Call for Papers for a Special Issue in the Information Systems Journal: "Exploring alternative (non-

Starts:  Dec 20, 2022 09:00 (DK)
Ends:  Apr 30, 2023 23:59 (DK)

Information Systems Journal: Special Issue (SI) Call for Papers
“Exploring alternative (non-economic) forms of value engendered by digital platforms


SI Guest Editors

Petros Chamakiotis, ESCP Business School, Spain (pchamakiotis@escp.eu)
Dimitra Petrakaki, University of Sussex, UK (
D.Petrakaki@sussex.ac.uk)


Over the last few years, we have seen a rising and multidisciplinary body of literature on the emergence of digital platforms and their implications for business and society (e.g., Howcroft & Bergvall-Kåreborn, 2019; Sutherland & Jarrahi, 2018; Tan et al., n.d.; Zutshi & Grilo, 2019). Three perspectives have been identified in existing studies on digital platforms and the wider
‘platform economy’ concept (Bonina et al., 2021; Rolland et al., 2018): the engineeringperspective (focusing on technical aspects of platforms and capacity to lead to further innovations), the economics perspective (focusing on business models, transactions and value creation/profitability), and the sociotechnical perspective (focusing on coordination and governance issues in the platform economy ecosystem).

There is a recognition in this literature that platforms create value for businesses and organisations (e.g., Sutherland & Jarrahi, 2018; Zutshi & Grilo, 2019), largely seen as economic value or profitability (e.g., Constantinides et al., 2018). This economic value of platforms may not always be visible to its users. For instance, digital health platforms offering patients a space to share peer experiences about health conditions and treatments generate economic value (Lupton, 2014, 2016; Tempini, 2015) when patient data are repurposed and capitalised by platform owners for profit (Kallinikos & Tempini, 2014; Tempini, 2015). Further to their emphasis on economic value, digital platforms have been found to be exploitative and exclusive (Ahuja et al., 2023). Tarafdar et al. (2022), for example, show how algorithms learn from human activity, generating economic or management value, often at the expense of individuals’ awareness and/or consent.

Recent Information Systems (IS) literature, however, has begun to look at the social value that platforms may afford (e.g., Barrett et al., 2016; Chamakiotis et al., 2021; Goh et al., 2016; Katsamakas et al., 2022), revealing that platforms may engender wider, non-economic forms of value for their members and beyond (such as their local communities). So far, we have seen

terms like ‘social value’ (Chamakiotis et al., 2021), ‘platforms for development’ (Bonina et al., 2021), ‘platforms for the co-creation of public value’ (Meijer & Boon, 2021), and ‘platforms for the common good’ (Katsamakas et al., 2022) being used to describe some of the non- economic types of value platforms can afford. This is within a wider emerging call in our field to explore how IS research could play a role in making the world a better place (Davison et al., 2023). Clarke and Davison (2020) find that most IS literature is dominated by a focus on the economic dimension, with little or no attention paid to the non-economic dimensions of IS, such as their social and environmental aspects.

This is the line of work we aim to contribute to with this Special Issue (SI). Bonina et al. (2021) urge scholars to explore, among others, how platforms can help to create new institutions in the Global South (as a way of creating social value), while Ahuja et al. (2023) make a case for responsible innovation (RI) with digital platforms. Building on this emerging literature, we invite submissions that unpack and explain alternative (non-economic) forms of value engendered by digital platforms. The existing literature looking at digital health platforms in the Global South tells us there are three types of social value cognitive, professional and epistemic and a unique form of digital activism that features as a main contributor to its creation (Chamakiotis et al., 2021; Petrakaki et al., 2021). Some of these platforms (e.g., MedicineAfrica) have been explicitly developed to produce social value (e.g., Chamakiotis et al., 2021), while others may contribute to social value creation whilst generating profit. This is the case with PatientsLikeMe, for example, which creates online patient communities and supports medical research whilst also serving commercial purposes (Kallinikos & Tempini, 2014).

