The increasing penetration of digital technologies into our personal and professional lives has created invaluable opportunities to improve our lives in many ways, from housing and cities to healthcare, education, employment, entertainment, security, public participation and transportation. But with great influence comes great responsibility. We have all recognized that digital technologies have brought about non-trivial and irreversible changes in our individual and collective behavior, in our institutions and organizations, and in our society and environment. These changes are neither clearly positive nor negative. For example, the digitization of personal data can help individuals live longer and healthier lives, but it also challenges individual rights, responsibilities and our sense of dignity (Leidner and Tona 2022). Our political processes are closely intertwined with social media, both as a tool for social change (Oh et al. 2015) and for manipulating public opinion (Kitchen et al. 2020). Emerging technologies such as electric cars and mobile sharing concepts are shaping a revolution in the mobility and energy sector (Kahlen et al. 2018), but are also fueling fears of labor substitution. The datafication of everyday behavior has led to new opportunities for healthcare, but also to increased surveillance (De Moya and Pallud 2020). Distributed ledger technologies offer novel ways of organizing participation in public processes (Rieger et al. 2019), but are also associated with a larger ecological footprint than alternatives (Sedlmeier et al. 2020). Artificial intelligence offers entirely new opportunities for automation and decision-making, but also raises thorny ethical issues related to accountability, privacy, fairness, discrimination and other biases (Berente et al. 2021).
As business IT specialists, it is up to us to understand, explain and shape the positive and negative consequences of the ongoing digitalization of our everyday lives. However, it is not enough to recognize and accept our “digital responsibility”. We must set out to analyze, explain, predict and influence the potential costs, tasks and obligations of decisions related to the development, implementation and use of digital information and communication technologies.
This conference theme invites researchers to contribute to building cumulative knowledge about “digital responsibility” at all levels (personal, corporate, institutional and societal) and in all areas of responsibility (individual, social, ethical and ethological). We undertake no restrictions in terms of theory, method, paradigm or context (e.g. in terms of region, organizational form or other). We welcome the full spectrum of information systems research and invite innovative, rigorous, relevant and exciting research on digital responsibility. We do not want labels and scripts associated with the traditional information systems paradigms of behavioral, design, economic, and organizational perspectives to limit the study of this important and complex phenomenon. We also welcome interdisciplinary work as long as a substantive engagement with the discourse on information systems is maintained.
Possible topics include:
- Responsibility for digital technology and the use of digital technology for responsibility
- Accountability, liability and responsibility for the design, implementation and use of digital technology
- Theoretical perspectives and/or empirical findings on the (un)intended social, ethical and environmental consequences of digital technologies along the entire value chain
- Designing digital technology to address social, ethical and/or environmental challenges
- Individual, organizational, institutional or societal strategies for using digital technology to address social, ethical and/or environmental challenges and innovation
- The role of digital technology in promoting social, ethical and environmental progress
- Applications of new digital technologies (e.g. AI) in social, ethical and/or environmental areas
- Social, ethical and environmental consequences of new digital technologies
- (Un)ethical issues related to digital technology and the data they generate
- Dignity, respect and moral behavior in a digital world
- Digital inclusion
- Social support and inclusion enabled by or embodied in digital technologies
- Balancing the contradictory effects of the information society (e.g. information society as a means of social change and information society as a means of social change)
Track chairs
AEs
- Olga Abramova, Leuphana University of Lüneburg
- Moritz Bruckner, University of Augsburg
- Valerie Carl, Goethe-University Frankfurt
- Sünje Clausen, University of Potsdam
- Marc Körner, University of Bayreuth
- Cristina Mihale-Wilson, Goethe-University Frankfurt
- Dimitri Petrik, University of Stuttgart
- Manfred Schoch, Esslingen University of Applied Sciences
- Markus Zimmer, Leuphana University of Lüneburg
- Philipp zur Heiden, University of Paderborn
Literature
Rieger, A., Guggenmos, F., Locki, J., Fridgen, G., & Urbach, N. (2019). Building a Blockchain Application that Complies with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. MIS Quarterly Executive, 18(4), 263-279.
Sedlmeier, J., Buhl, H. U., Fridgen, G., & Keller, R. T. (2020). The Energy Consumption of Blockchain Technology: Beyond Myth. Business & Information Systems Engineering, 62(6), 599-608.
Berente, N., Gu, B., Recker, J., & Santhanam, R. (2021). Managing Artificial Intelligence. MIS Quarterly, 45(3), 1433-1450.
De Moya, J.-F., & Pallud, J. (2020). From Panopticon to Heautopticon: A New Form of Surveillance Introduced by Quantified‐self Practices. Information Systems Journal, 30(6), 940-976.
Kitchens, B., Johnson, S. L., & Gray, P. H. (2020). Understanding Echo Chambers and Filter Bubbles: The Impact of Social Media on Diversification and Partisan Shifts in News Consumption MIS Quarterly, 44(4), 1619-1649.
Kahlen, M., Ketter, W., & van Dalen, J. (2018). Electric Vehicle Virtual Power Plant Dilemma: Grid Balancing Versus Customer Mobility. Production and Operations Management, 27(11), 2054-2070.
Oh, O., Eom, C., & Rao, H. R. (2015). Role of Social Media in Social Change: An Analysis of Collective Sense Making During the 2011 Egypt Revolution. Information Systems Research, 26(1), 210-223.
Leidner, D. E., & Tona, O. (2021). The CARE Theory of Dignity Amid Personal Data Digitalization. MIS Quarterly, 45(1), 343-370.
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