Research Commentary—Diversity of the Information Systems Research Field: A Journal Governance Perspective

Diversity has attracted much attention within the information systems (IS) field, with literature concentrating on diversity in topics and methods. These constitute two of three identified areas of research field diversity; the little-investigated third area includes demographic and social diversity of researchers. This study explores this gap for researchers comprising the editorial advisory boards (EABs) of 52 IS journals and links the underexplored types of diversity to topic diversity. The journals are categorized into seven intellectual communities, using topic affinity of journal content, and a social network of EAB members constructed from board interlocks. The network structure appears to reflect the topic-based community links. Journal communities are aggregated into two components of the social network: a business-school-related core set of journals and a more diverse computing- and engineering-related periphery. The strong ties at the network center do not necessarily reflect journal status. The observed combination of focus and diversity is consistent with a polycentric view of the IS field. Findings suggest low demographic diversity in the field and that demographic diversity correlates with other types of diversity. The field’s separation into business core and computing periphery is highlighted as potentially challenging to the IS field’s identity

Big Data enabled organizational transformation:The effect of inertia in adoption and diffusion

Big data and analytics have been credited with being a revolution that will radically transform the way firms operate and conduct business. Nevertheless, the process of adopting and diffusing big data analytics, as well as actions taken in response to generated insight, necessitate organizational transformation. Nevertheless, as with any form of organizational transformation, there are multiple inhibiting factors that threaten successful change. The purpose of this study is to examine the inertial forces that can hamper the value of big data analytics throughout this process. We draw on a multiple case study approach of 27 firms to examine this question. Our findings suggest that inertia is present in different forms, including economic, political, socio-cognitive, negative psychology, and socio-technical. The ways in which firms attempt to mitigate these forces of inertia is elaborated on, and best practices are presented. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications that these findings have for both research and practice

The Adoption and Diffusion of Wearables

Part 1: Technology Adoption, Diffusion and Ubiquitous ComputingInternational audienceAlthough the sales of wearables are increasing in the last few years, it is still unknown how wearables are actually adopted and being used in everyday life by consumers. In this study, we try to identify the adoption and diffusion patterns of wearables by performing a sentiment analysis on 97 semi-structured interviews with wearables owners/users focused on relevance and requirements of and resources and resistance related to wearables. Based on this analysis we conclude that developers and manufacturers of wearables should make their devices more relevant, more reliable and easier to use. They should also address privacy issues and foster habit (using it all and every day) in order to speed up the adoption and diffusion of wearables. The theoretical contribution of this paper is that habit should be studied as a potential dependent variable for intention to use