Guest Editors:
Fred Niederman, St. Louis University
Don McCubbrey, University of Denver
We are soliciting papers on emerging ideas in Information Systems (IS) that provide a “breakthrough” or innovative way of thinking. Our goal is to stimulate original thinking and reconceptualization of existing observations in service to the practice of IS. Our leaning is toward addressing phenomena that confront leaders and workers in the IS domain as well as the effects of using IS beyond organizations. We emphasize the potential of such thinking to increase the value of our scholarly work to our practitioner colleagues and our students, as they serve in the role of change agents and entrepreneurs and engines of organizational and societal progress. We want to stress the forward-looking positioning of this endeavor.
We are particularly looking for conceptual papers or think pieces that will help to bring forward emerging aspects of the field. We are also open to meta-analyses and literature reviews that emphasize what we have learned in a particular domain and what questions remain to be addressed. We are open to case studies and other methods that focus on practice. We are as interested in the details of small accumulated choices/actions as we are in the summary of these into the effects of large constructs on one another.
Within the organizational IS context, we are looking for papers that emphasize:
- reorganization or reinterpretation of the relationship among components in development, managing, and innovating with IS within and between organizations, e.g. better understanding of the interaction of specific organizational policies and practices with development constraints and outcomes;
- reporting of patterns of findings based on observations and studies in the IS domain, e.g. meta-analysis or literature reviews showing patterns of findings and unaddressed questions in a domain of interest;
- observation of detailed strategic, tactical, and operational behaviors and/or artifacts from the organizational application of IS, e.g. case
- studies showing the acquisition, adaptation, and use of information systems focused on detailed choices and local as well as summary outcomes;
- extrapolations of current trends into future prospects; and
- IS capabilities to address the grand challenges facing society including health care, sustainability, poverty alleviation, employment, social equity, and extending participation in governing institutions.
We envision including work on emerging technologies like ubiquitous computing, natural language processing, complex adaptive systems, agent-based modeling, social media, virtual worlds, and analytics, particularly when such inquiries incorporate what has been learned from “emerged” technology, what differentiates these technologies, what we can learn in observing their utility, and their potential for influencing both workplace and society at large.
We are not only interested in success stories, but also in “failure” stories with an emphasis on what was learned.
Interdisciplinary scholarship is increasingly demonstrating its value, and IS crosses almost every knowledge domain from art to the natural sciences. Therefore, papers that envision innovative interdisciplinary applications will be welcomed.
Editorial Board:
Currently being composed, we plan to invite a broad array of IS scholars from the three AIS regions whose prior work is based on a broad diversity of content and methods.
Timetable:
- Submit abstract to co-editors by January 9, 2012
- Submit paper by March 5, 2012
- Reviews returned to authors by April 2, 2012
- Revise and resubmit by May 21, 2012
- Final decisions by June 1, 2012
- Papers published by July 16, 2012
Review Process:
Inquiries prior to submission are welcome. Each paper will be reviewed by at least two members of the Special Section review board. Papers will have two rounds of peer review. The first round of reviews will provide developmental guidance for improving those papers that are conditionally accepted. Final selections for the Special Section will be made from the second-round submissions.
Submission Instructions:
All submissions should be emailed to the guest editors in MSWord format, following APA guidelines. Submit to niederfa@slu.edu and dmccubbr@du.edu.