Workshop
Engaging with AI: A Delphi study to prioritise an IS research agenda
AI is reshaping professional practice, organizational structures, and societal institutions faster than governance and regulation can adapt. This session aims to engage delegates in a conversation about how we understand and thereby shape a future research agenda for IS in an AI environment.
The session is based on a recent systematic literature review (SLR) of dozens of recent secondary reviews and research agendas. Following this work, a working group has developed a questionnaire as Round 1 of a multi-round Delphi study to rank AI benefits, challenges and specific research topics identified via the SLR.
Why your participation matters: We are seeking contributions and potential wider collaboration from the conference delegates to help refine the questionnaire with the purpose of understanding future research priorities for IS in the age of AI. As IS experts we seek to gain your contribution for an effective study which is deliberately open to the broad community of IS scholars in order to capture the discipline’s “fragmented adhocracy”, that is to represent its genuinely diverse epistemological, geographic, and sectoral perspectives. We are particularly interested in your academic contribution, grounded in your own area of expertise.
Organizers
About the organizer: Bartosz Marcinkowski holds a position of a professor and vice dean for research at the University of Gdańsk, Poland. He is an active participant in initiatives at the intersection of academia and business, and a trainer with extensive experience in conducting training programs dedicated to developing the practical IT skills of employees at Polish businesses. Over the past 5 years, he has focused in particular on issues related to digital transformation, business process management, and organizational agility. The relevance of his professional knowledge and skills in the IT market is confirmed by international certifications (including CCNA, OMG-Certified UML Professional, and OMG-Certified Expert in BPM), as well as numerous publications in JCR journal and textbooks.
About the organizer: Netta Iivari is a Professor in Information Systems and research group leader of INTERACT research group in University of Oulu. Her long-lasting research interest concerns understanding and strengthening people’s participation in shaping and making their digital futures. Recently, she has focused on artificial intelligence (AI) and explored participatory design, critical design, speculative design, empowerment, inclusion, ethics, and values in AI design and use. She regularly publishes in high level Information Systems and Human Computer Interaction journals and conferences and leads research projects addressing these topics.
About the organizer: Megan is a Senior Teaching Fellow with the Human Centred Computing Department, Faculty of IT, Monash University. Her research interest is in the field of complex organisational systems. Her doctoral thesis explored science leadership in institutional environments and identified unique co-leadership experiences in the overlay of institutional and network-like structures of organising. She is Chief Examiner for Digital Continuity and Lecturer in Responsible Digitalisation, focussing on ethics of technology, governance and the potential role and impact of agentic AI in organisations and society. Her research, in collaboration with the Australian Research Data Commons, identified researchers’ social engagement in data discovery and she has recently explored this in further depth from a practice theory perspective. She is also Chief Investigator for an inter-faculty project looking at the role of AI enabled conversation agents in augmenting scenario based learning (aSBL). This current project seeks to understand whether such agents can provide sustainable and accessible opportunities for information systems students to bridge their experience from the classroom to the world of work, based on current models in teaching practice in allied health and pharmacy.
Background
In 2024 at the ISD Conference in Gdansk, Poland, a project was initiated to map a roadmap for researching AI from a distinctive IS perspective. This was an open call to delegate to participate in setting an agenda and workplan for this project. The outcome was a 2-stage approach: first to complete a systemic literature review (SLR) to synthesizes the state of knowledge of IS research addressing AI; the second was to conduct a Delphi study to set an IS research agenda going forward.
Earlier this year, the SLR was submitted for publication. The SLR included 17 authors from 17 different institutions.
The Delphi study
Taking the SLR as a starting point, the working group has been developing a series of topics and issues that confront the IS discipline. The purpose is to canvass the international IS community to rank these topics and issues into a coherent research agenda for IS.
The study has deliberately chosen not to restrict the participants in the Delphi iterations to a select group of “experts” but to open the iterations to all IS scholars. We intend to distribute the study through the AIS, regional and national chapters of AIS and major IS conferences.
The workshop
The SLR has been an invaluable resource to assemble the topics and issues that will inform the IS research agenda. The working group has compiled this list. The Delphi study has ethics approval from the Gdańsk University of Technology, organised by Aleksander Jarzębowicz.
The purpose of the workshop is to review the scope and direction of the project and review the compiled list of topics and issues. Such a review is needed as AI, by its very nature, is not static and the field is changing rapidly. We need to identify any omissions, potential research areas that have emerged since the SLR, and methodological issues with the conduct of the Delphi study.
The working group intends to use the outcome of the workshop to finalise the Delphi survey and start the first iteration.
Agenda
Part I: Adam Przybyłek: Overview of the Roadmap project (5 min)
Part II: Bartosz Marcinkowski, Netta Iivari: Review of the SLR (10 min)
Part III: Megan Power, Netta Iivari, Bartosz Marcinkowski: Introduction to the Delphi study (5 min)
Part IV: All: Review of the Delphi survey (90 min)
Part IV.i: Structure
Part IV.ii: Content ( issues, topics)
Part IV.iii: What’s missing
Part IV.iv: Methodology (iterations, saturation, venues, analysis, etc)
Part V: Megan Power, Netta Iivari, Bartosz Marcinkowski: Summary and conclusions (10 min)