Navigating Generative Artificial Intelligence Promises and Perils for Knowledge and Creative Work

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is rapidly becoming a viable tool to enhance productivity and act as a catalyst for innovation across various sectors. Its ability to perform tasks that have traditionally required human judgment and creativity is transforming knowledge and creative work. Yet it also raises concerns and implications that could reshape the very landscape of knowledge and creative work. In this editorial, we undertake an in-depth examination of both the opportunities and challenges presented by GenAI for future IS research

How Do They Differ? Analyzing the Motivations of Posters and Lurkers for Participation in Enterprise Social Networks

Organizations have increasingly begun to implement enterprise social networks (ESNs) due to their potential to afford enterprise-wide collaboration, knowledge sharing, and interaction. Despite their proliferation, many companies still struggle to motivate a sufficient number of employees to actively participate in these collaborative networks. Consequently, many ESNs fail due to a lack of contributions. While most employees only read and consume content (lurking), few actively create content (posting). Little research has examined the differences between posters and lurkers and their underlying motivations, particularly in the ESN context. Building on social exchange theory (SET), we identify and test a set of motivational factors that researchers have scarcely studied in corporate social networks: reputation, common identity, common bond, social interaction, and community commitment. By investigating a rich data set of 4,892 respondents in a large knowledge-intensive multinational company, we provide evidence that posters and lurkers significantly differ in why they participate in ESNs. Further, we introduce a nuanced classification of participant roles to distinguish five user groups (super frequent posters, frequent posters, infrequent posters, frequent lurkers, and infrequent lurkers) with super frequent posters showing significantly higher mean values for all motivational factors to use an ESN compared to the other user groups. Our findings yield important theoretical and practical implications regarding different usage behaviors and on how to enhance participation in ESNs

What Do I Do in a World of Artificial Intelligence? Investigating the Impact of Substitutive Decision-Making AI Systems on Employees’ Professional Role Identity

Artificial intelligence (AI) systems in the workplace increasingly substitute for employees’ tasks, responsibilities, and decision-making. Consequently, employees must relinquish core activities of their work processes without the ability to interact with the AI system (e.g., to influence decision-making processes or adapt or overrule decision-making outcomes). To deepen our understanding of how substitutive decision-making AI systems affect employees’ professional role identity and how employees adapt their identity in response to the system, we conducted an in-depth case study of a company in the area of loan consulting. We qualitatively analyzed more than 60 interviews with employees and managers. Our research contributes to the literature on IS and identity by disclosing mechanisms through which employees strengthen and protect their professional role identity despite being unable to directly interact with the AI system. Further, we highlight the boundary conditions for introducing an AI system and contribute to the body of empirical research on the potential downsides of AI

Algorithmic Technologies as Threat to Who We Are: The Effect an IT Identity Threat has on Employees\u27 Work Engagement

Organizations’ introduction of algorithmic technologies fundamentally affects employees’ work processes, tasks, and responsibilities in organizations. Employees often find their professional identities threatened by the introduction of IT (a phenomenon labeled as IT Identity Threat). While prior studies have examined which mechanisms employees use to deal with such a perceived threat, it remains unclear how an IT Identity Threat affects employees’ work attitude in response to advanced IT such as algorithmic technologies. Employees’ work attitude is a recognized antecedent to workers’ well-being or performance. Based on a mixed-method study in the banking industry, our study reveals that an IT Identity Threat negatively affects employees’ work engagement. Further, our study uncovers how this effect comes about by showing that an IT Identity Threat decreases employees’ perceived autonomy and experienced responsibility for their work outcomes. Overall, both factors contribute to a negative relationship between an IT Identity Threat and employees’ work engagement

A Social Network Approach to Blogs: Improving Digital Collaborative Learning

Blogs as digital collaboration tools are promising resources in higher education to impart knowledge, enhance collaboration and social interaction among students and thus, to increase their success. Despite the widespread use of blogs, little is known about blogs’ impact on students’ social networks and its effect on learning success. Therefore, based on a social network perspective, we empirically assess the change in the social network of 51 blog users. We are among the first to investigate the influence of the social network’s characteristics on students\u27 subjectively perceived performance and access to knowledge within a blog-learning environment. We find evidence that blogs significantly increase the students\u27 social networks, but are primarily a medium for reinforcing what the student has learned rather than influencing performance related outcomes. Our results yield important practical and theoretical recommendations on how blogs can be used to enhance students’ social networks and in turn increase their success

Increasing user engagement on blockchain applications through persuasive design

Blockchain gives rise to many new applications and use cases and has already markedly changed several industries, such as financial services, energy and utilities, or healthcare. Although blockchain could potentially be used disruptively for end-user applications as well, utilizing it remains poor. It appears that the unconvincing design of many end-user blockchain applications leads to insufficient user engagement. To investigate the influence of design aspects on users’ engagement of blockchain end-user applications, we developed a blockchain application for the creative industries based on the principles of persuasive design. Hereby, we aim to contribute to research in the blockchain context on how end-user applications need to be designed to increase user engagement. By using a design science research process, we can ultimately provide a total of seven recommendations for developing persuasive blockchain applications for end-users

Advancing Digital Collaboration: Barriers to Enterprise Social Media Adoption and how to Overcome them

Advancing digital collaboration and fostering effective communication among a widespread workforce continues to be a perpetual challenge for companies. Organizations are progressively turning to Enterprise Social Media (ESM) because they promise new avenues for collaborative working. However, most ESMs fail to reach a wider adoption by the workforce, owing to an underutilization by the employees. To enhance the understanding of the underutilization phenomenon, we use affordance actualization theory as our theoretical lens to critically study the challenges employees face in their attempt to actualize respective ESM affordances. By analyzing comments from 992 frequent, infrequent, and discontinued ESM users from a large multinational company, we uncover four major challenges. By enhancing our understanding of ESM affordances and by incorporating the full spectrum from problem identification to solution, we provide practical advice for digital leaders and meaningful theoretical implications for the IS community

Do Enterprise Social Networks increase productivity or lead to information overload?

The objective of this study is to understand whether enterprise social networks (ESNs) increase employees’ productivity or create additional information overload

Do Enterprise Social Networks really enhance our Performance? Exploring the Relationship between Usage Practices and Individual Task Performance

The rapid proliferation of Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) has attracted the attention of organizational and IS researchers. Despite a growing body of literature on this emerging field, there is still a paucity of research examining how ESN usages affe

Why do you NOT use the Enterprise Social Network? Analyzing Non-Users\u27 reasons through the lens of Affordances

Enterprise Social Networks (ESNs) are increasingly implemented, as they promise to offer enormous potentials to enhance organizational collaboration, innovation, and performance. Nevertheless, many companies fail to encourage their employees to actively engage in ESNs. In order to understand the reasons for the lack of participation, we qualitatively surveyed 553 non-users of a multinational knowledge-intensive company. Using the concept of affordances as theoretical framework, we found our categories to be rooted in six affordances: visibility, persistence, editability, association, accessibility, and practicability. Furthermore, we provide empirical support for three propositions on non-usage: (1) Non-users do not actualize an affordance, because they are not aware of the affordance existence, (2) Non-users do not actualize the affordance owing to their subjective action goals, and (3) Non-users do not actualize the affordance due to negative effects created by the affordance. Our findings yield important practical implications on how to encourage non-users to participate in ESNs