2026-03-05
Hind Benbya et al.
Given its sociotechnical focus, information systems research has the potential to generate diverse forms of impact and advance society’s grand challenges. But producing research impact beyond academia remains a difficult endeavor. In this editorial, we discuss the multifaceted nature of IS research impact and offer a framework and guidelines for researchers to plan, deliver, measure, and communicate research impact across academia, business, and society, while considering the research context.
2026-03-05
Joschka Andreas Hüllmann et al.
Datafication technologies increasingly impact today’s workplaces, as employees’ behavioral data are collected and analyzed for organizational purposes. While datafication technologies can increase organizational efficiency, they come with the risk of employee surveillance and discrimination. As a result, their implementation is surrounded by controversy. Understanding the different perceptions and assumptions about these technologies from individuals with diverse functional roles is crucial to successfully implementing datafication technologies. Based on 43 interviews, we first investigated how individuals with different functional roles evaluate people analytics, as a manifestation of datafication technologies, using the well-known lens of affordances. Inconclusive results led us to explore further and investigate whether and how perceptions of datafication technologies, as well as affordance actualization, can be explained by data ideologies. Our findings from a critical realist analysis offer novel theoretical and empirical insights into the concept of data ideologies. Data ideologies offer a useful extension to affordance theory and help explain the relationship between varied stakeholders and datafication technologies along three mechanisms: moderation, confirmation, and modulation. The theorized mechanisms have implications for deploying datafication technologies in practice.
2026-01-02
Richard D. Johnson et al.
After more than 30 years of research into computer self-efficacy (CSE), the time has come to assess the progress made on this construct and whether we need to reconsider its conceptualization and nomological network. To do so, we used meta-analytic techniques to review 683 papers and aggregated results across 749 independent samples. Our results suggest that out of 30 variables suggested by Marakas et al. (1998) in their narrative review, only 7 were sufficiently examined to warrant inclusion in an empirical meta-analysis. At the same time, our analysis identifies 18 variables that had not been examined as part of CSE’s nomological network. Our research also indicates that relationships are robust and consistent across 11 potential categorical and continuous moderators, suggesting few moderators in a relationship with CSE. Evidence suggests that national culture and the setting where a study is conducted can moderate the relationship between CSE and such variables. Although these findings are consistent with current theory, much work remains if we wish to systematically test a theoretical understanding of how CSE is formed and influences performance. Our work confirms CSE’s continuing relevance in managing contemporary work environments and offers directions for future research.
2026-01-02
Bingqing Song et al.
Ties between users play a fundamental role in the operation of social commerce, allowing product information to diffuse from sellers to (indirectly connected) customers. However, social commerce ties are mainly formed based on customers’ interests in products, rendering them fragile. This study investigates the impacts of sellers’ promotional activities on the decay of ties in social commerce. Drawing on utility theory, we posit an inverted U-shaped relationship between the alignment of sellers’ promotions with customers’ interests and tie strength due to customers’ trade-off between surprise and fit in their consumption of product information. Moreover, we argue that the interest alignment effect is reinforced by multiple promotions (i.e., promotion count), flattening the nonlinearity of the inverted U-shaped impact and pushing the turning point to the right. We confirm these arguments via dyadic empirical analyses of a large Chinese social commerce website. The results inform social commerce practitioners of what is central to success and offer significant theoretical implications.
2026-01-02
Mohammad Soltani Delgosha et al.
The delegation of managerial functions such as job allocations, performance appraisals, and disciplining work behaviors to automated, intelligent algorithms has transformed various aspects of workplace dynamics. Despite the increasing prevalence of algorithmic management in today’s workplaces, its implications for work outcomes remain underspecified. Given the contextual novelty of this research, we adopted a mixed methods approach to theorize an algorithmic management resource model and investigate its configural relationships with crowdworkers’ engagement and burnout. This was achieved by analyzing online crowdworker community narratives and subsequently developing nuanced insights into the resources that algorithmic management offers or impedes. In Phase 1, drawing on conservation of resources (COR) theory tenets, we utilized computational text analysis to explore resource gains and losses associated with algorithmic management. Then, using configurational analysis over two studies ( N = 322), we identified and empirically examined the interrelationships among resource passageways and work outcomes, specifically engagement and burnout. Our results support a theoretical understanding of the algorithmic management resource model and shed greater light on several configurations of algorithmic resource passageways, sufficiently explaining crowdworkers’ engagement and burnout in distributed, dispatched work settings such as online labor platforms.
2026-01-02
Karen Stendal et al.
While technology can magnify existing inequalities by excluding marginalized groups in society, paradoxically, it can also serve as a means for them to move from isolation to inclusion. In this paper, we report a study illustrating how individuals belonging to one marginalized group—people with lifelong disabilities (PWLD)—used technology to navigate this path. Our study was part of an initiative by the Norwegian government exploring how PWLD can attain social inclusion (SI) through the use of virtual worlds (VW), specifically Second Life. Using a conceptualization of SI specific to PWLD, which consists of two interrelated domains—interpersonal relations and community participation—we trace how the actualization of affordances in VW enabled PWLD to achieve SI. This outcome was built upon the realization of five interrelated affordances: communicability, mobility, personalizability, engageability, and self-actualizability. Based on these insights, we demonstrate the role of VW affordances in achieving SI and propose a model titled the affordance-based pathway model of social inclusion. We contribute to the discourse on the theory of affordances by extending the role of facilitating conditions. Specifically, the outcomes achieved by the actualization of certain affordances can serve as facilitating conditions that support the perception and eventual actualization of other affordances.
2026-01-02
Kai Li et al.
As search engines are leading revenue growth in online marketing, search marketing has become a popular area of academic research. Although search engine advertising has interested researchers for decades and much has been learned, one thing that puzzles scholars is why search engine optimization companies are tolerated rather than excluded from the market, even though they capture a significant share of the advertising market. In this paper, we shed light on this phenomenon and establish an analytical model based on organic search quality. Through analysis of the model, we were able to draw several intriguing conclusions. First, there is no strictly positive correlation between advertisers’ willingness to pay and the click price of paid search marketing. In other words, the click price may decrease as advertisers’ willingness to pay increases. Secondly, improving the effectiveness of a search engine has the potential to attract more searchers, but it may also result in a decline in the search engine’s profits. Finally, a search engine may achieve higher profits by allowing search engine optimization firms to remain in the market rather than driving them out. We discuss our contribution to search engine marketing and provide implications for search engines, search engine optimization firms, and advertisers.