www.litbaskets.io, an IT Artifact Supporting Exploratory Literature Searches for Information Systems Research

Information Systems (IS) researchers currently lack an obvious place to start their literature searches. Existing tools suffer from being either too narrow in their coverage of existing research, leading to an insufficiency effect (low recall); or they are too encompassing, leading to an impracticality effect (low precision). From 11 listings of IS-related journals, we identify a set of 1,042 journals receptive to IS research. We introduce a web interface that allows searching for literature across most of these journals. The search tool enables researchers to narrow or widen the focus of searches, thus allowing researchers to optimise the precision-recall trade-off of their literature searches. We provide an evaluation of our artifact and discuss the relevance of our artifact for exploratory literature searches. Our artifact seeks to facilitate knowledge claims in IS research based on a shared body of knowledge beyond the AIS basket of eight journals

Cogency and Contribution in IS Research

Although it is accepted that to make a contribution, Information Systems (IS) research must be novel and provide utility, these characteristics are insufficient to account for the cogency or persuasion that research makes a contribution. Novelty and utility are not self-evident and authors need to articulate an argument that their paper makes a contribution in relation to the discourse to which it seeks to contribute. We use the Habermasian ideal of argumentation to explicate the rhetorical, dialectic, logical and socio-institutional dimensions of cogent argument. We use two examples of published research to illustrate how these elements can be extended to frame research as a contribution in relation to the wider disciplinary matrix. We outline next steps of the research and the utility of the framework for researchers, reviewers and editors

Telework Uptake and COVID: Will it be Back to Normal? - A Preliminary International Comparison

To date research on telework has predominantly focused on aspects related to organisations and employees, however, research currently falls short of cross-cultural studies investigating how cultural differences may vary the adoption and use of telework. COVID-19 has demonstrated the demands for working from home and countries with different cultures have expanded telework use as part of the COVID ‘new normal’. We identify patterns on the uptake of telework through pre-and post- COVID-19 and apply Hofstede’s 6-Dimension model to investigate how cultural consequences interact with the use of telework in the post-pandemic practice. We evaluate how cultural dimensions influence the acceptance of telework, thereon discuss our preliminary insights on future development needs for better cultural appropriate practices. Our study aims to provide a shared understanding for telework across cultures, shedding light on the potential for further in-depth explorative research on the use of information systems for telework in different cultural settings

Contribution in Information Systems: Insights from the Disciplinary Matrix

Hospital readmissions are an important quality measure in healthcare, as they can indicate issues in treatment, rehabilitation, or discharge management. Furthermore, readmissions are often associated with increased costs resulting from penalties and regulations enforced by policy makers and insurers. Several studies have been conducted in order to identify patients at high risk of readmission, especially focusing on the initial diseases addressed in the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP), acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure (HF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and pneumonia (PN). Since elective primary total hip arthroplasty and total knee arthroplasty (THA/TKA) procedures are a added later to the HRRP, research on risk prediction in that area is still quite scarce. This study focuses on total hip arthroplasty and total knee arthroplasty procedures. Based on a dataset from a not-for-profit Australian healthcare group, 10,872 admissions from 2011 to 2015 are utilized to build several predictive models for readmissions after THA/TKA procedures. The structure and application of these models are presented and benchmarked against current hospital risk scores, resulting in a good prediction power to identify patients at 28-day risk of readmission

A webometric analysis of Australian Universities using staff and size dependent web impact factors (WIF)

This study describes how search engines (SE) can be employed for automated, efficient data gathering for Webometric studies using predictable URLs. It then compares the usage of staffrelated Web Impact Factors (WIFs) to sizerelated impact factors for a ranking of Australian universities, showing that rankings based on staffrelated WIFs correlate much better with an established ranking from the Melbourne Institute than commonly used sizedependent WIFs. In fact sizedependent WIFs do not correlate with the Melbourne ranking at all. It also compares WIF data for Australian Universities provided by Smith (1999) for a longitudinal comparison of the WIF of Australian Universities over the last decade. It shows that sizedependent WIF values declined for most Australian universities over the last ten years, while staffdependent WIFs rose

