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FROM BROWN TO GREEN: HOW AI-DRIVEN TRANSFORMATION ENABLES BUSINESS MODEL RECONFIGURATION IN THE TWIN TRANSITION
AI Processed Human Approved

How can businesses use artificial intelligence to transition their business models toward sustainability?

Elaine Mosconi, Marie-Claude Boudreau
FROM BROWN TO GREEN: HOW AI-DRIVEN TRANSFORMATION ENABLES BUSINESS MODEL RECONFIGURATION IN THE TWIN TRANSITION
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • The AI-enabled platform qualitatively supported a business model shift from transactional, time-based billing to recurring, outcome-based services focused on asset durability and lifecycle performance.
  • A strategic alignment gap was identified: executives framed the AI and sustainability transformation as radical, whereas operational managers experienced it as incremental.
  • Successful scaling of the AI initiative qualitatively depended on adaptive governance (looser decision-making, rapid experimentation), pre-requisite capability building in data engineering, and strong leadership support.
  • Key organizational trade-offs and barriers emerged, specifically related to skills gaps, legacy system integration, high energy consumption of AI models, and delayed financial return on investment.
  • Limitation: The findings of this study are based on a single qualitative case study of a Canadian engineering firm, which may limit the direct generalizability of the results to other industries or regions.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Initiate an audit of legacy data pipelines to identify bottlenecks for AI integration, and establish a 'green sandbox' environment with relaxed governance rules to allow developers to experiment with asset-durability algorithms while tracking model energy consumption.
  • IT Manager: Hold a 30-minute team sync to map out existing data engineering skill gaps and assign one developer to clean and structure a single historical dataset of asset lifecycle performance to prepare it for future AI model training.
  • Business Strategist: Draft a pilot proposal to transition one high-trust client from hourly billing to a recurring, outcome-based pricing model focused on extending their asset lifecycle, and schedule a meeting with operational managers to align on realistic, incremental milestones.
  • Researcher: Design a survey instrument targeting business and IT leaders across multiple industries to quantitatively test whether the perceptual gap between executive (radical) and operational (incremental) views on AI-driven green transitions exists outside of the engineering sector.
  • Policymaker: Draft a policy brief proposing a targeted grant program that subsidizes data-engineering upskilling and offsets energy-efficiency auditing costs for mid-sized firms adopting AI-enabled, sustainable business models.
Twin Transition, Artificial Intelligence, Sustainability, Business Model, Dynamic Capabilities
THE AI-ENABLED CIRCULAR ECONOMY: EXTRACTING AND SYNTHESIZING DESIGN KNOWLEDGE
AI Processed

How can organizations design and use artificial intelligence to support circular economy practices?

Linda Sagnier Eckert, Christoph Hoppe-Ludwig, Timo Strohmann, Anne Ixmeier, Daniel Heinz
THE AI-ENABLED CIRCULAR ECONOMY: EXTRACTING AND SYNTHESIZING DESIGN KNOWLEDGE
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Synthesized design knowledge from 99 empirically grounded studies supported four distinct meta-principles for AI-enabled circular economies.
  • Meta-Principle 1 (AI for slowing resource loops) is supported by 15 empirical studies showing predictive AI models successfully forecast asset degradation to trigger life-extending actions.
  • Meta-Principle 2 (AI for closing resource loops) is supported by 29 empirical studies showing integrated computer vision and robotic sorting systems reliably classify and separate materials.
  • Meta-Principle 3 (AI for narrowing resource loops) is supported by 18 empirical studies showing hybrid optimization models successfully reduce resource and energy consumption.
  • Meta-Principle 4 (AI for socio-technical orchestration) is supported by 37 empirical studies demonstrating that AI can drive the organizational dynamic capabilities needed to coordinate circular workflows.
  • A recognized limitation is that the corpus is restricted to English-language, peer-reviewed publications from the last five years, and the synthesized principles have not been longitudinally tested in new field environments.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Schedule a 9:00 AM workshop with your Enterprise Architecture and Sustainability teams to map your organization's existing data infrastructure against the study's two-layered framework, explicitly linking your micro-level AI model choices with macro-level organizational capabilities to support circular workflows.
  • IT Manager: Initiate a pilot project on your team's backlog to deploy a predictive maintenance model on a single class of high-wear manufacturing assets, using telemetry data to forecast asset degradation and automatically trigger life-extending maintenance tickets.
  • Business Strategist: Conduct a value-chain audit to identify where materials are lost, and draft a business case for integrating computer vision and robotic sorting systems at your primary waste-handling facility to automate material classification and close resource loops.
  • Researcher: Draft a research proposal for a 12-month longitudinal field study in partnership with a local electronics manufacturer to empirically validate the paper's four synthesized meta-principles in a real-world operational environment, addressing the literature's lack of longitudinal testing.
  • Policymaker: Draft a policy memo proposing a targeted grant program that provides R&D tax credits to industrial recycling facilities that implement integrated computer vision and automated sorting systems to improve regional material recycling rates.
Circular economy, Artificial intelligence, Design knowledge, Meta-Synthesis, Design science research, Dynamic capabilities
AVATAR DESIGN AND USER PERSONALITY TRAITS: SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW ON IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION THROUGH AVATAR IN THE METAVERSE
AI Processed Human Approved

