Contemporary Information Systems Research Articles

Information Systems Analysis and Design: Past Revolutions, Present Challenges, and Future Research Directions

Systems Analysis and Design (SAND) is undoubtedly a pillar in the field of Information Systems (IS). Some researchers have even claimed that SAND is the field that defines the Information Systems discipline and is the core of information systems. The past decades have seen the development of Structured SAND methodologies and Object-Oriented Methodologies. In the early 1990s, key players in the field collaborated to develop the Unified Modeling Language and the Unified Process. Agile approaches followed, as did other dynamic methods. These approaches remain heavily employed in the development of contemporary information systems. At the same time, new approaches such as DevOps and DevSecOps continue to emerge. This paper curates these trends in SAND. It reviews past and present SAND research, discusses current challenges, and provides insights that can assist SAND researchers in identifying future SAND research streams and important future research directions.

The Complex Relations between Organization and Disorganization and Their Conceptual System

For improving and developing self-organization theory in contemporary complex information systems theory, it is necessary to reinterpret related concepts and their relations and construct a conceptual system related to self-organization theory. Based on the latest research results, this article specifically discusses concepts of organization and disorganization, static organization and dynamic organization, static disorganization and dynamic disorganization, organizing and disorganizing, self-organization and other-organization, self-disorganization and other-disorganization, and their relations. Further, it explores the mechanism of organization and disorganization, the compatibility of organization and disorganization, feedback and mutual other-disorganization in interaction, constraint and freedom of organization and disorganization, complexity of restraint and external factors, and relations between “the good” and “the evil” in restraint and freedom. On this basis, a diagram of the conceptual system of organization and disorganization, including four levels and their relations, is presented.

Visualizing Pausanias’s Description of Greece with contemporary GIS

Abstract This progress article focuses on an overview of the potential and challenges of using contemporary Geographic Information System (GIS) applications for the visual rendering and analysis of textual spatial data. The case study is an ancient traveling narrative, Pausanias’s Description of Greece (Periegesis Hellados) which was written in the second century CE. First, we describe the process of converting the volumes to spatial data using a customized version of the open-source digital semantic annotation platform Recogito. Then the focus shifts to the implementation of collected and organized spatial data to a number of GIS applications: namely Google Maps, DARIAH Geo-Browser, Gephi, Palladio and ArcGIS. Through empirical experimentation with spatial data and their implementation in different platforms, our paper charts the ways in which contemporary GIS applications may be implemented to cast new light on ancient understandings of identity, space, and place.

The Cost of Fairness in AI: Evidence from E-Commerce

Contemporary information systems make widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI). While AI offers various benefits, it can also be subject to systematic errors, whereby people from certain groups (defined by gender, age, or other sensitive attributes) experience disparate outcomes. In many AI applications, disparate outcomes confront businesses and organizations with legal and reputational risks. To address these, technologies for so-called “AI fairness” have been developed, by which AI is adapted such that mathematical constraints for fairness are fulfilled. However, the financial costs of AI fairness are unclear. Therefore, the authors develop AI fairness for a real-world use case from e-commerce, where coupons are allocated according to clickstream sessions. In their setting, the authors find that AI fairness successfully manages to adhere to fairness requirements, while reducing the overall prediction performance only slightly. However, they find that AI fairness also results in an increase in financial cost. Thus, in this way the paper’s findings contribute to designing information systems on the basis of AI fairness.

Research on the Influence of Computer Electronic Technology on Modern Enterprise Logistics Management Information System

With the continuous improvement of logistics supporting service requirements, small and medium-sized transportation logistics enterprises are facing challenges and pressures from multiple dimensions. Therefore, it is urgent to improve the level and ability of logistics management, and to promote the survival and development advantages in the cruel market competition. Based on this, this paper first analyzes the modern enterprise logistics management information system, then studies the data description of the contemporary enterprise logistics management information system, and finally gives the influence of computer electronic information technology on the enterprise logistics management information system.

