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Call for Papers: ISR Special Issue on Ubiquitous IT and Digital
Vulnerabilities (<a
href="http://pubsonline.informs.org/page/isre/calls-for-papers">http://pubsonline.informs.org/page/isre/calls-for-papers</a>)
<br>
<br>
Special Issue Editors:
<br>
<br>
Rob Fichman (<a href="mailto:fichman@bc.edu">fichman@bc.edu</a>)
<br>
Ram Gopal (<a href="mailto:ram.gopal@business.uconn.edu">ram.gopal@business.uconn.edu</a>)
<br>
Alok Gupta (<a href="mailto:alok@umn.edu">alok@umn.edu</a>)
<br>
Sam Ransbotham (<a href="mailto:sam.ransbotham@bc.edu">sam.ransbotham@bc.edu</a>)
<br>
<br>
Submission Deadline: 1 March 2015
<br>
<br>
“The myriad connections forged by […] technologies have brought
tremendous benefits to everyone who uses the web to tap into
humanity’s
collective store of knowledge every day. But there is a darker side
to
this extraordinary invention.” (Economist 2014)
<br>
<br>
IDEA IN BRIEF
<br>
<br>
It is incontrovertible that IT permeates every aspect of
organizational,
social, and economic activity. The ubiquity of information
technology
has profoundly changed society—usually for the better but sometimes
for
the worse. This special issue seeks to counterbalance the focus on
the
positive aspects and outcomes of pervasive digitization by
stimulating
research on vulnerabilities introduced or exacerbated by new (and
old)
forms of IT. Our goal is to develop and promote novel ideas for
preserving or strengthening the potential benefits of pervasive IT
while
mitigating potential drawbacks. Hence, the focus will be not just on
identifying vulnerabilities, but, rather, on the development of new
managerial wisdom for better managing organizations, societies, and
our
personal lives in light of these vulnerabilities.
<br>
<br>
DETAILS
<br>
<br>
Modern society is rapidly developing and diffusing previously
unimaginable information technologies. Systems that collect
information
now permeate all areas of society and range from widely used
Internet
applications to personal technologies to distributed embedded
devices.
These systems now routinely retain structured and unstructured data
in
hitherto unprecedented quantities. Google, for example, estimates
that
its data store performs four trillion read/write transactions per
month.
Detailed data collection is now pervasive, both by individuals
(e.g.,
the quantified self movement, Economist 2012) and by others (e.g.,
online activity, Geary 2012), and leads to unresolved questions
about
the nature of digital vulnerabilities. As tools and techniques
swiftly
evolve to process this information and use it in new ways, the
opportunities and challenges associated with information are
fundamentally changing. Privacy and security are clearly important,
but
much remains to be understood about many issues such as ethics,
responsible use, algorithmic accountability, discrimination,
de-anonymization, and policy implications.
<br>
<br>
A wealth of prior research sheds light on many ways that
organizations
can use systems to gather, organize, select, synthesize, and
distribute
information across all areas of the value chain including
operations,
logistics, production, marketing, design, service, and
infrastructure.
Emerging applications of IT provide significant opportunities for
advantage. However, emerging technologies also frequently have the
potential for unintended consequences or may create one problem even
as
they solve another (Overby et al. 2010). For example, the Centers
for
Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently made public for the
first
time how much Medicare pays individual doctors and other providers,
and
this marked a major milestone in healthcare transparency (Blum
2014);
however, it has also sparked concerns that individual physicians may
be
incorrectly targeted and publicly shamed (e.g., Salzberg 2014,
Weaver et
al. 2014). Furthermore, while pioneering uses of information
continue to
emerge, many aspects of IT have become commodities that do not
confer
advantage but are instead required and necessary for minimal
organizational operation. Unfortunately, these pervasive uses of and
dependencies on IT may also introduce vulnerabilities for
individuals
and organizations. To illustrate, the scale of a national system to
facilitate health insurance markets necessitates IT infrastructure.
Yet
difficulties with the launch of the United States healthcare.gov
site
caused significant loss of time, political and reputational damage,
and
direct expense (BBC News 2013). Additionally, emerging or commodity
uses
of IT may differentially affect societal subgroups along social or
economic strata with concomitant policy implications (Mitra and
Ransbotham 2012). Overall, vulnerabilities have received
considerably
less attention from researchers than benefits but are critical to
the
continued successful use of IT.