How do people's personality traits shape the way they design their avatars in virtual worlds?

Sohee Kim, Efpraxia D. Zamani, Konstantina Spanaki
AVATAR DESIGN AND USER PERSONALITY TRAITS: SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW ON IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION THROUGH AVATAR IN THE METAVERSE
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Conscientious individuals systematically tend to design avatars that closely resemble their physical, real-world selves, reflecting their responsible and organized personality traits (statistically supported across synthesized literature).
  • Users with high levels of openness are statistically more likely to select radical and experimental avatar designs (statistically supported across synthesized literature).
  • Extraversion systematically predicts the choice of socially oriented avatars with high visibility and outgoing styles, whereas agreeableness exhibits only a weak, non-significant relationship with avatar design choices (statistically supported across synthesized literature).
  • Neuroticism demonstrates mixed effects on avatar choices, sometimes resulting in greater self-avatar discrepancy and other times in idealized digital representations, especially among women (mixed results explicitly noted in literature).
  • High-fidelity technological immersion (e.g., through VR headsets and motion tracking) systematically increases presence and embodiment, which in turn drives identity salience and stronger user-avatar behavioral alignment (statistically supported across synthesized literature).
  • The findings are limited by a reliance on English-only publications and a dataset largely containing studies on older virtual environments (e.g., Second Life) rather than modern, integrated metaverses.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, sign off on a procurement budget to upgrade the remote team's hardware from standard webcams to high-fidelity VR headsets with motion-tracking capabilities, directly leveraging the finding that immersive hardware systematically increases presence, embodiment, and professional user-avatar behavioral alignment in virtual workspaces.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, reconfigure the onboarding settings of your company's virtual collaboration platform (e.g., Microsoft Mesh) to offer two distinct avatar creation paths: a fast-track 'realistic photo-to-avatar' tool to satisfy conscientious employees who value physical resemblance, and an 'advanced creative' toolkit with diverse assets for employees high in openness.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, restructure the digital product roadmap for your virtual storefront to prioritize two distinct, personality-targeted microtransaction lines: a premium line of highly visible, socially expressive, and outgoing avatar accessories for extraverted users, and a baseline line of realistic, professional attire for highly conscientious users.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, draft a research proposal and IRB application for a comparative study tracking avatar customization behaviors of non-English-speaking users in modern, high-fidelity platforms (like VRChat or Horizon Worlds), explicitly addressing the current literature limitations regarding English-only studies and outdated Second Life data.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, draft an organizational 'Metaverse Identity Privacy Policy' that explicitly bans the algorithmic profiling of users based on their self-avatar discrepancy, ensuring that users (particularly women experiencing identity discrepancy related to neuroticism) are protected from targeted behavioral manipulation or bias based on their digital representations.
Avatar design, Identity, Metaverse, Personality traits, Systematic Literature Review
ORCHESTRATION PARADOXES IN NATIONAL QUANTUM COMPUTING INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS
AI Processed Human Approved

What competing tensions and trade-offs do leaders face when guiding national quantum computing ecosystems?