Simulation and Analysis of Microring Electric Field Sensor Based on a Lithium Niobate-on-Insulator

With the increasing sensitivity and accuracy of contemporary high-performance electronic information systems to electromagnetic energy, they are also very vulnerable to be damaged by high-energy electromagnetic fields. In this work, an all-dielectric electromagnetic field sensor is proposed based on a microring resonator structure. The sensor is designed to work at 35 GHz RF field using a lithium niobate-on-insulator (LNOI) material system. The 2.5-D variational finite difference time domain (varFDTD) and finite difference eigenmode (FDE) methods are utilized to analyze the single-mode condition, bending loss, as well as the transmission loss to achieve optimized waveguide dimensions. In order to obtain higher sensitivity, the quality factor (Q-factor) of the microring resonator is optimized to be 106 with the total ring circumference of 3766.59 μm. The lithium niobate layer is adopted in z-cut direction to utilize TM mode in the proposed all-dielectric electric field sensor, and with the help of the periodically poled lithium niobate (PPLN) technology, the electro-optic (EO) tunability of the device is enhanced to 48 pm·μm/V.

The sentiment analysis method in finance: The psychological-financial index

Subject. The article discusses contemporary means of measuring emotions of those who make financial decisions. Objectives. Analyzing key means of sentiment analysis in Russia and abroad, the study is to create a tool, which would be applicable to valuation and provide the unbiased information about the emotional state of those who locally make financial decisions. I also demonstrate limited capabilities of contemporary information systems in terms of emotion measurement, valuation, and present means to address the imperfection of the existing news tone measurement framework, unveil the content of new emotion measurement techniques, which would be useful to appraisers and cost analysts. Methods. The study is based on the induction and deduction for opinion poll processing, narrative analysis in data environments. I display the nexus with new technological means of modern information systems. Results. The article unveils the substance of key methods for setting the psychological-financial index, modern means of sentiment analysis in the new setting of the digital economy and Big Data. I scrutinize key constituents of the psychological-financial index and its use in the current circumstances of the post-COVID-19 economy. The article shows how psychological measurement methods can be implemented as part of the narrative analysis. Conclusions and Relevance. Financial analysts get new opportunities when using new achievements of behavioral finance and modern psychological studies. As the use of the psychological-financial index shows in analyzing market anomalies, there appear more opportunities for explaining the irrational behavior of market agents in its various segments. New standards are set as they are needed for valuation purposes, when financial analysts use them. Reporting is normalized. I provide an outlook of the analytical apparatus development and new indicators to use valuation results more efficiently. The findings hereof are applicable to the practice of contemporary appraisers, cost and fundamental analysts. It is especially important to use sentiment analysis tools in the digital economy, during the instability and crisis, change in the market paradigm, market shifts, changes in the comparability metrics, distortion of traditional financial and economic indicators, market volatility. The use of the psychological-financial index supplements and expands the scope of classical measurement tools and increase the quality of valuation.

How Teachers Participate in the Infrastructuring of an Educational Network

The evolution of Digital technologies has changed the ways in which people interact with and through technologies. Despite longstanding investment in technical and pedagogical infrastructure, schools vary greatly in the degree to which they have digitalized. New curricula in Finland have put additional pressure on education to meet the goals set for learning in the 21st century. In information systems (IS) research, digitalization increases an interest for understanding contemporary IS projects as infrastructuring. In this study, we examine how teachers as influential actors in transforming their environment participated in shaping the infrastructuring of the educational network of a Finnish city. A nexus analysis of teachers’ interviews revealed three main discourses. The first discourse depicted teachers balancing between traditional and new educational solutions when aligning their pedagogy-driven practices with curriculum objectives. The second discourse concerned infrastructuring activities for establishing pedagogical ICT use successfully. The third discourse highlighted practices that teachers used to share resources as an organizational-balancing effort. The results reveal tensions between collegiality and leadership, submissive and empowered agency, and discontinuities and anticipation in ensuring continuity in infrastructuring. We discuss implications for organizing in-service training and developing local practices as contributing to infrastructuring in the educational network.

