Stoney Brooks

Unpacking Green IS: A Review of the Existing Literature and Directions for the Future

Green IS is one of the latest manifestations in the realm of sustainable business practices. The decisions surrounding Green IS implementation strategies, policies, and tools provide compelling challenges for organizations. As practitioners have been highly interested in this topic for a while (known as Green IT), there has also been a recent growing interest in Green IS within the IS academic community. In this chapter, we conduct a systematic and comprehensive review of both the practitioner and academic literatures surrounding Green IS. Specifically, our review includes articles published in the IS academic Senior Scholar’s Basket of Journals, hybrid journals such as Communications of the ACM, IEEE Software, and MIS Quarterly Executive, and practitioner outlets such as CIO magazine and PC World. Through this review, we identify the main streams of Green IS-related studies that have been undertaken within both practice and academia, and offer a holistic picture of the current state of research/interest in Green IS. We then identify the overlaps and differences between the two sides (that is, academia and practice) in an attempt to unearth noticeable similarities/gaps between both perspectives. Finally, we not only identify the trends in Green IS research, but also provide academic scholars interested in Green IS more focused directions on the specific research questions to address with respect to Green IS.

Social media-induced technostress: Its impact on the job performance of it professionals and the moderating role of job characteristics

Abstract Using social media during work hours for non-work-related reasons is becoming commonplace. Organizations are therefore challenged with identifying and overcoming the consequences of such use. Social media-induced technostress has been identified as an important unintended consequence of using social media at work, as it could negatively impact job performance. This study draws on Person-Environment Fit to investigate the relationship between social media-induced technostress and job performance in IT professionals, and the moderating effect of job characteristics on this relationship. The results indicate that social media-induced technostress is negatively related to job performance and the negative impact of social media-induced technostress is intensified when the job characteristics are low. This work extends the literature on job-stress, social media, technostress, and job characteristics.

Social networking’s peril: Cognitive absorption, social networking usage, and depression

Social networking has become commonplace in today’s always-connected world. Due to this ubiquity, researchers have sought to explore the positive and negative effects that can result from usage of social networking. This research has shown many effects on an individuals psychological well-being, with one of the most concerning being mixed results of how usage relates to depression. In this study, we further examine the relationship between usage and depression for social networking users. In addition, we posit that aspects of cognitive absorption, namely temporal dissonance, focused immersion, and heightened enjoyment, have a direct effect on the amount of usage. A survey of 251 social networking users reveals that temporal dissociation and heightened enjoyment are associated with increased usage, and usage was found to be associated with greater levels of depression. Further, prior research has shown a significant difference between genders in Internet usage and social networking. Therefore, we report our findings as an overall analysis and as a gender-based between-groups analysis. This analysis shows that more variance is explained for females than males in most relationships. Implications for research and society are discussed along with future research directions.

The Information Systems name game revisited: Still muddled 20 years later

ABSTRACT The Information Systems (IS) field has long suffered from an identity crisis. Academic programs in the field are represented with a multitude of names. For potential students interested in the field, a decision that could impact their academic path revolves around choosing the correct IS-related major. After all, why would there be different names if there were no differences in what is being taught? This study investigates these potential differences in curricula across the most popular major names in the IS field in AACSB-accredited schools of business in the United States. The findings show that, while the Information Technology-names major has many significant differences from more traditional IS-named majors, the differences between the IS-names majors are minor. Implications are provided along with future actions for the field.

Improving the teaching of Microsoft Excel: Traditional book versus online platform

ABSTRACT The authors explore the differences between traditional, book-based methods of teaching Excel and online, platform-supported methods by comparing teaching students in different locations, with and without online support. As Excel is a critical skill for business majors, the authors investigate which methods and locations provide the highest grades. To test their hypotheses, the authors gathered course grade information on multiple Excel assignments for each of four conditions: traditional versus online platform instruction methods, and face-to-face versus online class locations. They present the results along with insights gained from the study and recommendations for instructors.