Jori Taipale, Olli Tyrväinen, Tuure Tuunanen, Joel Mero, Teiko Heinosaari
ORCHESTRATION PARADOXES IN NATIONAL QUANTUM COMPUTING INNOVATION ECOSYSTEMS
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Organizing tensions were identified as the most frequent paradox, specifically focusing on the trade-offs between collaboration vs. resource competition and guidance vs. flexibility.
  • Performance tensions emerged regarding resource allocation between software vs. hardware development and building a shared vision vs. individual firm survival.
  • Belonging tensions highlighted a 'godfather' paradox, where the ecosystem must balance the state's role as a major supportive funder and customer with the ultimate goal of corporate independence.
  • Learning tensions were characterized by the challenge of managing multi-talent knowledge development versus narrow technology specialization.
  • The study is limited by its single qualitative case context in Finland with a small sample of 15 informants, requiring caution when applying these findings to other national contexts.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Schedule a 9:00 AM meeting with your lead enterprise architect to audit your current quantum-readiness roadmap, establishing a formal policy that divides software development and hardware access investments 50/50 to hedge against the performance tension of committing prematurely to a single unproven hardware stack.
  • IT Manager: Create a bi-weekly 1-hour 'Quantum Cross-Training' slot in your team's calendar starting this Friday, pairing your specialized quantum physics PhDs with your generalist cloud engineers to address the learning tension between narrow technical specialization and broad-based systems integration.
  • Business Strategist: Perform a revenue dependency audit to calculate the percentage of your quantum business unit's funding derived from state grants versus commercial clients, and draft a pitch deck for two private-sector pilots to actively transition away from 'godfather' state-funding reliance.
  • Researcher: Draft a pre-competitive collaboration agreement template to send to a peer researcher at a competing institution, outlining a shared framework for baseline algorithm testing while clearly defining IP boundaries to manage the tension of collaboration versus resource competition.
  • Policymaker: Draft a revision for the upcoming national quantum funding round guidelines that introduces a 'co-investment requirement,' mandating that state-funded consortia secure at least 25% of their budget from private corporate buyers to counter the 'godfather' dependency paradox.
Ecosystem orchestration, Paradox theory, Quantum computing innovation ecosystem, Explorative case study, Interpretive qualitative research
A CONTEXT-AWARE URBAN HEAT COMPANION FOR PROSUMER PARTICIPATORY SENSING AND JUST-IN-TIME ADAPTIVE INTERVENTION
AI Processed Human Approved

Can real-time advice keep citizens engaged in collecting local heat data using wearable sensors?

Niklas von Heyden, Florian Onur Kuhlmeier, Jeffrey Parsons, Alexander Maedche
A CONTEXT-AWARE URBAN HEAT COMPANION FOR PROSUMER PARTICIPATORY SENSING AND JUST-IN-TIME ADAPTIVE INTERVENTION
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • The Heat Companion system demonstrated technical reliability, capturing micro-climate variations with an average temperature deviation of +1.9 °C and relative-humidity deviation of -6.9% compared to the nearest official weather stations.
  • High system engagement was observed during the field study, with participants opening 93% of the 690 generated recommendations and responding with a median time of 14.2 seconds.
  • Engagement and compliance varied across recommendation domains, with short, actionable prompts like 'Hydration & Cooling' achieving a 33.6% follow rate, while broader domains like 'Social Care' had a 5% follow rate.
  • Perceived relevance of feedback was higher during warmer afternoon hours (median rating of 4.0 out of 5) than in the morning (median rating of 2.0 out of 5), suggesting relevance aligns with actual heat exposure.
  • Due to the small sample size (8 participants) and exploratory feasibility design, no inferential statistical tests were conducted to confirm the statistical significance of the behavioral changes, which remains a key limitation.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Authorize a pilot project to integrate on-device, context-aware processing capabilities into the company's mobile application roadmap, shifting away from centralized cloud polling to enable low-latency, real-time push notifications driven by on-device sensor data.
  • IT Manager: Update the push-notification system's scheduling logic to restrict alerts to high-relevance afternoon windows (12:00 PM to 4:00 PM) and truncate copy to short, single-action prompts like 'Hydration & Cooling' to maximize user compliance rates.
  • Business Strategist: Redesign the incentive structure of our data-collection app to offer immediate, personalized 'micro-utility' benefits—such as real-time local comfort scores—directly to the user upon data submission, mitigating long-term participation fatigue.
  • Researcher: Draft a research proposal and power analysis for a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a target sample size of at least 150 participants to statistically validate the behavioral impacts and compliance rates of the Heat Companion's adaptive interventions.
  • Policymaker: Draft a municipal initiative to equip outdoor public-sector employees (such as postal or sanitation workers) with wearable micro-climate sensors to map urban heat islands where official weather stations lack coverage.
Citizen-Centric Green IS, Participatory Sensing, Context-Aware Computing, Just-In-Time Adaptive Interventions, Urban Climate Adaptation
TOWARDS DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR TEACHING INDUSTRY 4.0 COMPETENCIES TO CS/IS STUDENTS
AI Processed

How can educators effectively teach modern industrial software skills without expensive physical equipment?

