[AISWorld] Call for Papers: MIS Quarterly Special Issue on ICT and Societal Challenges

[Jan DeGross]

Call for Papers: MIS Quarterly Special Issue on ICT and Societal Challenges

Submission Deadline: December 31, 2013

Guest Editors:
Ann Majchrzak, University of Southern California (majchrza at usc.edu)
M. Lynne Markus, Bentley University (mlmarkus at bentley.edu)
Jonathan Wareham, ESADE – Ramon Lull University (jonathan.wareham at esade.edu)

Information and communication technology (ICT) has been recognized as an 
important catalyst for national progress and social transformation, an 
insight that motivated early 20th century telecom regulations ensuring 
universal access for all citizens. More recently, we have witnessed how 
governments, nongovernmental organizations, and organic social movements 
can use ICT to create increased participation, transparency, and 
accountability for previously voiceless people in the developing nations 
of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. But, as Rob Kling (1996) reminded 
us, ICT’s consequences are not universally positive: ICT can contribute 
to unemployment and increased economic disparity, as well as labor and 
financial market instability and a host of other social problems.

The time has come to assess the evidence about ICT’s social consequences 
and to develop better theories about the precise nature of the role of 
ICT in complex social problems and the ecosystems that perpetuate the 
problems. Toward this aim, we invite papers that examine the role of ICT 
in complex social problems. This role may be

• Enabling—augmenting, catalyzing, or supporting solutions for complex 
social problems, or
• Constraining—worsening existing social problems, creating new 
problems, or diverting attention and resources from needed social change.

By complex social problems, we mean social challenges that are shaped by 
dynamic and interdependent factors; that cannot be “solved” by simple 
interventions; about which little evidence or agreement about effective 
solutions exists; and that respond unpredictably to policy 
interventions, often beyond the political life spans of policy makers 
(Gardner 2011). Solving these problems typically requires the support of 
coalitions of political and financial advocates, execution by skilled 
and pragmatic actors, and an enabling ICT infrastructure (Shen et al. 
2007). Examples include unemployment, financial exploitation, pollution 
and climate change, poverty, homelessness, illiteracy, crime, 
corruption, and addiction (Wareham and Sonne 2008).

For this special issue, authors should examine the role of ICT in 
enabling or inhibiting complex social problems and their solutions. This 
examination should have particular characteristics. First, we are 
particularly interested in novel affordances and constraints of ICT 
(Gibson 1977; Leonardi 2011; Majchrzak and Markus 2013; Zammuto et al 
2007 ). Thus, the focus should not primarily be on the features of ICT 
but rather on the uses of ICT that are afforded or inhibited by those 
features. Second, the social context of use within the social problem, 
including the range of users and other stakeholders, should be 
considered (Markus et al. 2002). Third, we particularly encourage 
research with a focus expanded beyond a simple two-party system of 
service deliverer and recipient to include aspects of the social and 
institutional ecosystem that sustains the social problem and how 
competing ecosystems of ICT may be harmful or helpful. The role of ICT 
in promoting participation, enabling new discourse and vocabularies, and 
increasing transparency and discussion are all of interest in this 
special issue, along with the role of ICT in problem creation or 
maintenance. While no paper needs to take all of these issues into 
account, too much abstraction risks oversimplifying the enabling and 
constraining roles of ICT.

Theories and methodologies outside the traditional mainstream IS 
literature are welcomed (as are insightful established theories). For 
example, approaches not commonly seen include systems dynamics modeling, 
simulation studies, action research, chaos modeling techniques, 
meta-analysis, event-based retrospectives, interpretive methods, and 
combinations of qualitative and quantitative analysis at various levels 
of analysis. Journalistic descriptions of ICT use in complex social 
problems as well as papers that present simple surveys of social service 
recipients are unlikely to provide convincing empirical evidence or 
sufficient insight into the phenomenon’s complexity. Quantitative work 
that delves deeply into societal reactions to ICT is, however, very much 
encouraged. The gap in the research on societal issues is not a 
methodological gap as we see it. It is essentially a theoretical gap.

Papers will be evaluated using rigorous criteria associated with high 
quality academic research, recognizing that we are encouraging scholars 
to take risks in both the content and methods they use (Burrell and 
Toyama 2009). Papers in this special issue will form a body of 
literature concerning the role of ICT in complex social problems, 
consisting of both theory and data. Ideally, the papers will also 
describe how the consideration of such complexity informs the broader 
domain of IS research. Pure theory papers will be considered, provided 
that they demonstrate the novelty of the theory in real-world applications.

Possible topics of the special issue include, but are not limited to

• Affordances and constraints of ICT that create or worsen complex 
social problems
• ICT uses for managing or disrupting the tensions, contradictions and 
paradox in complex social problems
• Uses of ICT to promote citizen participation or democratization
• ICT’s role in exploitation and marginalization
• ICT-enabled business models for social entrepreneurship and social 
problems
• How ICT-enabled platforms help NGOs complete social missions
• National ICT policies and how they shape the societal environment for 
ICT acceptance and diffusion

The full call for papers is available on the MIS Quarterly’s web site at 
http://www.misq.org/