Evaluation Criteria for Sociotechnical Systems for the Digitally Disadvantaged

This paper addresses the challenge of finding criteria to evaluate social inclusiveness of sociotechnical systems (STS). While IT offers opportunities to reduce inequalities, the digital divide is a growing challenge. This divide between individuals with access and sufficient digital literacy, has economic and social consequences. Although several factors have been identified as barriers to the use of IT or design principles for socially inclusive research, there is a gap in the literature in assessing the final STS in their social inclusivity. This paper aims to identify criteria for evaluating STS in terms of social inclusion of the digitally disadvantaged. Based on the STS perspective, design requirements and principles are derived to help design a checklist of whether needs of digitally disadvantaged have been met. The paper contributes to the existing body of knowledge by adding the STS design evaluation step to the current literature

CLAIM THE NAME: NAMES OF IT SOLUTIONS AND THE INFLUENCE ON OLDER ADULTS

The number of older adults as Information Technology (IT) users is increasing. While attention is already being paid to the design of IT solutions for older adults, the names of IT solutions have received little attention. It is important that the name does not convey negative attributes. In the case of older adults, stereotypes pose a challenge since they can lead to rejection of potentially helpful IT solutions. In this paper, we therefore propose a model for a stereotype-free naming process in the conceptual background of sociotechnical systems. The model will be developed and tested according to a design science research approach. The final model will be adaptable for further target groups to name IT solutions free from stereotypes

Attitude Discrepancy and Its Influence on Turnover Intention Among IS Professionals

Acquiring and retaining skilled IS professionals is a crucial success factor for organizations. Skilled IS professionals become even more important considering that organizations are constantly trying to improve through new innovative information technology. We plan to uncover the effects of conflicting explicit and implicit attitudes towards innovative technologies on job satisfaction and turnover intention, using blockchain technology as an example. We hypothesize that organizational factors such as IT capabilities and innovation support might have different effects on explicit and implicit attitudes, leading to attitude discrepancy, which negatively affects job satisfaction and increases turnover intentions. We plan to use a single concept implicit association test and a survey to assess implicit and explicit attitudes. Through our research, we expect to provide a better understanding of antecedents of job satisfaction and turnover intention on an organizational level that allows to derive better management practices for handling innovative technologies

The Case of Digital Ethics in IS Research – A Literature Review

Due to the rapid development in technology and the increasing digitization of organizations and society as a whole, digital ethics is becoming an increasingly important topic for researchers and practitioners of information systems (IS). This literature review shows the state of the art of ethical views present in IS research, at first establishing the relevance of the topic and then showing recent developments. Using a holistic view on ethics, this article provides (1) an overview of the number of publications considering ethics in IS research and on the different ethical constructs and theories. Additionally, it provides an overview (2) on the different fields of application. The aforementioned concepts (3) are contrasted to identify research streams and derive research gaps. Additionally (4), we provide a categorization scheme to classify ethics research in IS into 4 different types and from there (5) derive research propositions for future projects

Never Too Old: A Review of the Determinants of IT Task Performance in Older Adults From a Digital Transformation Standpoint

In a process known as the digital transformation, contemporary societies continue to morph into network societies, in which social interaction gets mediated by electronic channels. Using IT well (i.e. successfully) therefore becomes a necessary precondition for participation and inclusion in society. However, old adults, who did not grow up with IT, find themselves at a disadvantage and existent explanations for their IT task performance like the deficiency approach do not seem to suffice. Informed by active aging as a theoretical lens, we propose IT task performance as an important means to the social inclusion of older adults in the digital transformation of societies. Based on a review of the existent literature, we call for greater attention to the determinants of IT task performance, especially to those that originate from the social context of use, into which the concept of social inclusion actually expects older adults to integrate

Digital Public Service Avoidance by People with Disabilities

An increasing number of public services is delivered primarily via digital channels, however, a pressing problem is that they are frequently avoided or even rejected by marginalized citizens, such as people with disabilities. In this paper, we develop a contextualized framework of digital public service avoidance by people with disabilities that builds on and extends prior information systems research by incorporating complexity as the main antecedent of avoidance but it also leverages findings from social psychology and sociology by incorporating the need for human interaction and stigma consciousness as unique sociocultural barriers. We apply the framework to the context of a digital public service specifically developed for people with disabilities and assess its utility in a quantitative study of 145 severely disabled citizens. Our results uncover the need for interaction as a novel and underexplored driver of avoidance, illustrating that the missing “human touch” may be a hidden barrier to bringing more marginalized citizens online