Felix Salcher
TOWARDS DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR TEACHING INDUSTRY 4.0 COMPETENCIES TO CS/IS STUDENTS
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Eight design principles were established, emphasizing virtualization, containerization, and problem-based learning cases as alternatives to expensive learning factories.\n- Preliminary course evaluation yielded positive descriptive feedback, with a mean rating of 4.43 out of 5 across satisfaction categories.\n- No formal statistical significance tests were performed due to the pilot nature of the study and the small, specific evaluation sample.\n- The pilot is limited by a very small sample size (9 respondents from a single cohort) and relies on subjective student perceptions rather than objective competency-based assessments.\n- Students noted difficulty adapting to the course's fast pace and programming requirements, highlighting a need for aligned prerequisites.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Direct your enterprise architecture team to draft a transition plan to replace physical IT hardware training labs with virtualized, containerized sandbox environments (e.g., Docker/Kubernetes) to reduce infrastructure costs and align onboarding with modern Industry 4.0 software architectures.
  • IT Manager: Review the programming prerequisites of your junior developers and assign them a structured, hands-on troubleshooting task using a containerized microservice mock-up on Monday morning to assess their readiness for complex Industry 4.0 integration projects.
  • Business Strategist: Reallocate a portion of next quarter's talent development budget away from high-cost physical equipment training and toward scalable, software-based virtual simulators to cost-effectively build digital twin and data architecture competencies.
  • Researcher: Draft a research proposal to conduct a multi-institution comparative study on these eight design principles, incorporating objective pre- and post-intervention technical testing rather than relying on subjective student feedback to measure competency gains.
  • Policymaker: Create a state-level educational grant initiative that incentivizes higher education institutions to update computer science curricula with virtualization-based Industry 4.0 frameworks, shifting funding priority away from physical learning factories.
Design Principles, Design Science Research, Industry 4.0, Smart Manufacturing
SUPPORT OR SUBSTITUTION: HOW CHATGPT AFFECTS COGNITIVE LOAD, OWNERSHIP, AND PERFORMANCE IN PROBLEM-SOLVING
AI Processed

How does using ChatGPT affect worker performance, workload, and their sense of ownership over problem-solving tasks?

Leonie Rebecca Freise, Josephine Mago Moritz
SUPPORT OR SUBSTITUTION: HOW CHATGPT AFFECTS COGNITIVE LOAD, OWNERSHIP, AND PERFORMANCE IN PROBLEM-SOLVING
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Both ChatGPT-only access and ChatGPT with a prompting guide significantly improved task performance compared to the control group (Supported).\n- ChatGPT access significantly reduced temporal demand, but neither ChatGPT condition significantly reduced mental demand, and there was no significant effect of cognitive load on task performance (Partially Supported).\n- Both experimental conditions significantly reduced psychological ownership of the task outcome (Supported).\n- Reduced psychological ownership did not significantly impair task performance in this study (Not Supported).\n- Higher AI literacy significantly moderated and weakened the negative effects of AI access on temporal demand, and partially weakened the negative effect of the prompting guide on psychological ownership (Partially Supported).\n- The study's limitations include a modest sample size of 136 participants, a single-session experimental setting, and a reliance on self-reported measures.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Sign off on the procurement and scheduling of a mandatory 'AI Literacy and Collaborative Prompting' training program for all departments currently using generative AI, rather than just distributing licenses, to actively counter the erosion of psychological ownership and help staff manage cognitive load.
  • IT Manager: Schedule a 30-minute team meeting to establish a 'Human-in-the-Loop' workflow review protocol, requiring team members to explicitly document, edit, and present their personal contributions to any ChatGPT-generated deliverables to re-establish psychological ownership over their outcomes.
  • Business Strategist: Draft a proposal to revise departmental key performance indicators (KPIs), shifting the metrics of success from speed and volume (temporal savings) to qualitative, human-curated excellence to prevent employees from disengaging and treating their roles as outsourced, low-ownership tasks.
  • Researcher: Write a research proposal for a multi-week longitudinal field study with a cohort of at least 250 participants to track whether the observed short-term reduction in psychological ownership from AI usage leads to long-term employee disengagement or performance declines over time.
  • Policymaker: Publish a revised corporate governance policy that defines a 'Responsible Authorship' standard, mandating that the human employee remains 100% accountable for the accuracy and quality of AI-assisted outputs to prevent the dilution of organizational responsibility.
Generative Artificial Intelligence, Human-AI Collaboration, Cognitive Load, Psychological Ownership, AI Literacy, Task Performance
THE ANATOMY OF A DESIGN CHALLENGE FOR INITIATING AI INNOVATION
AI Processed Human Approved

How should teams structure initial challenges to successfully launch AI projects?