Using Heider’s Epistemology of Thing and Medium for Unpacking the Conception of Documents: Gantt Charts and Boundary Objects

Documents play a central role for many organizational processes. Current conceptualizations of documents predominantly engage with documents in two different ways. One sees documents as things with specific properties, and a second sees documents as medium enabling communication across different groups of actors. What is currently not well understood is how documents are perceived either as thing or as medium. This chapter engages with this issue by drawing from Fritz Heider’s epistemology of thing and medium, a concept stemming from social and media theory. According to Heider things are uniform and medium are multiform. Applying this concept to documents we argue that documents as things are perceived as uniform, whereas documents as medium are perceived as multiform. We exemplify the application of this conception of documents in the context of Gantt charts and the concept of boundary objects

Materiality of Connectivity in the Networked Society: A Sociomaterial Perspective

This paper contributes to an emerging discourse on the meaning of technology in today’s networked society by exploring connectivity as a hallmark of the networked society. Based on an empirical study of professionals, arguably the forerunners of the networked society, the paper seeks to answer how connectivity matters. Rich narratives from in-depth interviews reveal the diverse ways materiality of connectivity is experienced and performed in the work practices and private lives of professionals. These findings challenge existing conceptual treatments of connectivity as a technical, social, or socio-technical phenomenon, and offer empirical grounding for a novel theoretical view of connectivity. The proposed sociomaterial theoretical framework identifies four different modes of connectivity that explain how connectivity matters to individuals: as materially experienced and enacted in specific sociomaterial practices. As a novel and refined view of connectivity the sociomaterial framework is important for future research on connectivity in the networked society

The rise of metrics and fall of academic autonomy: the digital future of academic freedom

As citation-based metrics are increasingly used for measuring research performance, the formation of academics’ research choices and conceptions of academic freedom are affected. Critically examining the behaviours of academics in today’s competitive publishing landscape, we argue that creeping managerial practices are shaping research choices and perceived opportunities. In addition, observation indicates that the way in which academic freedom is conceptualised is changing as a result of considering academic performance through metrics. This raises questions of whether and to what extent professional and academic autonomy remains in the hands of authors or are instead being outsourced to metrics. Based on 21 semi-structured interviews with academics across the humanities and social sciences, we found metrics relating to assessment, rankings and funding all direct research choices. This research-in-progress paper identifies key issues and outlines future research to understand the wider influence of metrification

Temporal Aspects of Telework and its Impact on Work-Family Conflict

Telework is the engagement in work outside of a regular office setting by means of the use of information and communication technology (ICT). Findings reported in the literature are mixed with some studies having argued that telework provides workers the opportunity to better balance work and private roles. In contrast others have argued telework blurs the boundaries between work and private life thus creating competing objectives and conflict. This research in progress seeks to examine these inconsistencies by distinguishing between telework activity before and after office working hours. We predict that increased engagement in telework outside of office hours will contribute to stronger perceptions of work-family conflict, while greater engagement in telework during office hours will lessen perceptions of work overload and work-family conflict

A webometric analysis of Australian Universities using staff and size dependent web impact factors (WIF)

This study describes how search engines (SE) can be employed for automated, efficient data gathering for Webometric studies using predictable URLs. It then compares the usage of staffrelated Web Impact Factors (WIFs) to sizerelated impact factors for a ranking of Australian universities, showing that rankings based on staffrelated WIFs correlate much better with an established ranking from the Melbourne Institute than commonly used sizedependent WIFs. In fact sizedependent WIFs do not correlate with the Melbourne ranking at all. It also compares WIF data for Australian Universities provided by Smith (1999) for a longitudinal comparison of the WIF of Australian Universities over the last decade. It shows that sizedependent WIF values declined for most Australian universities over the last ten years, while staffdependent WIFs rose