the outcomes of risk-generating events which could provide guidance for the evaluation of e-commerce recommender systems from a multistakeholder perspective.

Robodebt: A Socio-Technical Case Study of Public Sector Information Systems Failure

Roger Clarke — 2024-09-05

Large-scale public sector information systems (PSIS) that administer social welfare payments face considerable challenges. Between 2014 and 2023, an Australian government agency conceived and implemented the Online Compliance Intervention (OCI) scheme, widely referred to as Robodebt. The scheme's primary purpose was to apply digital transformation in order to reduce labour costs and increase recovery of overpayments. Among its key features were a simplified, but inherently erroneous, estimation method called income averaging, and a new requirement that welfare recipients produce documentation for income earned years earlier. Failure by welfare recipients to comply with mandates resulted in the agency recovering what it asserted to be overpayments. This article presents a case study of Robodebt and its effects on over 1 million of its clients. The detailed case study relies on primary data through Senate and other government hearings and commissions, and secondary data, such as media reports, supplemented by academic sources. Relevant technical features include (1) the reliance on the digital persona that the agency maintains for each client, (2) computer-performed inferencing from client data, and (3) automated decision-making and subsequent action. This article employs a socio-technical systems approach to understanding the factors underlying a major PSIS project failure, by focusing on the system's political and public service sponsors; its participants (users); the people affected by it (usees); and the broader economic, social, and political context. Practical and theoretical insights are presented, with the intention of highlighting major practical lessons for PSIS, and the relevance of an articulated socio-technical frame for PSIS.

“Use” as a Conscious Thought: Towards a Theory of “Use” in Autonomous Things

Gohar Khan — 2024-05-15

The way users perceive and use information systems artefacts has been mainly studied from the notion of behavioral beliefs, deliberate cognitive efforts, and physical actions performed by human actors to produce certain outcomes. The next generation of information systems, however, can sense, respond, and adapt to environments without necessitating similar cognitive efforts, physical contact, or explicit instructions to operate. Therefore, by leveraging theories of consciousness and technology use, this research aims to advance an alternative understanding of the "use" associated with the next generation of IS artefacts that do not require deliberate cognitive efforts, physical manipulation, or explicit instructions to yield outcomes. The theory and proposed model were refined and validated through the burst detection technique, IS expert involvement (n=10), a pilot study (n=130), and end-user surveys (n= 119). Structural equating modelling techniques were employed to test the theory. We show that unlike the manually operated IS artefacts, the “use” of a fully autonomous artefact is a conscious thought rather than a physical activity of operating a system to produce certain outcomes. We argue that, unlike the traditional notions of use associated with manually operated technologies, conscious use is not characterized solely by behavioral beliefs stemming from logical and reflective cognitive and physical efforts (e.g., effort expectancy). We propose the notion of conscious use within the context of fully autonomous entities and empirically validate its measure. Additionally, we offer recommendations for future research directions in this area. The conceptualization of this new theory for fully autonomous IS artefacts adds significant academic value to the literature given the convergence of AI-based machine learning systems and cognitive computing systems.

Requirements Risk Management for Continuous Development: Organisational Needs

Sanna Kainulainen — 2024-09-05

Information systems development has recently evolved from traditional to agile and continuous forms. Continuous development (CD) methods, such as development and operations (DevOps), integrate many well-regarded parts of agile development and add collaboration among an organisation’s development, operations and quality assessment departments. We argue that requirements risk management (RRM) poses additional challenges to projects where development work is carried out quickly and continuously. However, in the literature, most methods for prioritising requirements and managing risks are more suited to traditional development. This raises the need for new tools and methodologies to meet CD challenges. As these challenges constantly evolve, project management must be able to control CD, changes in the determination of requirements and the accompanying risks. Based on a systematic literature review, we define the key features of CD and develop a conceptual three-dimensional framework that can be used to understand the organisational needs of RRM for CD.