Franziska Anna Röckel, Benjamin van Giffen, Andreas Janson, Jennifer Hehn
THE ANATOMY OF A DESIGN CHALLENGE FOR INITIATING AI INNOVATION
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • The study empirically validated a structural anatomy for the Design Challenge consisting of four robust elements (verb, object of innovation, target group, context) and three plastic elements (internal data, technology, potential), which was supported across all 42 cases analyzed.
  • The robust elements were validated to successfully create a stable, shared identity and common direction among diverse team members, acting as a center of authority.
  • The plastic elements were shown to successfully absorb technological uncertainty, providing a flexible framework for teams to negotiate and adapt to AI's emergent capabilities over time.
  • The qualitative analysis identified three distinct nuances in shaping the 'object of innovation' (modular, abstract, and space) that guide teams toward either incremental or more radical innovation pathways.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Mandate that all upcoming AI project proposals use a standardized 'Design Challenge' charter template structured around the 4 robust elements (verb, object of innovation, target group, context) and 3 plastic elements (internal data, technology, potential), explicitly forbidding teams from locking in a rigid technical architecture in their initial pitch.
  • IT Manager: Gather your interdisciplinary project team for a 60-minute workshop on Monday morning to co-create a 'Design Challenge' statement, explicitly defining the stable 'robust' elements to align the business and tech members, while leaving the 'plastic' elements (like specific data sources and AI models) open as flexible targets to be negotiated as the project progresses.
  • Business Strategist: Review your company's AI project portfolio on Monday morning and intentionally rewrite the 'object of innovation' for each project: frame them as 'modular' if you need predictable, incremental improvements, or rewrite them as 'space-based' (e.g., focused on broad capabilities) if you want to push the team toward radical, disruptive business model innovation.
  • Researcher: Update your qualitative coding scheme for ongoing field studies of AI adoption to track how frequently and at what project stages teams modify the 'plastic' elements (internal data, technology, potential) versus the 'robust' elements of their project charters to measure the empirical threshold where technological uncertainty triggers project misalignment.
  • Policymaker: Revise the application guidelines for the upcoming public AI innovation grant cycle to replace rigid 'technical specifications' requirements with a mandatory 'Design Challenge' framework, scoring applicants on the clarity of their robust elements (target group, context) and the adaptive flexibility of their plastic elements (data and technology integration plans).
Design Challenge, AI Innovation, Boundary Object, Anatomy, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Problem Formulation
WHEN WE CANNOT STOP THE DATA FLOW: THE EMOTIONAL LIFE OF DATA IN A CHILDREN’S DAYCARE CENTER
AI Processed

How does continuous digital reporting affect emotional pressure, trust, and staff autonomy in childcare centers?

Lea Püchel, Tobias Brandt
WHEN WE CANNOT STOP THE DATA FLOW: THE EMOTIONAL LIFE OF DATA IN A CHILDREN’S DAYCARE CENTER
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • This is a qualitative, ethnographic case study, meaning it does not test quantitative hypotheses or report statistical significance values.
  • The qualitative data supports a sequential three-stage framework showing how digital opportunity transitions into perceived control and safety, data reassurance dependency, and ultimately internalized data-driven surveillance.
  • In the highly digitalized center, continuous digital updates successfully provided a feeling of safety but created an addictive loop where any absence of data was interpreted as a signal of risk.
  • Educators did not openly resist the system but instead practiced adaptive, situated compliance, adjusting their timing, tone, and messaging to meet platform expectations.
  • The comparative boundary case with lower-intensity digital reporting demonstrated that a slower communication rhythm can temper the emergence of the full data-dependency cycle.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: On Monday morning, reconfigure your enterprise communication and tracking platforms to aggregate non-critical status updates into a single daily digest at 4:00 PM, rather than allowing real-time push notifications, to actively break the expectation of continuous monitoring.
  • IT Manager: On Monday morning, audit the daycare platform's dashboard interface and replace all default automatic 'No Data' warning flags or empty progress bars with a neutral status indicator to eliminate the false perception of operational risk during quiet hours.
  • Business Strategist: On Monday morning, draft and distribute a 'Communication Cadence Agreement' to clients that explicitly sets the expectation of only two digital updates per day, actively framing this slower rhythm as a premium service feature that ensures staff are focused on active care rather than screens.
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, draft a research proposal to conduct a comparative diary study of frontline workers in relationship-heavy sectors like eldercare, specifically measuring the psychological friction and time spent on 'situated compliance' tasks versus actual patient care.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, draft a policy amendment for child and eldercare labor standards that prohibits the use of real-time telemetry and continuous digital logging frequency as metrics for assessing staff performance and regulatory compliance.
Data work, future of work, reporting systems, relational data, data dependency
NONPROFITS' DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: UNDERSTANDING ORGANISATIONAL IDENTITY DYNAMICS
AI Processed