However, it is not only commercial platforms like Airbnb and Uber that have been found to contribute to unjust outcomes by being exploitative or exclusive (e.g., Ahuja et al., 2023). Social value too has been found to come hand in hand with unintended negative effects within the digital platform environment, including colonising effects over the communities they intend to serve (Petrakaki et al., 2022), and ‘degenerative’ outcomes causing local systems to deteriorate (Masiero & Arvidsson, 2021). We aim to contribute to this emerging literature both in terms of breadth and depth, and ultimately provide a better understanding around

alternative, yet un(der)-explored, forms of value engendered by digital platforms, the contexts wherein this value may be generated (i.e., for whom), the mechanisms that underpin them, and the wider implications of this value creation. We are interested in a variety of different types of platforms and industries in a variety of empirical contexts, such as the Global South.

The SI is envisaged to inform researchers, practitioners, policy makers, educators, healthcare professionals and others depending on industry and context. In 2019, we organised a symposium1 bringing together the academic and practitioner communities to discuss the educational value digital health platforms can create. Since then, platformisationhas grown exponentially and turned into a buzzword, affecting a range of industries and contexts. We invite submissions focusing on a wide array of digital platforms across different domains (e.g., healthcare, education, environment/sustainable futures), deepening and/or extending our understanding of some of the different types of platforms (Derave et al., 2021; Howcroft & Bergvall-Kåreborn, 2019), and the opportunities they may afford for the generation of non- economic forms of value in different domains. We will consider primarily empirical studies (qualitative and quantitative) and we are also open to novel methodological approaches that go beyond traditional research methods, such as interviews and questionnaires, and which may be more adequate for studying platforms (e.g., Symon et al., 2022). While, traditionally, the Information Systems Journal (ISJ) invites research papers, i.e., papers aiming to advance theory, we are open to a range of different types of submissions for this SI, including Practitioner Papers, so long as authors follow the relevant guidelines on the ISJ website. Practitioner Papers are expected to contribute valuable insights that will be of interest to non- academic practitioners in solving practical problems and challenges, for instance, about designing platforms for value creation. With our SI, we aim to create a forum for a wider discussion that may lead to the discovery of underexplored aspects of value associated with platforms, unearthing some of the ways in which IS research can help to create a better world (Davison et al., 2023). Topics could include but are not limited to the following:

  • Designing platforms for public value
  • Digital platforms for development

  • Digital platforms for sustainable futures

  • Changes in knowledge work and knowledge workers in the platform economy

  • Mechanisms and forms of non-economic value creation on digital platforms

  • Platformisation in the Global South and alternative empirical contexts

  • Platforms for education, reskilling and learning

  • Digital platforms in healthcare

  • Volunteering expertise in the platform economy

  • Knowledge production for all: mechanisms for data access and data sharing on

    platforms


    Timeline

    Submission of extended 1,000-word abstract deadline (optional): 31 January 2023 Submission of manuscript deadline: 30 April 2023

    Review Process

    Review will start immediately after submission. Authors will need to comply with the ISJ’s Author Guidelines when preparing and submitting manuscripts. Submissions will be made on ScholarOne at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/isj. You will have to indicate that your manuscript is for the particular SI. The SI Guest Editors will first screen all submitted papers to assess suitability. Suitable papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed. It is expected that successful papers undergo two (or more) rounds of revisions.