Machine learning in tutorials – Universal applicability, underinformed application, and other misconceptions

Machine learning has become a key component of contemporary information systems. Unlike prior information systems explicitly programmed in formal languages, ML systems infer rules from data. This paper shows what this difference means for the critical analysis of socio-technical systems based on machine learning. To provide a foundation for future critical analysis of machine learning-based systems, we engage with how the term is framed and constructed in self-education resources. For this, we analyze machine learning tutorials, an important information source for self-learners and a key tool for the formation of the practices of the machine learning community. Our analysis identifies canonical examples of machine learning as well as important misconceptions and problematic framings. Our results show that machine learning is presented as being universally applicable and that the application of machine learning without special expertise is actively encouraged. Explanations of machine learning algorithms are missing or strongly limited. Meanwhile, the importance of data is vastly understated. This has implications for the manifestation of (new) social inequalities through machine learning-based systems.

Instrumental aspects of play at work in information technology organisations

ABSTRACT Conventional wisdom suggests that play is the antithesis of work. But in the information technology (IT) industry, companies such as Google, Facebook and Microsoft have positively integrated play into the workplace. In an era when the digital is ubiquitous and where play with IT has become commonplace, exploring the nature of play at work could shed light on the broader question of how humans exist in the world. This is an essential question for contemporary Information Systems scholarship. Drawing on the critical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer, I offer a narrative account of the instrumental aspects of play at work. I conducted an ethnographic study of the everyday practices of young IT professionals, revealing that workplace play has multiple instrumental aspects which are related to the temporality, spatiality, materiality and sociality of IT work practices.

OVERVIEW OF BROADBAND INFORMATION SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE FOR CRISIS MANAGEMENT

Many risks as a result of accidents, catastrophes and natural disasters can contribute to crisis situation, which according to the definition means a set of circumstances, both external and internal, that affect a given system through changes. Crisis situations are usually the result of natural disasters. Where such phenomena occur, it is important to ensure communication both at regional and national level. This is particularly important in areas affected by disasters caused by force majeure, such as earthquakes. The main aim of the article is to provide an overview of the architecture of contemporary information systems including satellite links, in order to present information on the potential possibilities of their use in the case of crisis situations.

ORGANIZATION OF STUDENTS’ PRODUCTIVE EDUCATIONAL AND COGNITIVE ACTIVITY DURING THE WORK WITH DIDACTIC MATERIALS OF THE TEXTBOOK ON PHYSICS FOR THE 9TH GRADE PUPILS BY MEANS OF FUNCTIONALLY SELECTED ELECTRONIC MANUALS AS A METHODOLOGICAL ISSUE

The article reveals the essence of the organization of productive educational and cognitive pupils’ activity in the process of occupation with didactic materials of a textbooks on physics by means of functional selected e-manuals. In this context, the aim of the article is to explain theoretically the realization of the productive educational and cognitive pupils’ activity in the process of occupation with didactic materials of a textbook on physics by means of functional selected e-textbooks.The authors isolate peculiarities of structural elements of school textbook on physics and specific features of the realization of its didactic function in organization of productive educational and cognitive pupils’ activities.The article gives the examples of methodological recommendations for realization of productive educational and cognitive pupils’ activity during the work with the textbook on physics and selected didactic materials by means of author’s e-manual.The usage of such approach to organization of pupils work with didactic materials of school textbook on physics reveals other possibilities for introduction of information and communicative technologies in traditional form of training, and makes it possible to combine and to ensemble established didactics and contemporary information and methodological systems as a whole.Current research proves that organization of productive educational and cognitive pupils’ activities in the process of occupation with didactic materials of a textbook on physics by means of functional selected e-textbook makes it possible to expand methodical opportunity of educational process.