How does digital transformation affect a nonprofit's identity, and how are resulting internal conflicts resolved?

Maria Julia Torres, Lea Pchel, Markus P. Zimmer, Tobias Brandt
NONPROFITS' DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION: UNDERSTANDING ORGANISATIONAL IDENTITY DYNAMICS
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • Digital transformation in nonprofits is a cyclical, five-period recursive process (comprising internal alignment, strategy production, democratization, implementation, and resistance/re-anchoring) rather than a linear transition (Supported by qualitative case analysis).
  • Unlike for-profit firms where digital transformation fundamentally redefines identity, a nonprofit's core values-based identity remains stable, whereas only the methods of how they work are challenged and reconfigured (Supported by qualitative case analysis).
  • Transitioning from foundation-setting to a proactive digital role triggers organizational resistance and identity dissonance, as new digital structures and departments challenge existing activist culture and localized power dynamics (Supported by qualitative case analysis).
  • Momentum in a nonprofit's digital transformation is re-established not by resolving technical deficits, but by re-anchoring the digital strategy within a moral narrative against a common value-based antagonist (Supported by qualitative case analysis).
  • The study's generalizability may be limited due to its focus on a single, large-scale, globally federated nonprofit, and the patterns of resistance might vary in smaller or less decentralized organizations (Acknowledged study limitation).
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Meet with your internal communications lead on Monday morning to rewrite the launch narrative of your current digital initiative; frame the IT upgrades not as a 'system migration for efficiency,' but as a vital strategic weapon designed to help your activists defeat the organization's primary external adversary.
  • IT Manager: Identify the regional office or department most resistant to the new software rollout and schedule a 30-minute call with their team leader on Monday morning to ask how the system can be configured to protect their local autonomy, rather than forcing a standardized corporate workflow.
  • Business Strategist: Review your draft digital strategy document first thing Monday morning and audit its vocabulary; strip out commercial, for-profit terminology like 'customer acquisition,' 'user monetization,' and 'ROI,' replacing them with values-driven terms like 'supporter mobilization' and 'mission impact.'
  • Researcher: On Monday morning, draft a outreach email to directors of three small, community-based local charities to pitch a comparative study, testing if the five-period recursive digital transformation model identified at Greenpeace holds true in non-federated, resource-constrained nonprofit settings.
  • Policymaker: On Monday morning, update your organization's digital funding policy and grant application templates to remove mandatory 'commercial viability' metrics, instead requiring applicants to demonstrate how the requested digital grant will reinforce and scale their core mission-based values.
Digital Transformation, Organisational Identity, Nonprofits, Case Study, Greenpeace International
UNPACKING THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUALS IN PROCESS MINING: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
AI Processed

How do individual user behaviors and attitudes impact the business value generated from process mining?

