Mindful Organizing for the CIO: Towards a Conceptual Model for Transformational Leadership

Considered invaluable to corporate entities, CIOs are relied upon for the strategic oversight of technological infrastructure as well as the articulation of a business case for IT resources. How can CIOs prepare for and respond to dynamic, and often uncertain changes, which challenge organizational resources, processes, and strategies? Research continues to indicate that technological transformation and integration of newer, faster IT capabilities have become a critical focus for the CIO. Extant literature on mindfulness suggests that mindful organizing (MO) can facilitate and enhance the effectiveness of strategic level decision makers. Integrating insights from MO, we present and analyze the literature to build an action orientated framework to support the CIO in leveraging the dynamic capabilities under his/her purview. Our objective is to examine key attributes of mindful organizing which are especially critical to building a level of awareness that cultivates an environment for reliability under transformational leaders

A MINDFULNESS BASED APPROACH TO EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS (EMIS) UTILIZATION AND PERFORMANCE

The 13th of November terrorist attacks in Paris highlight a critical need within the emergency management (EM) domain to demonstrate the value of technological system capacities that support decision making. The world watched scores of police, paramedic, and fire teams communicating and coordinating together to save innocent civilian lives. Many researchers agree that systems should be designed informed by the “cognitive processes” used to respond to unanticipated emergencies. Mindfulness, within emergency management organizations (EMOs,) is created by the complex engagement of five organizational principles. They activate processes which produce capabilities uniquely supported by technology to anticipate and contain unexpected incidents for the EM domain. This paper explores organizational mindfulness (OM)) as a theoretical and methodological mechanism for design, assess and evaluation of emergency management information systems (EMIS). Mindfulness provides a basis for understanding both the EM domain and the organizational capabilities which allow for multiagency coordination. Design Science is proposed to conceptualize an IS artefact that refines our understanding of coordinated real- time decision making (CRDM). This research-in-progress paper adds to literature focused on system utilization and performance through the lens of the EM domain focusing on EMIS utilization to engage in CRDM within operational centres

Design drift and reflective conversation in Design Science Research: A case study of problem formulation

Design Science Research is a well-established theoretical and methodological approach to design, build, and evaluate IS artefacts. However, research suggests that the engagement of subjective and ethereal processes of design are not well documented in literature, highlighting a significant challenge to understanding design praxeology, or the study of practices and processes of design. This paper explores the artefact conceptualization stages of DSR using a case study focused on the utilization of emergency management information systems to propose two approaches to understanding and presenting the design process. Design drift and reflective conversation are proposed and applied to a DSR project to create a conceptual design for a mindfulness-based evaluation framework for EMIS supported decision making. By removing some of the mysticism often associated with abductive reasoning, the study demonstrates ways researchers can be more effective in using cognitive mapping tools and communicating approaches to illustrate the inferential processes that are unique to DSR

Design Drift and Reflective Conversation in Design Science Research: A Case Study of Problem Formulation

Research specifically exploring the abductive process of knowledge building in DSR remains elusive. Using organizational mindfulness (OM) as the base kernel theory, this research explores the creation of an IS artefact to evaluate system enabled decision making by strategic teams in dynamic environments. The paper provides an exploration of a learning methodology to approach design science research (DSR) using two techniques, design drift and reflective conversation. The notion of drifting was proposed by Fricke (1972) for use in engineering design, and further developed by (Cross, 1999) as an approach in design research to aid in maturing the partially structured design artefact. This paper explore design praxeology, or the study of practices and processes of design to present a case for the use of the two techniques