Researcher-Practitioner Collaboration in Action Design Research

Stefan Cronholm — 2024-09-05

Action Design Research (ADR) is a well-known research method within Design Science Research (DSR). An essential characteristic of the ADR method is the need for researcher-practitioner collaboration (RPC). While there is abundant research on RPC regarding information systems projects in general concerning explanatory and normative knowledge, there is very limited prescriptive knowledge on how to execute RPC in ADR projects. Successful collaboration in ADR projects is imperative since the development of socio-technical IT artefacts requires frequent interaction in organisational contexts. However, RPC can be hard to manage due to competing interests. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to present prescriptive knowledge for how to manage RPC. We have analysed a collaborative ADR project consisting of several researchers and practitioners. Based on a grounded theory approach, we have developed theoretical models based on challenges identified in an ADR project. The models provide prescriptive knowledge regarding: shape the IT artefact based on organisational intervention, exploit the mutual dependency between developing design principles and IT artefacts, and contextualise and generalise learning. Each model involves logical relationships between: conditions for the challenges, actions taken to address the challenges and consequences of the actions taken. The guidelines were deducted from the models and consist of recommendations that could be considered in future ADR projects.

(Why) Do We Trust AI?: A Case of AI-based Health Chatbots

Ashish Viswanath Prakash — 2024-05-15

Automated chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can act as a ubiquitous point of contact, improving access to healthcare and empowering users to make effective decisions. However, despite the potential benefits, emerging literature suggests that apprehensions linked to the distinctive features of AI technology and the specific context of use (healthcare) could undermine consumer trust and hinder widespread adoption. Although the role of trust is considered pivotal to the acceptance of healthcare technologies, a dearth of research exists that focuses on the contextual factors that drive trust in such AI-based Chatbots for Self-Diagnosis (AICSD). Accordingly, a contextual model based on the trust-in-technology framework was developed to understand the determinants of consumers’ trust in AICSD and its behavioral consequences. It was validated using a free simulation experiment study in India (N = 202). Perceived anthropomorphism, perceived information quality, perceived explainability, disposition to trust technology, and perceived service quality influence consumers’ trust in AICSD. In turn, trust, privacy risk, health risk, and gender determine the intention to use. The research contributes by developing and validating a context-specific model for explaining trust in AICSD that could aid developers and marketers in enhancing consumers’ trust in and adoption of AICSD.

Information Systems Research in Australia and New Zealand: A Survey of Research Activity from 2020 to 2022

Marc Adam — 2024-11-21

Over the past 60 years, the information systems (IS) discipline has become an established research field in Australia and New Zealand. Throughout its history, the discipline has experienced an ongoing formation and evolution of its unique identity, with important links to both business and computing-focused research. As a sociotechnical discipline, IS research considers a wide range of phenomena that emerge when social systems interact with technical systems. Yet, there is a lack of research into how recent socioeconomic and technical developments, such as accelerated digitisation in the aftermath of Covid19, widescale university restructuring, and a revision of the government’s research classification schemes, have affected the IS discipline. Against this backdrop, the present paper seeks to establish the current state of the IS discipline in Australia and New Zealand. Based on a survey of 123 IS researchers, we confirm the sociotechnical nature of the IS discipline in this region, identify key research focus areas, provide research output benchmarks at different academic levels, and assess the level of engagement with general and specialised conferences. Our results provide important insights into the positioning of the IS discipline at the nexus of business and computing-focused research.

Business process pattern for improving social sustainability

Thorsten Schoormann — 2024-11-22

Business process management (BPM) has the ability to boost transformations towards sustainable entities by innovating organizational structures. While the majority of existing BPM tools and methods focus on economic obligations, social sustainability is often underrepresented. This is problematic because it inhibits business improvement of people’s quality of life (e.g., health and equity), fails to address changing customer demands beyond transactional excellence, and obstructs the consideration of new regulations. Based on a literature review and expert interviews, recurrent problems and best practice solutions for integrating social sustainability into business processes were collected. These were formalized into a set of process patterns and then evaluated through illustrative demonstrations, an applicability check, and interviews with process experts. The paper proposes ten patterns together with a series of examples to guide the analysis and improvement of processes in terms of social sustainability. They support both generating novel ideas and identifying weaknesses. In doing this, our work complements existing tools and methods from sustainable BPM, advances the current body of knowledge in this stream, and opens avenues for a more holistic consideration of sustainability in business processes.

