IS Sustainability Research: A trans-disciplinary framework for a ‘grand challenge’

To address the “grand challenge” of biosphere sustainability, it is imperative that we examine the assumptions and philosophies underlying Information Systems sustainability research and expand research approaches. Despite calls for trans-disciplinary research and recognition that addressing sustainability will require multiple perspectives, a review of the IS sustainability literature finds that few publications incorporate knowledge or methods from outside traditional business-centric boundaries. Drawing on a diverse range of IS and sustainability literature, we develop a trans-disciplinary framework for IS Sustainability Research (ISSR) based on a view of sustainability that recognizes the environment as a critical stakeholder rather than a collection of resources to be managed and exploited. We identify three broad areas of inquiry and representative research questions which address the connections between human activity, the natural capital of the biosphere, and the societal goals of human-environment interactions through which ISSR can contribute to the grand challenge of biosphere sustainability

Of catwalk technologies and boundary creatures

Researchers designing and deploying technologies in the wild can find it difficult to balance pure innovation with scalable solutions. We propose a catwalk technology metaphor where researchers as boundary creatures focus on innovation whilst providing links to prêt-a-porter (ready to wear) developments. Evidence from three ‘in-the-wild’ field-based learning case studies with 140 geosciences and history learners are used to conceptualise the researchers’ ‘boundary creature’ role in managing these design process tensions, specifically for e-learning using mobile systems, distributed collaboration, sensors and augmented reality in quarries, up mountains and in the city. The analysis details the researcher issues of spatial/temporal acuity and socio-political astuteness in an adapted practitioner inquiry approach. Ultimately, a researcher design role (RDR) model reveals how researchers establish expectations with the design team, stakeholders and users around what is to be innovated (e.g. technology, activities) and how the system will change or enable current practices

Leveraging Multimedia to Advance Science by Disseminating a Greater Variety of Scholarly Contributions in More Accessible Formats

For the welfare of the scientific community, we intentionally “rock the boat” about the way we conduct, recognize, and disseminate scholarly contributions. As a scientific community, we are doing ourselves a great disservice by ignoring the insights, artifacts, discoveries, and conversations that naturally occur in the scientific process of advancing knowledge that do not fit into the narrowly defined form of print-style papers. By failing to recognize, reward, and publish the wide variety of scholarly contributions that do not suit print-style papers, we hinder scientific progress, devalue important and necessary contributions to science, and demotivate these types of vital contributions. Although over three centuries of scientific publishing has demonstrated the effectiveness of the print medium for conveying scholarly knowledge, the print-style paper captures only a single form of scholarly contribution in a highly limited media format. Unfortunately, the current tenure and promotion process recognizes only this one form of scientific contribution. As a result, science at large advances inevitably only by this single type of contribution. Given the radical advances in audiovisual technologies, storage and bandwidth capacities, public virtual infrastructure, and global acceptance of user-generated open content, the time is ripe to exploit the possibility of publishing more forms of scholarly contributions in a publicly available multimedia format (e.g., video). In this paper, we examine the feasibility of this proposal, develop a model to demonstrate the sustainability of this approach, and discuss potential limitations

How to Create an Innovation Accelerator

Too many policy failures are fundamentally failures of knowledge. This has become particularly apparent during the recent financial and economic crisis, which is questioning the validity of mainstream scholarly paradigms. We propose to pursue a multi-disciplinary approach and to establish new institutional settings which remove or reduce obstacles impeding efficient knowledge creation. We provided suggestions on (i) how to modernize and improve the academic publication system, and (ii) how to support scientific coordination, communication, and co-creation in large-scale multi-disciplinary projects. Both constitute important elements of what we envision to be a novel ICT infrastructure called "Innovation Accelerator" or "Knowledge Accelerator".Comment: 32 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

ECSCW 2013 Adjunct Proceedings The 13th European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work 21 - 25. September 2013, Paphos, Cyprus

This volume presents the adjunct proceedings of ECSCW 2013.While the proceedings published by Springer Verlag contains the core of the technical program, namely the full papers, the adjunct proceedings includes contributions on work in progress, workshops and master classes, demos and videos, the doctoral colloquium, and keynotes, thus indicating what our field may become in the future