The 4th workshop on the Digitization of the Individual will be held in Munich, Germany, in conjunction with ICIS 2019 and is scheduled for December 15 2019, 1:00 PM - 5:30 PM. To promote further impactful research on individuals, strong emphasis during the workshop will be given to paper development discussions, among others, facilitated by discussants providing direct feedback. Workshop participants will be charged a registration fee that will include snacks and coffee breaks (details will be announced as the conference program is finalized).

This year's workshop includes an expert panel on “AI and robots in our individuals’ lives - How to align technological possibilities and ethical issues”. More information on this will follow soon.

Workshop description

As our lives become immersed by powerful digital devices and services, questions of implications for individuals’ lives as well as their social interactions and structures arise. IS research has traditionally focused rather on institutional contexts (Baskerville 2011). However, the digitization of individuals' private contexts offers manifold important research questions to be solved (Matt et al. 2019). In everyone’s life outside the organizational context these pertain individual behavior and decision making and the positive and negative consequences thereof, but also communication and interactions with other individuals as well as firms. The emerging fully digitized and connected environment implies changes to the development, exploitation and management of personal IS. While particular scenarios (e.g. smart home, connected cars, social networks) have received some attention in different fields, this workshop seeks to gather these fragmented views and bring together researchers interested in the impact of digitization on individuals.

Research in this area is beneficial in two ways. First, understanding the implications, opportunities and threats of the digitization of individuals' private lives enables suppliers of digital technologies to form closer and stronger connections with their customers and to build services and devices that better match their expectations and improve their everyday lives. Second, this research can help to develop policies and practices that improve the usage and exploitation of digital technologies on a societal level. By encouraging a systematic focus on the individual, this workshop strives for a common understanding of the role of the individual and the challenges and opportunities owing to novel digital technologies.

Possible topics of submissions include, but are not limited to:

• Individual behavior in digital environments, such as
  • Choice making in digital environments
  • Individual behavior in social networks and the sharing economy
  • Individual communication and consumption patterns
  • Digital collaboration among individuals
• Positive and negative outcomes of digitization, such as
  • Effects of usage of digital devices and ubiquitous connectivity on individuals’ attitudes, behaviors and performance
  • Techno-overload and techno-stress
  • Privacy and IT-security issues for individuals’ private lives
  • The impact of quantification on the self
• Development, exploitation and management of personal IS
  • Development of solutions for individual use
  • Business models for personal IS solutions
  • Individual’s information system architectures and connected environments
  • Personal IS solutions in particular contexts (e.g. health IS, smart home)

References:

Baskerville, R. (2011): Individual information systems as a research arena, European Journal of Information Systems, 20, 251–254; doi:10.1057/ejis.2011.8
Matt, C., Trenz, M., Cheung, C. M. K., and Turel, O. (2019):. The Digitization of the Individual: Conceptual Foundations and Opportunities for Research, Electronic Markets, 10.1007/s12525-019-00348-9