AIS SIGPRAG 9th Virtual Workshop

"Meaning, Values, and Actions in Digital Practices: Explicating Pragmatism in Information Systems Research"

The AIS Special Interest Group in Pragmatist Information Systems (IS) Research (SIGPRAG) wants to stimulate and promote pragmatist IS research in ways that address relevant and timely areas, questions, and phenomena in the IS field. In the 2023 workshop, this will be done by putting an emphasis back on pragmatism in IS research through the theme: “Meaning, Values, and Actions in Digital Practices: Explicating Pragmatism in Information Systems Research”. The theme calls for pragmatist IS research of today’s challenges and opportunities with and within digital practices in organizations where Information Technology (IT) and nformation Systems (IS) artifacts are central objects of meaning, values, and actions.

The rapid digitalization of organizations and society necessitates that we inquire into digital practices and their creation of meaning, how they become meaningful for organizations over time, and how IS/IT affords meaningful actions for people at work. On the one hand, the rapid pace of design, development, adoption, and discharge of state-of-the-art IT has become a societal norm that informs organizations’ formation of digital practices. On the other hand, the rapid pace of such development overshadows organizations’ critical reflection on the meaningful implications of digital practices. To better understand the practical and theoretical nuances of how meanings, values, and actions are intertwined with digital practices, the theme of this virtual workshop acknowledges the following topics:

• Digital practices in IS that have an explicit foundation in pragmatism
• Pragmatist foundations and applications of pragmatist IS research to digital practices
• Pragmatist ways to conceptualize and describe meaning and meaningful technologies in IS research
• Pragmatist ways to critically problematize the entanglement of values and technologies in IS research
• Pragmatist accounts of how technologies afford meaningful actions for the formation of digital practices
• Pragmatist approaches for designing and evaluating emerging technologies’ (e.g., Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality) potential for supporting meaning creation in digital practices
• The philosophy of pragmatism and its implications for the development, use, and management of artifact solutions that address problems of digital practices in IS
• Pragmatist approaches to addressing concepts, values, and theories of digital practices in IS
• Co-creation of knowledge for meaning and values in emerging practices
• Philosophically grounded and practice-oriented papers theorizing the relationship between meaning and values from perspectives of pragmatism
• Case descriptions, including descriptions of and reflections on digital practices
• Pragmatist-driven design of digital artifacts that aim to create digital practices in various domains of work

Following the tradition of SIGPRAG workshops, we also accept papers on the foundations and application of pragmatist IS research. Such papers may cover pragmatist approaches to and views on:  

• Research designs (e.g., Practice research; Action research; Design science research; Action design research; Case study research; Evaluation research)
• Conceptualizing and describing digital artifacts (e.g., Ensemble view; Socio-technical view; Contextual view; Functional tool view; Affordance view; Communicative action view)
• Conceptualizing and describing practices (e.g., Symbolic interaction; Language action; Socio-materiality; Institutionalism; Actor-networks
• Design processes (e.g., Openness in innovation; Design thinking; Collaborative design; Stakeholder inclusion; How to tackle wicked problems; Design conversations; Values and goals articulation; Creativity in design; Design and evaluation strategies)

Workshop Purpose and Procedure

This workshop will be arranged virtually in the same spirit and a continuation of earlier successful SIGPRAG workshops. The workshop will thus be executed virtually to bring scholars and practitioners together for knowledge exchange and development on pragmatist research foundations and practical contributions to the sustainability imperative in IS. We will use the following virtual room or the workshop:

• Virtual Room: https://shorturl.at/adxKO

The workshop will take different time zones of participants into sufficient consideration in order to organize and conduct a rewarding workshop. The workshop is a developmental arena with thoughtful and constructive feedback from reviews and comments from other scholars in IS. The workshop should be a place where you can present ideas in papers and get fruitful feedback for further development of the papers.

Dates and Submission Details

Submission Opens: September 11^th

Submit Extended Abstract: October 9^th

Notification of Acceptance for Extended Abstracts: October 16^th

Submit Full Manuscripts: November 13^th

Workshop: November 27^th, between 09-16 CET

The workshop will follow an ordinary scientific procedure with a submission of extended abstracts on 2 pages. The selection of extended abstracts is conducted through peer-review pursued by the SIGPRAG committee. After the selection, the authors are invited to send their full paper submissions which are expected to be between 5–16 pages. We welcome full research papers, conceptual papers, as well work-in-progress/position papers. For submissions, we use the EasyChair system (https://shorturl.at/wyCKO). A format template can be found here. Workshop papers (as being in a state of development) will solely be distributed among workshop participants.

Workshop Co-Chairs and Program Committee

• Amir Haj-Bolouri, University West, Sweden (amir.haj-bolouri@hv.se)
• Göran Goldkuhl, Linköping University & Uppsala University, Sweden (goran.goldkuhl@liu.se)
• Markus Helfert, Maynooth University, Ireland (Markus.Helfert@mu.ie)
• Leona Chandra Kruse, University of Liechtenstein, Liechtenstein/Agder University, Norway (leona.chandra@uni.li)
• Hans Weigand, Tilburg University, Netherlands (h.weigand@tilburguniversity.edu)
• John Stouby Persson, Aalborg University, Denmark (john@cs.aau.dk)
• Kieran Conboy, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland kieran.conboy@universityofgalway.ie