Julian Dyong, Sandro Franzoi, Jan vom Brocke
UNPACKING THE ROLE OF INDIVIDUALS IN PROCESS MINING: A LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH FRAMEWORK
ECIS 2026 · 2026
Key findings
  • The review identifies and establishes user behavior, usage patterns, and affect (such as uncertainty and trust) as the three core elements constituting the individual level of process mining, supported by the synthesized literature.
  • The analysis reveals that technical, individual, and organizational contingency factors systematically influence user behavior and affect; for example, data inaccuracies undermine user trust, while formal training and methodological guidance support correct execution.
  • Individual behaviors and affective states are shown to directly impact value outcomes, with structured behaviors like hypothesis testing decreasing analysis duration and increasing the quality of insights.
  • Key limitations of the study include its reliance on a limited sample of 23 reviewed papers, a static framework that does not capture sequential or temporal dynamics, and a lack of true inter-coder reliability during the qualitative coding process.
What it means for you
  • CIO / IT Executive: Initiate a data audit of the source pipelines feeding your enterprise process mining tools to eliminate data discrepancies, directly addressing the research finding that data inaccuracies severely undermine user trust and derail tool adoption.
  • IT Manager: Add a mandatory 'Hypothesis-First' template to your team's process mining workflow on Monday morning, requiring analysts to document their specific diagnostic hypothesis before running queries to enforce structured behavior and reduce analysis duration.
  • Business Strategist: Redesign the process mining ROI dashboard to measure actual business value outcomes (e.g., cost savings from process changes) rather than user log-in frequency, linking individual analytical insights directly to operational KPIs.
  • Researcher: Draft a research design for a longitudinal study tracking 20 process mining analysts over six months to capture the sequential and temporal dynamics of user affect and trust, directly addressing the static limitations of current literature.
  • Policymaker: Establish an internal organizational standard mandating that no department may deploy process mining software without integrating a formal training and methodological guidance program, ensuring compliant and high-quality data execution.
Process Mining, Individual Level, Literature Review, Research Framework, Value Creation, User Behavior
Corporate Nomads: Working at the Boundary Between Corporate Work and Digital Nomadism
AI Processed Human Approved

How can companies and employees successfully negotiate a nomadic lifestyle alongside permanent corporate employment?

Julian Marx, Milad Mirbabaie, Stefan Stieglitz
Corporate Nomads: Working at the Boundary Between Corporate Work and Digital Nomadism
Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2025
Key findings
  • The study develops a three-phase process model (splintering, calibrating, and harmonizing) that explains how corporate nomads and their organizations successfully negotiate this new work arrangement.
  • The integration of corporate nomads is not a one-sided decision but a mutual process of 'boundary work' requiring engagement, negotiation, and trade-offs from both the employee and the company.
  • Corporate nomads operate as individual outliers who change their personal work boundaries (e.g., location and time) without transforming the entire organization's structure.
  • Information Technology (IT) is crucial in managing the inherent tensions of this lifestyle, helping to balance organizational control with employee autonomy and enabling integration from a distance.
Corporate Nomads, Digital Nomads, Boundary Work, Digital Work, Information Systems
Capturing the “Social” in Social Networks: The Conceptualization and Empirical Application of Relational Quality
AI Processed

How do activity levels and connection counts shape the quality of employee interactions on corporate social networks?

Christian Meske, Iris Junglas, Matthias Trier, Johannes Schneider, Roope Jaakonmäki, Jan vom Brocke
Capturing the “Social” in Social Networks: The Conceptualization and Empirical Application of Relational Quality
Journal of the Association for Information Systems · 2025
Key findings
  • Relational quality is a distinct and relevant dimension that complements traditional structural social network analysis (SNA), which typically only focuses on network structure.
  • The study identifies and measures four key facets of relational quality: being personal, being curious, being polite, and sharing.
  • Different types of users exhibit distinct patterns of relational quality; for instance, 'connectors' (users with many connections but low activity) are the most personal, while 'broadcasters' (users with high activity but few connections) share the most resources.
  • As a user's activity (e.g., number of posts) increases, their interactions tend to become less personal, curious, and polite, while their sharing of resources increases.
  • In contrast, as a user's number of connections grows, their interactions become more personal and curious, but they tend to share fewer resources.
Enterprise Social Network, Social Capital, Relational Quality, Social Network Analysis, Linguistic Analysis, Computational Research
How SME Watkins Steel Transformed from Traditional Steel Fabrication to Digital Service Provision
AI Processed

How can traditional small and medium-sized businesses successfully transform into digital service providers?

Friedrich Chasin, Marek Kowalkiewicz, Torsten Gollhardt
How SME Watkins Steel Transformed from Traditional Steel Fabrication to Digital Service Provision
MIS Quarterly Executive · 2022
Key findings
  • Watkins Steel successfully transitioned by augmenting its core steel fabrication business with new, high-value digital services like 3D scanning, modeling, and data reporting.
  • The study proposes a transformation framework for SMEs based on two concepts: 'digital augmentation' (adding new services) and 'digital adjacency' (leveraging existing assets like customers, data, and skills for these new services).
  • Key success factors included contagious leadership from the CEO, embracing business constraints as innovation opportunities, and a customer-centric approach to solving their clients' problems.
  • Instead of hiring new talent, Watkins Steel successfully cultivated its own digital experts by empowering existing employees with domain knowledge to learn new skills, fostering a culture of experimentation.
  • The transformation allowed the company to move up the value chain, from being a materials provider to coordinating and managing construction processes, creating a more defensible market position.
digital transformation, SME, business model innovation, case study, digital service provision, digital augmentation, digital adjacency
Designing and Implementing Digital Twins in the Energy Grid Sector
AI Processed Human Approved

How can energy grid companies successfully design and implement digital twins?