    Associate Editors

    Pierre-Emmanuel Arduin, Université Paris-Dauphine, France
    Roberta Bernardi, University of Bristol, UK
    Carla Bonina, University of Surrey, UK
    W. Alec Cram, University of Waterloo, Canada
    Andreas Eckhardt, University of Innsbruck, Austria Daniel Fürstenau, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark Federico Iannacci, University of Sussex, UK
    Stan Karanasios, University of Queensland, Australia
    Petter Nielsen, University of Oslo, Norway
    Niki Panteli, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK
    Mira Slavova, The University of Warwick, UK
    Manuel Trenz, University of Göttingen, Germany
    Yingqin Zheng, Royal Holloway, University of London, UK

    SI Citation

    Chamakiotis, P., & Petrakaki, D. (2022). Call for Papers: Exploring alternative (non-economic) forms of value engendered by digital platforms. Information Systems Journal, URL <https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/pb- assets/assets/13652575/ISJ%20SI%20proposal%20Chamakiotis%20&%20Petrakaki% 2022SEPT22.pdf>

    References

    Ahuja, S., Chan, Y. E., & Krishnamurthy, R. (2023). Responsible innovation with digital platforms: Cases in India and Canada. Information Systems Journal, isj.12378. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12378

    Barrett, M., Oborn, E., & Orlikowski, W. (2016). Creating Value in Online Communities: The Sociomaterial Configuring of Strategy, Platform, and Stakeholder Engagement. Information Systems Research, 27(4), 704723. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2016.0648

    Bonina, C., Koskinen, K., Eaton, B., & Gawer, A. (2021). Digital platforms for development: Foundations and research agenda. Information Systems Journal, 31(6), 869902. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12326

    Chamakiotis, P., Petrakaki, D., & Panteli, N. (2021). Social value creation through digital activism in an online health community. Information Systems Journal, 31(1), 94119. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12302

    Clarke, R., & Davison, R. M. (2020). Through Whose Eyes? The Critical Concept of Researcher Perspective. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 21(2), 483501. https://doi.org/10.17705/1jais.00609

    Constantinides, P., Henfridsson, O., & Parker, G. G. (2018). Introduction—Platforms and Infrastructures in the Digital Age. Information Systems Research, 29(2), 381–400. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0794

    Davison, R. M., Majchrzak, A., Hardin, A., & Ravishankar, M. (2023). Special issue on responsible IS research for a better world. Information Systems Journal, isj.12405. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12405

    Derave, T., Prince Sales, T., Gailly, F., & Poels, G. (2021). Comparing Digital Platform Types in the Platform Economy. In M. La Rosa, S. Sadiq, & E. Teniente (Eds.), Advanced Information Systems Engineering (Vol. 12751, pp. 417431). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79382-1_25

    Goh, J. M., Gao, G. (Gordon), & Agarwal, R. (2016). The Creation of Social Value: Can an Online Health Community Reduce Rural-Urban Health Disparities? MIS Quarterly, 40(1), 247263.

    Howcroft, D., & Bergvall-Kåreborn, B. (2019). A Typology of Crowdwork Platforms. Work, Employment and Society, 33(1), 2138. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017018760136

    Kallinikos, J., & Tempini, N. (2014). Patient data as medical facts: Social media practices as a 
    foundation for medical knowledge creation. Information Systems Research, 25(4), 817833. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2014.0544

    Katsamakas, E., Miliaresis, K., & Pavlov, O. V. (2022). Digital Platforms for the Common 
    Good: Social Innovation for Active Citizenship and ESG. Sustainability, 14(2), 639. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14020639

    Lupton, D. (2014). The commodification of patient opinion: The digital patient experience 
    economy in the age of big data. Sociology of Health & Illness, 36(6), 856869. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.12109

    Lupton, D. (2016). The diverse domains of quantified selves: Self-tracking modes and 
    dataveillance. Economy and Society, 45(1), 101122. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2016.1143726

    Masiero, S., & Arvidsson, V. (2021). Degenerative outcomes of digital identity platforms for 
    development. Information Systems Journal, 31(6), 903928. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12351

    Meijer, A., & Boon, W. (2021). Digital platforms for the co-creation of public value. Policy & Politics, 49(2), 231–248. https://doi.org/10.1332/030557321X16115951032181

    Petrakaki, D., Chamakiotis, P., & Bamber, J. R. (2021). Establishing professionalism through digital health platforms. Proceedings of the UK Academy for Information Systems (UKAIS 2021) Annual Conference: ‘Navigating the “New Normal” — Information Systems for a Post-Pandemic World’. UKAIS, Online.