Machine Learning Based Decision-Making: A Sensemaking Perspective

Jingqi (Celeste) Li — 2024-05-15

The integration of machine learning (ML), functioning as the core of various artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled systems in organizations, comes with the assertion that ML models offer automated decisions or assist domain experts in refining their decision-making. The current research presents substantial evidence of ML’s positive impact on business and organizational performance. Nonetheless, there is a limited understanding of how decision-makers participate in the process of generating ML-driven insights and enhancing their comprehension of business environments through ML outcomes. To enhance this engagement and understanding, this study examines the interactive process between decision-makers and ML experts as they strive to comprehend an environment and gather business insights for decision-making. It builds upon Weick’s sensemaking model by integrating ML’s pivotal role. By conducting interviews with 31 ML experts and ML end-users, we explore the dimensions of sensemaking in the context of ML utilization for decision-making. Consequently, this study proposes a process model which advances the organizational ML research by operationalizing Weick’s work into a structured ML-driven sensemaking model. This model charts a pragmatic pathway, outlining the interaction sequence between decision-makers and ML tools as they navigate through recognizing and utilizing ML, exploring opportunities, assessing ML model outcomes, and translating ML models into action, thereby advancing both the theoretical framework and its practical deployment in organizational contexts.

Achieving Desired Project Outcomes with Control Modes amidst Technical Uncertainty

Vijay Raghavan — 2024-11-21

Organizations aim to achieve successful project outcomes in information systems development (ISD) projects by managing the technical uncertainties that arise with adopting innovative technologies. This study, guided by control theory, investigates various control modes—namely, behavior, outcome, clan, and self-control—and their role in enhancing internal efficiency and psychological outcomes among project members in the presence of technical uncertainty. Our findings reveal that outcome and clan control modes are particularly effective at promoting favorable project results amidst the technical uncertainty surrounding innovative technology development, whereas behavior and self-control modes show no significant impact. As a result, prioritizing outcome and clan control modes is recommended for managing ISD projects characterized by technical uncertainty.

Creating an immersive environment of Metaverse for businesses

Harish Kumar — 2024-11-22

Metaverse is an immersive environment that shares online space with users to interact with an artificial world through avatars or other digital representations. By leveraging the immersive features of Metaverse, businesses can create new opportunities for revenue generation, customer engagement, collaboration, innovative products, services, or innovation. The development and governing of user interfaces and virtual environments are challenging. Since the metaverse concept is emerging, numerous questions remain about designing, executing, and benefiting from it in the business environment. This study identifies enablers that can support creating an immersive Metaverse environment for businesses to gain new business opportunities. The study deploys multi-criteria decision-making techniques, "Total Interpretive Structural Modelling," and "Cross-Impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification" to establish cross-relationships among enablers. The study also provides a hierarchical roadmap for creating an immersive metaverse environment. Recognizing which enablers hold the most influence in a hierarchy can lead to the strategic development of an immersive environment. This study will help researchers, policymakers, technology consultants, and business practitioners explore Metaverse's most impacting enablers to gain competitive advantages and future opportunities for the business.

Sociotechnical perspectives of digital technologies in sustainable mining

Warren Gabryk — 2024-05-15

This paper adopts an interpretive case study approach to understand the role of digital technologies in addressing seemingly contradictory sustainability goals in mining. The sociotechnical model of information systems was used as a framework to guide the analysis of twenty-five in-depth interviews with globally dispersed digital technology experts working collaboratively at an industry-leading hi-tech mining solutions company. The sociotechnical-led thematic analysis findings highlight the trade-offs experts face in balancing narrow technological imperatives and economic outcomes with broader sustainability goals. The analysis moves beyond the technological and economic to a harmonious perspective of social, human, environmental, and technological interactions. A visual thematic map is presented to aid practitioners in designing and optimally implementing digital technologies to simultaneously address the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals while prioritising business sustainability. We conclude by drawing from the proposed sociotechnical perspectives approach for digital sustainability to provide scholars with possible pathways for future responsible information systems research.

What prevents organisations from achieving e-HRM potential?