Applying Complex Adaptive Systems Theory to Understand Distributed Participatory Design in Crowdsourced Information Systems Development

Contemporary information systems development (ISD) takes place in a dynamic environment; it is generally acknowledged as a complex activity. It has been proposed that ISD projects should be viewed as a complex adaptive system (CAS) and that these projects are better understood through the application of CAS. Distributed participatory design (DPD) is an approach to contemporary ISD where different, geographically dispersed stakeholders, often called the crowd, participate voluntarily and typically unaffiliated with the development organisation in the development and design of information systems in distributed design teams which are mostly online on Internet, web-based, and social media platforms. Going beyond individual methods, techniques, and practices, the objective of this research is twofold as we answer the two research questions: how are DPD projects in crowdsourced ISD managed and performed in their entirety and how does CAS theory provide plausible explanations and contribute to an understanding of contemporary ISD? For this purpose, we present a case of DPD in crowdsourced ISD in an intergovernmental, not-for-profit environment in the context of a DPD project which engaged Pacific Youth in the development of a digital game where we applied CAS theory to better understand and gain insights for ISD theory and practice.

Matching Interaction Design Principles and Integrated Navigation Systems in an Electronic Classroom

This article deals with cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary virtual engagement aimed to match human-computer interaction design principles and contemporary integrated navigation information systems. As interaction design principles ten general principles - heuristics are used, and as examples of contemporary navigation information systems, chart Radio Detection (or Direction) and Ranging (RADAR) device and Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) are used. This cross-disciplinary research has been achieved through a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) project by Durban University of Technology (DUT) in South Africa and University of Colima (UoC) in Mexico. Namely, the students from both sides guided by their lecturers have been engaged in analyzing today’s most frequently used marine navigational aids from the perspective of their reliability and user centeredness. The complexity of the systems and the lack of standards are observed as main problems when it comes to marine information systems effectiveness and their user centeredness.

Making IS Relevant in a Connected World

The exponential growth of the Internet since the mid-1990s has greatly expanded the capacity of people everywhere to interconnect and engage through digital technologies. As a complex adaptive system of systems, the Internet has extended the range and complexity of phenomena of interest to Information Systems (IS) scholars. This is both an exciting opportunity and a challenge which we explore in this paper by revisiting the Intellectual Structures Framework (Hirshheim et al. 1996) which attempted to make sense of the fragmented adhocracy of IS, before the expansion and penetration of the Internet. We suggest that the IS adhocracy, with its multi-disciplinary and systems-oriented nature, gives IS researchers the requisite variety to contend with the increasingly diverse digital ecologies of IS-enabled human activities that have emerged in the ensuing two decades. Based on relevant research over these two decades we present a revised framework that (1) reflects the complexities of contemporary IS phenomena and (2) can act as an instrument for analysing such phenomena across a spectrum of human activities. We justify the form and content of the Revised Intellectual Structures Framework, providing examples of its application in IS research using appropriate research methods and techniques. We argue that our revisions to the original framework provides individuals, organisations, and societies with a conceptual lens that is necessary to better address the challenges and opportunities posed by the complexities of contemporary digital ecologies.

In Search of a Framework for User-Oriented Data-Driven Development of Information Systems

Although iterative and continuous improvements are common in the design and development of contemporary information systems, some interesting research directions are arising from general trends towards user-oriented data-driven approaches. Since this is a relatively active research area, the paper aims to provide a brief overview of the main concepts and research directions and to define the setup and the context for the proposed user-oriented data-driven information systems development framework. Experts from the field of information systems are interviewed and their feedback is used to evaluate different aspects of the proposed framework. DOI: 10.15458/ebr.89

ERP Systems Application for Efficient Business Management

Contemporary ERP systems have various applications. Today, they are successfully used both in material value adding areas and in services rendering / work performance areas. Taking into account the business’ specific features is crucial for selection of software that will automate the activities of each organizational structural unit and the enterprise as a whole. The task of selecting and implementing contemporary ERP systems for business management requires conducting detailed analysis to identify the advantages and drawbacks of their application, as well as determine economic benefits from application of this information and analytical system. In this research, we relied on methods of economic and comparative analysis and used a systemic approach. The main purpose of research is finding arguments proving the practical value of purchasing an ERP system. The paper presents this research containing information on economic benefits that an enterprise could gain after ERP system implementation. According to the author, using a contemporary information and analytical system makes it possible to solve one of the most important tasks – improve business reliability and controllability through application of contemporary information technologies, which is particularly relevant as enterprise management procedures are growing ever more complicated.

