Special issue on responsible IS research for a better world

Abstract

The notion that there is a moral obligation for researchers to make the world a better place is not new, yet one seldom encounters substantive research that practically espouses such a view. Noting the lack of such research, Walsham (2012) made an impassioned call to arms in a short article titled ‘Are We Making the World a Better Place with Information Systems?’. Providing further evidence of the critical need for responsible research, scholars have formed a new virtual organisation named ‘Responsible Research in Business and Management’ (RRBM). RRBM has the avowed focus of ‘inspiring, encouraging, and supporting credible and useful research in the business and management disciplines’ (http://rrbm.network). In 2019, the ISJ issued a call for papers for a special issue to encourage our colleagues to contribute to making the world a better place. Following Majchrzak et al. (2016), we suggested that contributing authors should not limit their research designs and thus contributions to the scholarly community but should also consider the practical and policy implications for a wide range of practitioners (not only managers) as well as the broader social world. Finally, they could also consider the non-human world of the environment, given our focus on making the world a better place through IS research. Thirty-nine papers were submitted to the special issue and six have, after extensive revision, been accepted. They are introduced below. We suggest that there are many different ways in which responsible research can lead to a better world. Beyond the interests of individual organisations, scholars also need to consider the grander scheme of how research can make the world a better place, not only in economic terms, but also socially, personally and environmentally. Occasionally we see articles in which it is clear that the authors are pursuing an agenda that aims to contribute to ‘making the world a better place’. Examples include: Zheng and Yu's (2016) study of the socialised affordances of social media in the processes of collective action, with a detailed examination of the ‘Free Lunch for Children’ charity in China; Tim et al.'s (2017) exploration of how the boundary-spanning competences of social media function as a digital response mechanism in natural disasters; and Díaz Andrade and Doolin's (2016) account of how Information and Communication Technologies contribute to the social inclusion of newly settled refugees. But these examples are too few and far between. Apart from articles that demonstrate the beneficial impacts of social media and IT more generally, a stream of ‘critical social IS research’ emerged in the 1990s focusing on the social and ethical implications of technology in organisations and society. Critical IS researchers have explored how IS that was deployed with the objective of increasing efficiency and instrumental rationality often also increased managerial or social control, surveillance and domination, with negative social consequences in organisations and society (see Howcroft & Trauth, 2005). Thus, the purpose of critical IS research has been to contribute knowledge with transformative and emancipatory potential in order to make the world a better place. Although recognised as a third research stream (Chen & Hirschheim, 2004; Orlikowski & Baroudi, 1991) that addressed practically, socially and ethically relevant questions, critical IS research has remained somewhat outside the mainstream. It is pertinent to note that the ISJ was one of a few premier journals to advance critical research by publishing a Special Issue ‘Exploring the Critical Agenda in IS Research’ (Cecez-Kecmanovic et al., 2008). The ISJ further published a Special Issue on ‘The Dark Side of IT Use’ (Tarafdar et al., 2015a; Tarafdar et al., 2015b) that examined negative phenomena associated with use of IT, phenomena that are often hard to articulate and investigate because institutions are reluctant to acknowledge their existence give