TY - JOUR

T1 - Criticality and Values in Digital Transformation Research: Insights from a Workshop

AU - Zimmer, Markus Philipp

AU - Vasilakopoulou, Polyxeni

AU - Grisot, Miria

AU - Niemimaa, Marko

N1 - Funding Information: We thank all workshop participants and the keynote speakers, Brit Ross Winthereik and Jannis Kallinikos, for their thought-provoking and engaging presentations and discussions as well as their comments on this report’s draft. We are indebted to Jonna Järveläinen for graciously agreeing at short notice to facilitate one of the round table sessions. We are grateful to Matthew Jones and Benjamin Mueller who supported the workshop and guided us in its preparation. We also thank the Association for Information Systems and the IT-University Copenhagen, especially Oliver Krancher for his ground support. We express our deep appreciation to all who contributed to making this workshop a fruitful and thought-provoking event and thank the authors for their permission to use excerpts from their submissions in this report. Publisher Copyright: © 2023 by the Association for Information Systems.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Digital transformation can positively or negatively contribute to societies, organizations, and individuals depending on the values inscribed in the underlying digital technologies. This highlights the importance for researchers to critically examine digital technologies’ value inscriptions, how technology use enacts these values and the bearing of these values on research. This paper draws on the pre-ICIS 2022 IFIP 8.2 OASIS workshop on “Criticality and Values in Digital Transformation Research" to highlight four ways researchers can practice criticality, that is, how they can identify and reflect on the values that underlie digital phenomena. The types of criticality are phenomenon-based, method-based, theory-based, and self-reflexive criticality. Criticality alone does not constitute critical social research. However, criticality sensitizes researchers to consciously engage with values, which can feed into critical research’s elements of insight, critique, and transformation. Criticality can inform insight by surfacing values; providing the basis for critique by confronting readers with alternative values; and supporting transformation by proposing alternative value inscriptions. Hence, we take criticality as pivotal for understanding how digital transformation can contribute to building a better world and we invite the IS community to practice and discuss criticality, values, and reflexivity to drive positive change.

AB - Digital transformation can positively or negatively contribute to societies, organizations, and individuals depending on the values inscribed in the underlying digital technologies. This highlights the importance for researchers to critically examine digital technologies’ value inscriptions, how technology use enacts these values and the bearing of these values on research. This paper draws on the pre-ICIS 2022 IFIP 8.2 OASIS workshop on “Criticality and Values in Digital Transformation Research" to highlight four ways researchers can practice criticality, that is, how they can identify and reflect on the values that underlie digital phenomena. The types of criticality are phenomenon-based, method-based, theory-based, and self-reflexive criticality. Criticality alone does not constitute critical social research. However, criticality sensitizes researchers to consciously engage with values, which can feed into critical research’s elements of insight, critique, and transformation. Criticality can inform insight by surfacing values; providing the basis for critique by confronting readers with alternative values; and supporting transformation by proposing alternative value inscriptions. Hence, we take criticality as pivotal for understanding how digital transformation can contribute to building a better world and we invite the IS community to practice and discuss criticality, values, and reflexivity to drive positive change.

KW - Business informatics

KW - Criticality

KW - Digital Transformation

KW - Values

KW - Critical Research

KW - Responsible digital transformation

KW - Management studies

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85179134055&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - https://www.mendeley.com/catalogue/9e5a8b89-e6de-358b-99af-97846abe8b76/

U2 - 10.17705/1CAIS.05341

DO - 10.17705/1CAIS.05341

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 53

SP - 964

EP - 983

JO - Communications of the Association for Information Systems

JF - Communications of the Association for Information Systems

SN - 1529-3181

M1 - 41

ER -