Christian Meske, Karen S. Osmundsen, Iris Junglas
Designing and Implementing Digital Twins in the Energy Grid Sector
MIS Quarterly Executive · 2021
Key findings
  • The digital twin provides real-time and historical insights into the grid's status, enabling proactive maintenance, prediction of component failures, and more efficient management of power loads.
  • It serves as a powerful simulation tool to model future scenarios, such as the impact of increased electrification from electric ferries, allowing for better long-term planning and investment.
  • Successful implementation requires a strong focus on organizational learning, innovative co-creation with technology partners, and continuous feedback from end-users throughout the project.
  • The project highlighted the critical importance of evolving data governance, forcing the company to tackle complex issues of data security, integration, and standardization to unlock the full potential of the digital twin.
Digital Twin, Energy Sector, Grid Management, Digital Transformation, Organizational Learning, Co-creation, Data Governance
Managing IT Challenges When Scaling Digital Innovations
AI Processed

How can managers overcome IT challenges when scaling digital innovations from initial exploration to profitable growth?

Sara Schiffer, Martin Mocker, Alexander Teubner
Managing IT Challenges When Scaling Digital Innovations
MIS Quarterly Executive · 2023
Key findings
  • Prepare for a significant cultural shift: Management must explicitly communicate the change in focus from creative exploration and prototyping to efficient and profitable operations to align the team and manage expectations.
  • Rearchitect IT systems for scalability: Systems built for speed and flexibility in the exploration phase must be redesigned or replaced with robust, efficient, and reliable platforms capable of handling a large user base.
  • Adjust team composition and skills: The transition to scaling requires different expertise, shifting from IT generalists who explore new technologies to specialists focused on process automation, data analytics, and stable operations. Companies must be prepared to bring in new talent and restructure teams accordingly.
digital innovation, scaling, IT management, organizational change, case study, insurtech, innovation lifecycle
Leveraging Information Systems for Environmental Sustainability and Business Value
AI Processed Human Approved

How can managers use information systems to achieve environmental sustainability and create business value?

Anne Ixmeier, Franziska Wagner, Johann Kranz
Leveraging Information Systems for Environmental Sustainability and Business Value
MIS Quarterly Executive · 2024
Key findings
  • Legitimize sustainability by using IS to create awareness and link environmental metrics to business value.
  • Optimize processes, products, and services by using IS to reduce environmental impact and improve eco-efficiency.
  • Internalize sustainability by integrating it into core business strategies and decision-making, informed by data from environmental management systems.
  • Standardize sustainability data by establishing robust data governance to ensure information is accessible, comparable, and transparent across the value chain.
  • Collaborate with external partners by using IS to build strategic partnerships and ecosystems that can collectively address complex sustainability challenges.
Information Systems, Environmental Sustainability, Green IS, Business Value, Corporate Strategy, Sustainability Implementation
How Audi Scales Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing
AI Processed

How can manufacturers successfully scale artificial intelligence solutions from pilot projects into full operational use?

André Sagodi, Benjamin van Giffen, Johannes Schniertshauer, Klemens Niehues, Jan vom Brocke
How Audi Scales Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing
MIS Quarterly Executive · 2024
Key findings
  • Audi successfully scaled an AI-based system to automate the detection of cracks in sheet metal parts, a crucial quality control step in its press shops.
  • The success was driven by a strategic four-stage approach: Exploring, Developing, Implementing, and Scaling, with a focus on designing for scalability from the outset.
  • Key success factors included creating a single, universal AI model for multiple deployments, leveraging data from various sources to improve the model, and integrating the solution into the broader Volkswagen Group's digital production platform to create synergies.
  • The study highlights the importance of decoupling value from cost, which Audi achieved by automating monitoring and deployment pipelines, thereby scaling operations without proportionally increasing expenses.
  • Recommendations for other businesses include making AI scaling a strategic priority, fostering collaboration between AI experts and domain specialists, and streamlining operations through automation and robust governance.
Artificial Intelligence, AI Scaling, Manufacturing, Automotive Industry, Case Study, Digital Transformation, Quality Inspection
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