
Daniel SchlagweinThe University of Sydney · Discipline of Business Information Systems
Daniel Schlagwein
PhD
About
84
Publications
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Introduction
Professor at The University of Sydney.
Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Information Technology.
My research is on digital working and organizing, with a emphasis on digital nomadism. Additionally, I write about the philosophy of science and qualitative research methods.
Additional affiliations
Education
October 2008 - June 2012
University of Cologne
Field of study
- Information Systems
Publications
Publications (84)
Purpose
– The purpose of the paper is to better understand the relation between information technology (IT) affordances and donor motivations in charitable crowdfunding.
Design/methodology/approach
– This paper reports the findings from a comparative case study of two charitable crowdfunding campaigns.
Findings
– The affordances of crowdfunding p...
Crowdsourcing practices have generated much discussion on their ethics and fairness, yet these topics have received little scholarly investigation. Some have criticized crowdsourcing for worker exploitation and for undermining workplace regulations. Others have lauded crowdsourcing for enabling workers' autonomy and allowing disadvantaged people to...
What are the potential futures of knowledge work, given its transformation into almost exclusively digital work during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis? Our ongoing research program on digital nomadism informs a Hegelian dialectical analysis and an envisioning of the future(s) of knowledge work. We contrast the Factory paradigm of work (thesis), exempl...
Academic and public debate is continuing about whether digital nomadism, a new Internet-enabled phenomenon in which digital workers adopt a neo-nomadic global lifestyle, represents ‘real’ emancipation for knowledge workers—or if it is, instead, the opposite. Based on a field study of digital nomadism, and accepting a pluralist approach to emancipat...
Digital nomadism allows individuals to travel worldwide while using various forms of information technology (IT) to work digitally. Places like Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Canggu, Bali/Indonesia, have gained popularity among digital nomads in the past decade. In contributing to the economies of local communities, these nomads, with their unique chara...
While many organizations keep their proprietary resources – such as source code or intellectual property – close to themselves, organizations increasingly open resources to achieve anticipated competitive effects. In particular, this “strategic openness” can be applied by organizations in transforming industries – where certain hardware or software...
In line with the mission statements of many academic societies and universities, I view the ultimate purpose of academic research, which, unlike corporate R&D, is often publicly funded, as contributing to knowledge that benefits society at large. As such, there is, in my view, an inherent ethical obligation for research to contribute to practice, p...
The advent of ‘digital’ ways of working and organising is unequivocally transforming the very fabric of work, leading to an increasingly uncertain, unsettled, and fluid environment. Research has traditionally anchored worker identity in fixed and place-bound concepts. However, in the digital workplace, where work is more akin to a performance, unfo...
While the automotive industry is in the midst of fundamental transformations, Tesla has repeatedly applied strategic resource openness initiatives (e.g., open patents, open-source code, open infrastructure). Existing resource openness perspectives associate such initiatives with anticipated advantages regarding value appropriation or profitability...
Digital nomadism is a lifestyle that enables individuals to work while travelling by using digital information technologies (IT). Locations such as Chiang Mai, Thailand and Canggu, Bali/Indonesia, are popular destinations for digital nomads. Media articles and research studies indicate significant growth in digital nomadism. Governments worldwide a...
“Grand challenges” can provide an important orientation regarding whether research deals with societally relevant problems. Yet, many IS scholars have claimed that IS research is often dealing with issues that are of rather little relevance to societal grand challenges. In this “research-in-progress” study, we examine to which degree IS research is...
Information technologies (IT) give rise to new digital work practices that challenge institutionalized work arrangements. The literature has focused on how key actors legitimate digital work practices in traditional organizations. However, digital work entails sui generis new work forms that are emerging outside of traditional organizations. Unders...
Openness as organizational philosophy and theoretical concept
has continuously gained importance over the past decades. While
the adoption of open practices such as open-source development
or crowdsourcing is primarily academically observed in the 20th
and 21st century, organizational practices adopting or facilitating
openness have already been ap...
This space does not allow discussion of all the supposed ‘mis-characterisations’ of the natural sciences by IS researchers. However, I believe that considering context, history and the above distinctions help to better clarify whether they are, in fact, mis-characterisations at all (or simply value differences) and, if so, precisely of what and by...
Digital technologies are reconfiguring how work is organised and how digital workers are led. Management and leadership research have conventionally assumed that organisations require top-down, hierarchical management. However, leadership in digitally enabled forms of work is bound to differ in substantial ways from more traditional in-person setti...
The COVID-19 pandemic has created a need for rapid, population-wide digital contact tracing. One solution, Bluetooth-enabled digital proximity tracing using smartphones, promises to preserve individual privacy while helping to contain society-wide viral outbreaks. However, this digital solution works effectively only if adopted by the majority of t...