    Petrakaki, D., Curto-Millet, D., & Chamakiotis, P. (2022). Manifestations of Digital Colonialism on Health Education Platforms. 38th European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS) Colloquium, Sub-Theme 50 ‘Organizational Research on and from the Global South: Overcoming the “Perfect/Imperfect” Dichotomy’. EGOS, Vienna, Austria.

    Rolland, K. H., Mathiassen, L., & Rai, A. (2018). Managing Digital Platforms in User Organizations: The Interactions Between Digital Options and Digital Debt. Information Systems Research, 29(2), 419–443. https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2018.0788

    Sutherland, W., & Jarrahi, M. H. (2018). The sharing economy and digital platforms: A review and research agenda. International Journal of Information Management, 43, 328– 341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.07.004

    Symon, G., Pritchard, K., & Hine, C. (Eds.). (2022). Research methods for digital work and organization: Investigating distributed, multi-modal, and mobile work. Oxford University Press.

    Tan, B., Xiao, X., Chau, M., Tan, F. T. C., & Leong, C. (n.d.). Digital Platforms and Ecosystems. Information Systems Journal.

    Tarafdar, M., Page, X., & Marabelli, M. (2022). Algorithms as co‐workers: Human algorithm role interactions in algorithmic work. Information Systems Journal, isj.12389. https://doi.org/10.1111/isj.12389

    Tempini, N. (2015). Governing PatientsLikeMe: Information Production and Research Through an Open, Distributed, and Data-Based Social Media Network. The Information Society, 31(2), 193–211. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2015.998108

    Zutshi, A., & Grilo, A. (2019). The Emergence of Digital Platforms: A Conceptual Platform Architecture and impact on Industrial Engineering. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 136, 546–555. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2019.07.027

     

    Appendix: Bios of Guest Editors
    Dr Petros Chamakiotis
    is an Associate Professor of Management at ESCP Business School in Madrid, Spain where he is also the Scientific Director of the MSc in Digital Project Management & Consulting. He is part of the ESCP Chair on ‘Reinventing Work’ funded by BNP Paribas in France, and he is affiliated with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)- funded Digital Futures at Work Research Centre in the UK. His research focuses on technology-mediated forms of work (e.g., digital platforms, hybrid working, virtual teams) and currently he (co-)leads studies looking at the social value of platforms, digital coloniality, and social media use in the refugee context. With Prof. Petrakaki (SI co-editor), he has generated research income to study the value of digital platforms and to organise relevant workshops. His work has appeared in IS and management journals, and in the media and the international professional press. Between 2018 and 2021, he served as the Chair of the International Federation for Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 9.5 ‘Our Digital Lives’ and he currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Information Systems Journal.

    Prof Dimitra Petrakaki is a Professor of Technology and Organisation at the University of Sussex and Co-Investigator of the ESRC-funded Digital Futures at Work Research Centre. Her research interests revolve around the interaction between technology and work organisation with specific focus on healthcare. She is currently working on research projects that explore the social value of platforms in the Global South; platform work in healthcare and on the mediating role of digital technology (including Virtual Reality, platforms etc) in establishing professionalism. Her research has been funded by the Wellcome Trust, British Academy/Leverhulme, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and others and has been presented in world leading outlets, including Journal of the Association for Information Systems; Information Systems Journal; Social Science & Medicine; Sociology of Health & Illness; Organization; British Medical Journals and others. Dimitra is an Editorial Board member of New, Technology, Work and Employment and the International Journal of Information Management and an Associate Editor at Information Systems Journal.

     

     

     

     

    Contact

    Petros Chamakiotis

    pchamakiotis@escp.eu