Nancy Pouloudi

Understanding Cloud Adoption Decisions in the Public Sector

Cloud computing is bringing significant changes in the way that public organizations interact with information systems. Existing research exploring cloud computing adoption in the public sector tends to privilege the technological factors. This paper contributes to the understanding of cloud computing adoption decisions in the public sector by also considering the organizational and environmental contexts of the adoption. By drawing on diffusion of innovation literature, we analyze the results of 21 interviews conducted across six European countries. The results of the study reveal that the adoption of cloud computing in the public sector is viewed with optimism and highlight that most of the factors that hinder the adoption are relevant to the environmental context.

A profile of information systems research in the Mediterranean region

Drawing data from the Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS), we build a profile of Mediterranean information systems (IS) research and compare the emerging research landscape with recent reviews in European and international contexts. We report on research topics addressed, research methodologies employed, local empirical contexts and the composition of the related community of authors. On the basis of this data, we problematize on the meaningfulness and nature of a regional profile for IS research. Together with the six papers selected for this special issue, we aspire to contribute to the broader discourse on the diversity of IS research orientation, methodologies and agendas across different parts of the world.

IS research stakeholders and cyborgs: an opportunity to revisit the normative IS agenda

I nformation systems (IS) research has, over time, dealt extensively with ethical issues (Stahl, 2012a), yet there is a widespread belief that the field is still very much in need of a strong ethical agenda (Walsham, 2012). Put eloquently by Adam (2012: 102), ‘whatever turns IS did make, the ethical turn was not one of them.’ Interestingly, a number of special issues, editorials, papers and commentaries on ethics have very recently appeared in IS journals, in tandem with similar attention on virtual worlds and digital cultures (e.g., Bryant et al., 2009; Oinas-Kukkonen et al., 2010; Sawyer et al., 2011; Stahl, 2012a; Stahl, 2012b; Walsham, 2012). These publications indicate, on one hand, the need to extend the ethical debate in IS and, on the other, the changing nature of the object of our study: the ‘IT artifact’ itself and the context of its use. Together, they signal a need to revisit our research agenda. Schultze and Mason’s (2012) paper is a welcome and timely contribution in this direction. The authors challenge our assumptions and attitudes as researchers toward online research, especially in novel and less understood environments, such as virtual worlds. Central to their argument is the – ethically lacking – way in which our field treats an emerging subject of our study: cyborgs. The authors argue that cyborgs constitute complex entities, whereby ‘real’ people become entangled with their online representations as email, text, image, video, profile, avatar and so on: ‘Embodied users are seen as inextricably interlinked with their digital bodies, which extend their senses and presence across time and space.’ With cyborgs at the center of the authors’ analysis, Internet users are portrayed as increasingly vulnerable in the online context. Cyborgs, researchers and research ethics committees (RECs) thus become the key stakeholders the authors identify for understanding and managing ethical issues in online research. Although the authors make only passing reference to the term stakeholder toward the end of their paper, it is a helpful construct for identifying and debating ethical issues in our research agenda. Stakeholder theory has been central to business ethics (e.g., Beauchamp et al., 2009) and has been employed in the IS literature to unveil complex and conflicting interests during IS development and use. While there is widespread recognition that IS stakeholders span beyond the traditional user–developer dyad, stakeholder identification is far from trivial (Pouloudi and Whitley, 1997). This observation is particularly applicable when novel digital environments fall under scrutiny.

Unraveling the Virtual University

This chapter critically explores the vision of a university “without walls” has dominated these last years the discussions in academia and industry alike. In examining the efforts of a distributed virtual university to foster collaboration among the various participating actors through the establishment of a common technological infrastructure, we found that technological coupling is not enough in itself. In particular, the analysis showed that there are a number of defining factors namely, (1) task characteristics, (2) communication interface, and (3) frames that must be aligned for any effort to create a distributed virtual university to be successful. To this end, we examine in depth each of these defining factors and discuss the assumptions that lead universities to rely on technology to foster collaboration. We conclude by discussing the implications of the vision for a “virtual” university for both academic research and practice.

