In the globalized, turbulent, and rushed nature of contemporary work, organizations perceive an increasing pressure to master digital transformation. To do so, organizations are increasingly turning to ‘high speed’ methods such as agile and flow. We argue that the differentiating feature of these methods is how to address time complexity to increase time-to-delivery, epitomized by terms such as cycle time, lead-time, latency, real-time, and velocity. This emphasis on speed is often an oversimplification of many complex and multi-faceted time complexities in play, and such an obsession on speed alone often results in failure. We examine how Fujitsu succeeded in managing time complexity by keeping multiple temporal challenges imposed by different time conceptions, temporal interdependencies, and management styles in sync to set a Guinness World Record with the largest animated tablet PC mosaic. We compare our findings with four other Fortune 500 companies confirming that applying agile practices can help in managing time complexity.

The study of sociomateriality in Information Systems (IS) research is recording increasing impact and interest. Primarily focused on the entanglement of the social and the material, we argue that IS literature on sociomateriality lacks a proper account of the affective configurations that transform a sociomaterial practice in a place of salience to the individual or organization. To bridge this gap, we propose an integrative theoretical framework to “disclose” affectivity in sociomateriality, as well as guidance to build a research apparatus and a diffractive approach as a research methodology. We build on affectivity research from the enactivist approaches to cognition, philosophy, and phenomenology. To illustrate our contribution, we relate to research on the digital practices of criminal courts in Chile. IS researchers and practitioners will benefit from (1) a robust theoretical foundation that extends sociomaterial studies as well as (2) the advancing of research methods and new research possibilities

New digital services and products rely heavily on digital technologies and need to be deployed in an ever-shorter timeframe in response to rapidly changing market demands. To address this challenge, companies review their sourcing strategies to shorten tender duration for large-scale IT initiatives and to increase flexibility in contracting of IT services. This study aims at revealing how the application of agile practices impacts the sourcing and contracting of IT services. As the automotive industry is especially affected by digital transformation, this revelatory case study shows how the German premium car manufacturer CarCo increased agility in sourcing and contracting of IT services for an autonomous driving development platform. Agile practices turned out to be essential in dealing with technological novelty and hurdles, regulatory uncertainty, and frequently changing requirements. We found that applying agile practices to the sourcing and contracting of IT services has two implications: First, agile practices aim at reducing tender duration, decreasing pre-contractual uncertainty, and therefore lead to an increase of speed and flexibility. Second, agile software development changes contract nature as comprehensive requirements are replaced by high-level specifications focusing on early results and business outcomes. We contribute to the extant body of knowledge on IT sourcing and contracting by providing managerial recommendations on how agile practices could reduce time-to-market and increase flexibility in the sourcing and contracting of IT services.

Big data analytics (BDA) gained importance in scholarly and practitioner literature alike. There is some disagreement, however, whether BDA is merely an evolution of established phenomena, most particularly business intelligence, or whether BDA represents a novel technology-driven innovation with potentially disruptive market impacts. Using the technology-organization-environment theory as our lens of analysis, we take a critical stance and conduct a systematic literature review to offer guidance for future research by pinpointing pivotal concepts and providing conceptually and empirically validated propositions as well as research avenues for IS research on BDA adoption. While the research avenues are intended to trigger future research, the developed propositions shall provide guidance to research endeavors that empirically analyze the adoption of BDA in organizational settings. By discussing open research issues and providing potentially fruitful theoretical perspectives for enriching our knowledge in this domain, this shall ultimately contribute to advancing BDA research.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) promises to have a transformational impact on our economy and society. It offers the opportunity for digital innovation, as it can be embedded in products and services. However, although companies are adopting AI, success stories are limited. Similarly, research on how to realize digital innovation from AI is scarce. To analyze the role of AI for digital innovation and how it affects the venture creation process, we conduct an in-depth case study at a heavily-funded medical imaging AI company. Our case study reveals four AI-caused tensions, which a digital venture faces, and we discuss four ways in which it counters them: (1) Managing Over-Expectations of AI, (2) Designing Work Routines for AI, (3) Addressing Opposing User Perceptions of AI, and (4) Integrating Domain Expertise with AI. Ultimately, we hope to contribute to the understanding of digital innovation in the context of AI.

The study of sociomateriality in Information Systems (IS) research has been increasing its impact and interest. Primarily focusing on how the material and the social are intertwined and its implication for organizations, IS research on sociomateriality does not account for role of the individual and the “self”. Enactive approaches to cognition are also concerned with sociomateriality focusing on how the self – individual–engages with an intertwined sociomaterial environment. To contribute to bridging this gap, we leverage from developments in the cognitive sciences and philosophy of mind to propose an enactiveecological approach to sociomateriality. In this paper, we bridge the phenomenological concept of solicitations and the affective-self approach to previous research on sociomateriality and affordances in the IS community. IS researchers and practitioners will benefit from a strong and robust theoretical foundation with a richer account of the individual engagement in sociomaterial studies as well as new research possibilities.

Digital and agile companies widely use chatbots in the form of integrations into enterprise messengers such as Slack and Microsoft Teams. However, there is a lack of empirical evidence about their action possibilities (i.e., affordances), for example, to link social interactions with third-party systems and processes. Therefore, we adopt a three-stage process. Grounded in a preliminary study and a qualitative study with 29 interviews from 17 organizations, we inductively derive rich contextual insights of 14 affordances and constraints, which serve as input for a Q-Methodology study that highlights five perceptional differences. We find that actualizing these affordances leads to higher-level affordances of chatbots that augment social information systems with affordances of traditional enterprise systems. Crossing the chasm between these, so far, detached systems contributes a novel perspective on how to balance novel digital with traditional systems, flexibility and malleability with stability and control, exploration with exploitation, and agility with discipline.