The 2019 impact factor (announced end of June 2020) for ISJ is 4.188. This is the third best impact factor in the Basket of Eight IS Journals. See past ISJ impact factors and the Editor’s comment on impact factors here. The next impact factor (2020) will not be available until around mid June 2021.

Abstract

Based on three case studies of Chinese Internet start?ups, this study seeks to address the research question: “How is digital entrepreneurship enacted in China?” Our findings reveal that there was a common theme that underpinned the start?ups we studied, which we termed ‘Qinghuai’ in the language of the informants we spoke with. In this paper, we explain the roots of the concept and its six constituent elements at the individual, organizational, and ecosystem levels. These elements are then abstracted into two dimensions: (a) spiritual idealism and (b) perpetual development. We argue that Qinghuai as a concept is a product and reflection of the cultural and institutional complexity of contemporary China. Further, we discuss how Qinghuai facilitates digital entrepreneurship across the business, organizational, and technological domains. This explanation is substantiated by data from our three cases and juxtaposed with what has been discussed in the existing digital entrepreneurship literature. Finally, as we present the contributions of our study, we elaborate on (a) how Qinghuai reflects the contemporary context of China; (b) how Qinghuai is instrumental to digital entrepreneurship in China; and (c) how Qinghuai is different from other related concepts including Guanxi, collectivism, collective action and social entrepreneurship. We conclude the paper by discussing its limitations, future research opportunities, as well as its practical implications.

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Abstract

Software process tailoring (SPT) is a team?based and learning?intensive activity that addresses the particular dynamic characteristics of a development project. Because SPT critically influences how projects are conducted, its performance should be investigated. However, the extant literature lacks empirical evidence on how the underlying effects of SPT performance and its team?supportive factors operate and influence software project performance. From the knowledge perspective, this study adopts dynamic capabilities theory and considers the learning ability and absorptive capacity of software project teams to develop a theoretical model to address this gap. The results of an empirical examination of the model with 135 software project teams advance our understanding of how team?level learning antecedents—experience, communication quality and trust—dynamically facilitate teams’ absorptive capacity (AC) when they conduct SPT, which in turn reinforces project performance. The mediating effects of the proposed model are unveiled and discussed, and theoretical implications as well as practical guidance for how AC and these factors promote SPT and project performance are suggested.

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Abstract

The study explores how online health communities produce social value by uniting individuals under a common purpose, to advance healthcare in post?conflict states. We selected MedicineAfrica – a digital platform known for creating social value by providing medical education in regions with under?resourced healthcare systems – and drew on multiple data collection methods. We found that it is through a unique form of digital health activism that social value is created in this context. Drawing on a sociological understanding of digital health activism, we make the following contributions: First, we identify three types of non?economic, social value: cognitive, professional and epistemic. Second, we indicate that social value creation is enabled by three emergent forms of digital health activism (ie, philanthropic, moral and reciprocal activity). Third, we elicit three enabling mechanisms explaining how these forms of activism are technically and socially afforded through the platform’s connective capacity and emerging collective practices in tandem with its members’ growing commitment. Our article contributes to the growing IS literature on digital activism by offering a framework that elucidates how digital health activism relates to social value creation. The article provides practical implications as to how platforms can enable sustainable online (health) communities.

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EarlyView is Wiley’s online repository for papers accepted but not yet published in an issue. The latest EarlyView papers are detailed below. For full details and access to all of the ISJ please go to the publishers website – see Wiley link in Weblinks in the next column.

Abstract

With the growing proliferation of smart home assistants (SHAs), digital services are increasingly pervading people’s private households. Through their intrusive features, SHAs threaten to not only increase individual users’ strain but also impair social relationships at home. However, while previous research has predominantly focused on technology features’ detrimental effects on employee strain at work, there is still a lack of understanding of the adverse effects of digital devices on individuals and their social relations at home. In addition, we know little about how these deleterious effects can be mitigated by using information technology (IT) artefact?based design features. Drawing on the person?technology fit model, self?regulation theory, and the literature on anthropomorphism, we used the synergistic properties of an online experiment (N = 136) and a follow?up field survey with a representative sample of SHA users (N = 214) to show how and why SHAs’ intrusive technology features cause strain and interpersonal conflicts at home. Moreover, we demonstrate how SHAs’ anthropomorphic design features can attenuate the harmful effects of intrusive technology features on strain by shaping users’ feelings of privacy invasion. More broadly, our study sheds light on the largely underinvestigated psychological and social consequences of the digitization of the individual at home.

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Abstract

Information security in an organization largely depends on employee compliance with information security policy (ISP). Previous studies have mainly explored the effects of command?and?control and self?regulatory approaches on employee ISP compliance. However, how social influence at both individual and organizational levels impacts the effectiveness of these two approaches has not been adequately explored. This study proposes a social contingency model in which a rules?oriented ethical climate (employee perception of a rules?adherence environment) at the organizational level and susceptibility to interpersonal influence (employees observing common practices via peer interactions) at the individual level interact with both command?and?control and self?regulatory approaches to affect ISP compliance. Using employee survey data, we found that these two social influence factors weaken the effects of both command?and?control and self?regulatory approaches on ISP compliance. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

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Abstract

This paper proposes qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as a novel method to harness unstructured data sets such as publicly available reports and news articles. It shows how QCA and conventional qualitative IS research can complement each other. In particular, it demonstrates how qualitative IS research can combine typical qualitative coding techniques with a specific type of QCA, namely crisp?set QCA (csQCA). The paper illustrates how QCA offers qualitative IS research an innovative approach to explicate the combination of conditions associated with particular outcomes. Drawing on an empirical study of green IS, it showcases the potential of QCA to harness large unstructured qualitative material and generate deeper insights about emerging IS phenomena. The paper also highlights how QCA can contribute to the data collection and analysis stages of qualitative IS research.

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Abstract

We report a surprising experience with mobile technology: the lead author found herself seeing and acting differently while running over part of her usual running track with the exercise?tracking application ‘Strava’ on her phone, even without focal attention to the app. We apply the method of problematization to a detailed empirical account of this experience, in conjunction with a literature analysis of taken?for?granted assumptions underpinning research on ‘mobile technology use’. This reveals that, while the relationship of attention, perception, movement and technology was a key element of the surprise, these themes are not well accounted for in current IS literature. In response, we employ William Gibson’s ecological theory of visual perception to reinterpret the empirical account and thereby build a new understanding of the human plus mobile technology that we term moving?with?technology . We introduce to IS: moving?with?technology as a new analytical perspective; the new phenomena of digital sub?species , digital?niches and asynchronous co?location ; and stimulus for new ecologically oriented ‘mobile methods’. Moving?with?technology also has practical implications for urban planners who are using data from digital trace?making tools such as Strava in their decision?making, thereby generating what we call ecological feedback loops .

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Abstract

Social media provide new opportunities for supporting the dynamics of collective action (CA), allowing for the mobilisation of people into debates and involving them in new forms of collective decision making. Although current studies focus on opportunities offered by social media for collective action, there is still a need to deepen the understanding of how social media support the organisation of CA and to study the effects of individual actions performed on social media in complex organisational settings. We here explore how social media are used to manage CA by the Italian political movement Movimento Cinque Stelle, using the concept of affordances as the conceptual framing. Based on the qualitative case analyses, our study contributes to the knowledge base by identifying a typology of nine affordances supporting CA and exploring how the combined actualisations of some affordances of the typology create antecedents of the fundamental processes of CA. On the basis of the study analysis, we suggest a model to describe how social media support CA through affordances, their combinations, and the creation of antecedents and then formulate implications for research and practice.

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