3D online environments: ethical challenges for marketing research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is twofold: to provide an overview of related studies and to highlight research gaps and questions that need to be addressed. Research conducted in three-dimensional (3D) online environments constitutes a different research context, not least because it involves the recruitment of avatars in the research process. Researchers need to appreciate better the ethical concerns that arise in this novel, fast-evolving context and how these concern different stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – The paper employs an interdisciplinary desk-research approach. It critically reviews related literature, highlights the involved stakeholders, discusses ethical issues from a marketing research perspective and concludes with a discussion of related studies and research gaps, providing direct future research avenues. Findings – The characteristics of the 3D online environments and the behaviour and experiences of their users set the boundaries and guide the way regarding the ethical...

Designing Visual Exemplars of 3D Online Store Layout Types

This paper presents the design issues in the visualization of five distinct store layout types in the context of 3D online retailing and discusses appropriate design decisions. The development of the stores is based on the requirements (layout characteristics) elicited from a three-round Delphi method with 3D expert users and designers which served as the qualitative empirical research vehicle. Along with the visualization of the characteristics of each layout type, the theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and the future research avenues of the study are discussed.

Tracing Diversity in the History of Citizen Identifiers in Europe: a Legacy for Electronic Identity Management?

Secure and interoperable e-government identity management practices and transactions are essential in supporting the free movement of people, products and ideas across the European Union. As a result there is significant interest and investment in this area, with open architecture solutions being proposed to support electronic cross-border identity management services. In our engagement with GUIDE (‘Creating a European Identity Management Architecture for eGovernment’), an EU-funded project that provided specifications for such a solution, we explored the influence of ‘softer’ issues, related to organizational, legal and societal aspects of identity management. This chapter reports on our findings on the role of the social context of the European Union in the understanding and acceptance of electronic identity management services by citizens. Our approach entailed looking at six, geographically spread and culturally diverse EU countries to investigate the interplay of social context and history on the perceptions of identity management in society. This chapter reports on current citizen attitudes towards identity management in these countries, as influenced by historical circumstance. We argue that efforts to coordinate identity management at the European level need to respect and accommodate historical and cultural conditions that have shaped the diversity in current national practices.

Organizational and ethical issues in the information society

European Journal of Information Systems (2006) 15, 343–344. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000628 The ever more ubiquitous and pervasive nature of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has profound organizational and societal implications, enabling and shaping an ‘e-society’. Yet, research in this area remains underrepresented in the ‘mainstream’ information system (IS) conferences and journals. How we use and shape ICT in all areas of our lives has a profound impact on the way we conceptualize and shape the IS we encounter within the workplace and vice versa. The e-society track of the 13th European Conference in Information Systems raised interesting and important questions on the opportunities, threats and dilemmas that citizens, organizations and decision–makers face concerning issues such as awareness, access, technology adoption, participation, fairness and education in the context of the e-society. Following from this stimulating debate, we solicited submissions for this special issue on Organizational and Ethical Issues in the Information Society, based on selected papers from the e-society track. Specifically, we invited the authors of all accepted papers, the associate editors of the track and the authors of highly ranked papers that were submitted but not included in the e-society track to submit an updated version of their research work on the e-society to EJIS. Twelve papers were submitted to the special issue and underwent a double-blind review with the assistance of 23 reviewers. The authors of five of the papers were invited to resubmit. Following an editorial review, one of the resubmitted papers was rejected and two were asked to undertake further revisions. The four papers that have been included in this special issue focus on different aspects of organizational and ethical issues in the information society. Broadly stated, two adopt an ‘organizational’ perspective, focusing on the behavior of employees using ICT; the other two adopt a broader ‘societal’ perspective, although they are inspired by the influence of ICT on the interaction of employees (female information technology (IT) workers and teleworkers) within the formal organization. The papers also cover the broadest spectrum of research paradigms: positivist, interpretive and critical. Although this is incidental, we are delighted that we could provide in this special issue an illustration of the value that multiple paradigms bring to IS research. In particular, we anticipate that the two critical approaches (feminist and Marxist) adopted in the latter two papers, will be instrumental in raising the profile of this stream of research, provoking or even challenging our own behavior in the work place as well as in the family environment.