Arnela Ceric — 2024-01-29

Use of electronic human resource management (e-HRM) offers the prospect of enabling the human resource management (HRM) function to take on a strategic partner’s role in organisations. Despite the pervasive expansion of e-HRM use, there is no clear understanding of why organisations are not achieving e-HRM potential. We address this issue by investigating e-HRM adoption factors and their influence on information technology (IT) use potential to automate, informate and transform the HRM function in a sequential manner. In particular, we examine HRM professionals’ experiences with e-HRM use, including challenges, successes, and outcomes. We identified e-HRM adoption factors that enable and that constrain each stage of e-HRM use. With a focus on the inhibiting factors, our findings suggest that e-HRM potential hindered already in the automation stage diminishes e-HRM potential to subsequently informate and to transform the e-HRM function.

Using Analytical Information for Digital Business Transformation through DataOps: A Review and Conceptual Framework

Jia Xu — 2024-01-29

Organisations are increasingly practising business analytics to generate actionable insights that can guide their digital business transformation. Transforming business digitally using business analytics is an ongoing process that requires an integrated and disciplined approach to leveraging analytics and promoting collaboration. An emerging business analytics practice, Data Operations (DataOps), provides a disciplined approach for organisations to collaborate using analytical information for digital business transformation. We propose a conceptual framework by reviewing the literature on business analytics, DataOps and organisational information processing theory (OIPT). This conceptual framework explains how organisations can employ DataOps as an integrated and disciplined approach for developing the analytical information processing capability and facilitating boundary-spanning activities required for digital business transformation. This research (a) extends current knowledge on digital transformation by linking it with business analytics from the perspective of OIPT and boundary-spanning activities, and (b) presents DataOps as a novel approach for using analytical information for digital business transformation.

Mobile Identity Protection: The Moderation Role of Self-Efficacy

Yasser Alhelaly — 2024-01-29

The rapid growth of mobile applications and the associated increased dependency on digital identity raises the growing risk of identity theft and related fraud. Hence, protecting identity in a mobile environment is a problem. This study develops a model that examines the role of identity protection self-efficacy in increasing users’ motivation intentions to achieve actual mobile identity protection. Our research found that self-efficacy significantly affects the relationship between users’ perceived threat appraisal and their motivational intentions for identity protection. The relation between mobile users’ protection, motivational intentions, and actual mobile identity protection actions was also found to be significant. Additionally, the findings revealed the considerable impact of awareness in fully mediating between self-efficacy and actual identity protection. The model and its hypotheses are empirically tested through a survey of 383 mobile users, and the findings are validated through a panel of experts, thus confirming the impact of self-efficacy on an individual’s identity protection in the mobile context.

Doing Big Things in a Small Way: A Social Media Analytics Approach to Information Diffusion During Crisis Events in Digital Influencer Networks

Shohil Kishore — 2024-01-28

Digital influencers play an essential role in determining information diffusion during crisis events. This paper demonstrates that information diffusion (retweets) on the social media platform Twitter (now X) highly depends on digital influencers’ number of followers and influencers’ location within communication networks. We show (study 1) that there is significantly more information diffusion in regional (vs. national or international) crisis events when tweeted by micro-influencers (vs. meso- and macro-influencers). Further, study 2 demonstrates that this pattern holds when micro-influencers operate in a local location (are located local to the crisis). However, effects become attenuated when micro-influencers are situated in a global location (outside of the locality of the event). We term this effect ‘influencer network compression’ – the smaller in scope a crisis event geography (regional, national, or international) and influencer location (local or global) becomes, the more effective micro-influencers are at diffusing information. This shows that those who possess the most followers (meso- and macro-influencers) are less effective at attracting retweets than micro-influencers situated local to a crisis. As online information diffusion plays a critical role during public crisis events, this paper contributes to both practice and theory by exploring the role of digital influencers and their network geographies in different types of crisis events.

Editor’s Comment

Karlheinz Kautz — 2024-05-16

This is the third and my farewell editorial as editor-in-chief (EiC) of the AJIS. Three plus years, 40 months have passed since I took over the EiC role after an appointment by the AAIS search panel.

AJIS Thinking Differently in Service of The Community

Michael Davern — 2024-09-05