The impact of IT level of knowledge on work-readiness from the accounting graduate perspective: Evidence from Greece

The current reality of the business world, commands that economists and especially accountants include in their daily routine contemporary and advanced information systems with which it is considered necessary that economists and accountants be familiar and well trained. IT knowledge and skills are increasingly important for graduates to enter the accounting job market. Over the last years, the persistent discrepancy between IT skills provided by job candidates and expectations of employers has triggered many scholars and research centers to focus on the graduate skills gap. The lack of education of business schools comprises an obstacle to the normalization of new circumstances as there is no defined standard of necessary knowledge and the appropriate lessons learning technologies are not included in the curriculum. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of graduates’ IT knowledge on their perceived readiness to enter the accounting job market. A self-administered survey conducted and a sample of 363 questionnaires was gathered for the purpose of the study. Principal components analysis supported four components of IT tools which were used in hierarchical regression analysis as determinants of the perceived work readiness of graduates. During the analysis satisfaction with the teaching and learning processes were taken into consideration as well as the type of the institution graduates attend. Research findings indicate that educators must give attention to specific accounting IT tools and applications so as to enhance graduates’ level of knowledge. Satisfaction with learning and teaching experience and the type of institution are important causal elements for graduates’ work-readiness.

Predicting the success of Twitter in healthcare

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to predict Twitter satisfaction by healthcare professionals through integrating constructs of Csikszentmihalyi’s flow theory, quality dimensions and usefulness.Design/methodology/approachSurvey responses of 108 physicians from a variety of specialisations in the United Arab Emirates have been validated and analysed by means of partial least squares-based structural equation modelling method using smartPLS software.FindingsService quality has emerged as the most influential quality dimension that positively impact flow state and perceived usefulness of Twitter, while information quality, surprisingly, does not show any effect. The findings also indicate that flow state plays a significant role in shaping physicians’ satisfaction with Twitter. The study also enhances our understanding concerning the effects of perceived usefulness on flow state and satisfaction.Research limitations/implicationsUnderstanding factors that influence Twitter satisfaction can help healthcare managers construct appropriate intervention strategies for maximising professional benefits of social media and minimising user resistance. This is important because top managers usually ratify traditional practices that are only of limited effect. Also, the findings help vendors to accentuate user’s concerns in addition to system functionalities in social media applications.Originality/valueThe paper is an early attempt to propose a model for social media success in a professional context in general and healthcare in particular. It also one of first studies that examine social media satisfaction through integrating contemporary information system success and acceptance models with flow theory.

What’s in a face? Making sense of tangible information systems in terms of Peircean semiotics

Within this paper, we utilise a delimited area of philosophy to help make sense of a delimited area of design science as it pertains to a class of contemporary information systems. The philosophy is taken from that of Charles Sanders Peirce; the design science is directed at the construction of visual devices in that area known as visual management. The utilisation of such devices within their wider visual management systems we take to be instances of what we refer to as tangible information systems. Tangible information systems use tangible artefacts, such as whiteboards and magnetic tokens, to accomplish information. We particularly use Peircean semiotics to analyse the use of tangible emoticons articulated upon performance boards within a large-scale manufacturing facility. We infer from our analysis of these informative artefacts that certain integrated aspects of Peircean philosophy offers an alternative way of framing notions of a proper design science, design theory, and design artefact for the discipline of information systems.