<br>
<br>
How can we maximize benefits and create value from advances in IT
while
minimizing drawbacks? This special issue takes a broad view of
vulnerability and calls for novel, data-focused approaches to
identify
sources of vulnerability, to understand their underlying mechanisms,
and
to mitigate their effects. Submissions at any level of analysis are
welcome but should be grounded in data (including field and lab
experiments, archival data, primary data collection). Topics of
interest
include but are not limited to vulnerabilities (and associated
tensions)
related to the following:
<br>
<br>
- Liability, electronic discovery, and legal implications of new
forms
of data tracking and retention
<br>
- Widespread public exposure of confidential or unflattering
organizational or individual information (e.g., through social media
or
search)
<br>
- Intellectual property issues (copying, reverse engineering, theft,
espionage) in a globally connected society
<br>
- Catastrophic operational disruptions arising from system failures
<br>
- Dissemination of information with dangerous applications (e.g.,
related to terrorism, crime, risky personal behavior)
<br>
- Tensions in transparency of information (e.g., health, financial,
or
operational)
<br>
- Privacy and personal data disclosure
<br>
- Ethical uses of information
<br>
- Management and implications of emerging payment systems and
currencies
<br>
- Pervasive use of surveillance that may both secure and subjugate
<br>
- Cyber stalking, bullying, and harassment
<br>
- Information technology used for fraud and deception
<br>
- Future directions in vulnerability research
<br>
- Domain-specific issues (e.g., marketing, law, health, education)
<br>
<br>
PROJECTED TIMELINE
<br>
<br>
January 4, 2015 Early reactions to paper ideas (optional)
<br>
March 1, 2015 Submissions due
<br>
June 2015 First round of editorial decisions
<br>
September 2015 Special issue workshop at Boston College
<br>
January 10, 2016 Revisions due
<br>
March 2016 Second round of editorial decisions
<br>
May 8, 2016 Final revisions due
<br>
June 2016 Final editorial decisions
<br>
Sept/Dec 2016 Publication
<br>
<br>
EDITORIAL REVIEW BOARD
<br>
<br>
Ahmed Abbasi (Virginia)
<br>
Alessandro Acquisti (CMU)
<br>
Terrence August (UCSD)
<br>
France Belanger (Virginia Tech)
<br>
Huseyin Cavusoglu (UT Dallas)
<br>
Ram Chellappa (Emory)
<br>
Elizabeth Davidson (Hawaii)
<br>
Debabrata Dey (Washington)
<br>
Kai Lung Hui (HKUST)
<br>
Eric Johnson (Vanderbilt)
<br>
Karthik Kannan (Purdue)
<br>
Paul Lowry (Hong Kong)
<br>
James Marsden (Connecticut)
<br>
Sabyasachi Mitra (Georgia Tech)
<br>
Vijay Mookerjee (UT Dallas)
<br>
Tyler Moore (SMU)
<br>
Eric Overby (Georgia Tech)
<br>
Rema Padman (CMU)
<br>
Srinivasan Raghunathan (UT Dallas)
<br>
Sasha Romanosky (RAND)
<br>
Matti Rossi (Aalto)
<br>
Larry Sanders (SUNY - Buffalo)
<br>
Raghu Santanam (Arizona State)
<br>
Ulrike Schultze (SMU)
<br>
Olivia Sheng (Utah)
<br>
Param Singh (CMU)
<br>
Mikko Siponen (Jyväskylä)
<br>
Carsten Sørensen (LSE)
<br>
Catherine Tucker (MIT)
<br>
Merrill Warkentin (Mississippi State)
<br>
<br>
BIBLIOGRAPHY
<br>
<br>
BBC News (2013) Obama addresses healthcare website glitches.
October
21,
<a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24613022">http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24613022</a>.
<br>
Blum J, (2014) Next steps in Medicare data transparency. Centers
for
Medicare & Medicaid Services, <a
href="http://blog.cms.gov/2014/04/02/next-steps-in-medicare-data-transparency/">http://blog.cms.gov/2014/04/02/next-steps-in-medicare-data-transparency/</a>.
<br>
The Economist (2012) Counting every moment. The Economist, March
3,
<a href="http://www.economist.com/node/21548493">http://www.economist.com/node/21548493</a>.
<br>
The Economist (2014) Defending the digital frontier. The
Economist,
July
12, <a
href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/07/special-report-cyber-security">http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/07/special-report-cyber-security</a>.
<br>
Geary J (2012) Tracking the trackers: What are cookies? An
introduction
to web tracking. The Guardian, April 23.
<br>
Mitra S, Ransbotham S (2012) The effects of vulnerability
disclosure
policy on the diffusion of security attacks. Proc. Internat. Conf.
on
Inform. Systems.
<br>
Overby E, Slaughter S, Konsynski B (2010) The design, use, and
consequences of virtual processes. Inform. Systems Res.
21(4):700-710.
<br>
Salzberg S (2014) New Medicare data reveal startling $496
million
wasted
On chiropractors. Forbes, April 20.
<br>
Weaver C, Beck M, Winslow R (2014) Doctor-pay trove shows limits
of
Medicare billing data. Wall Street Journal, April 9.
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Sam Ransbotham
Boston College
Associate Professor of Information Systems
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:sam.ransbotham@bc.edu">sam.ransbotham@bc.edu</a>
MIT-Sloan Management Review
Guest Editor, Data and Analytics
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ransboth@mit.edu">ransboth@mit.edu</a>
Twitter: @Ransbotham
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.SamRansbotham.com">http://www.SamRansbotham.com</a>
MIT-SMR articles: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://sloanreview.mit.edu/?s=ransbotham">http://sloanreview.mit.edu/?s=ransbotham</a>
phone: 617-552-0465</pre>
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