Several leading firms have used the Internet to open (for free and public use) some of their most valuable resources (e.g., code, patents, APIs). Examples of such ‘resource openness’ range from Facebook’s APIs, to Google’s Android source code, and Tesla’s electric car patents. Resource openness appears to contradict the tenets of conventional theor...
This research-in-progress examines the mobilities of digital work. We study digital nomadism as an exemplary case of extremely mobile forms of digital working. The recent "mobile turn" in the social sciences provides us with theoretical grounds to understand societies that are increasing defined by dynamic, global environments (e.g., freelance work...
This study analyses how Information Systems (IS) research is justified by authors. We assess how authors justify their research endeavors based on published IS research papers. We use justification theory [11], which along with later work, identifies seven different value systems (i.e., orders of worth) as co-existing in society, as a conceptual fo...
Openness is often deeply embedded in information technology (IT); it can be both a driver for and a result of new forms of dealing with information resources and can make major differences for businesses. Resource-level theories explain competitive advantages and differences in the performance of firms through their exclusive possession and use of...
Digital nomadism is a growing phenomenon wherein technology enables new forms of resistance against the norms of the market economy. However, digital nomads inevitably also comply with the market economy. In this paper, we synthesise literature about the complicating role of technology in the market economy throughout history, to develop a research...
This paper presents a literature review of critical information systems (IS) research. Specifically, it focuses on how IS researchers have responded to Myers and Klein’s (2011) call to consider critical approaches and theorists in addition Bourdieu, Foucault and Habermas. The review identifies and discusses three types of critical IS research “beyo...
Digital technologies have redefined many jobs and are challenging how people define themselves at work. Scholars have long argued that people's work identities are mainly derived from the organizational environment in which they are embedded. But advances in digital technologies, in combination with a global restructuration of labor markets, have l...
The "sharing economy" has recently emerged as a major global phenomenon in practice and is consequently an important research topic. What, precisely, is meant by this term, "sharing economy"? The literature to date offers many, often incomplete and conflicting definitions. This makes it difficult for researchers to lead a coherent discourse, to com...
The way we perform and organise work has undeniably changed and will continue to do so in the next decades. Work is becoming increasingly digital, independent, and performed outside of hierarchical organisations. These new forms of work, characterised by organisational independence, pose new challenges to management research and its theoretical con...
This paper presents a study of barriers to participation in the sharing economy. We study both, the barriers to participation as a provider, as well as the barriers to participation as a consumer in the sharing economy. We conducted semi-structured interviews and used grounded theory techniques to identify barriers that prevent participation in the...
Information technology (IT)-enabled, educational practices and open learning approaches are starting to transform traditional educational institutions. In particular, the use of digital platforms to engage both learners and educators in the process of knowledge co-creation and sharing is growing under the name of “crowdsourcing for education”. Alth...
High failure rates of information systems development (ISD) projects continue to trouble organizations and information systems practices. Such a state of affairs has been of great concern for the information systems discipline for decades, motivating information systems researchers to focus on and extensively study ISD project failure. However, the...
This research essay traces the history of digital nomadism, a form of highly mobile digital work that has emerged as an information technology (IT)-enabled global phenomenon with substantial implications for individuals, businesses and societies (Schlagwein 2017). While definite numbers are not available, my estimate, based on primary research, is...
This paper presents a literature review and conceptual development of digital nomadism. Digital nomadism is characterised by mobile workers indefinitely travelling between different locations while continually fulfilling their work obligations. The emerging literature on digital nomadism is fragmented and primarily focused on digital nomads' lifest...
High failure rates of information systems development (ISD) projects continue to trouble organizations and information systems practices. Such a state of affairs has been of great concern for the IS discipline for decades, motivating IS researchers to focus on and extensively study ISD projects failure. However, the increasing complexity and uncert...
This paper systematically reviews the state of the art of the literature and practices of enhancing learning and teaching through crowdsourcing. We refer to these emerging phenomena as "crowdsourcing for education" (CfE). Based on 51 relevant initiatives in practice, which we identified, we develop a definition and a taxonomy of CfE, and analysed C...
Over the past years, crowdsourcing has increasingly been used for the discovery of vulnerabilities in software. While some organizations have extensively used crowdsourced vulnerability discovery, other organizations have been very hesitant in embracing this method. In this paper, we report the results of a qualitative study that reveals organizati...
This research-in-progress paper reports on the preliminary findings of a study of barriers to participation in the sharing economy. We study both, the barriers to participation as a provider of a resource, as well as the barriers to participation as a consumer of a resource in the sharing economy. We conducted semi-structured interviews and used gr...
In the domain of digital work, a new phenomenon has emerged that is increasingly referred to as "digital nomadism". Digital nomadism involves mostly Western professionals using a range of information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) tools to work digitally over the Internet while travelling perpetually in typically exotic locations. Exi...
User-generated online comments reveal a dark side of human nature: they can be full of rage and other negative emotions. Indeed, prior literature confirms that online crowds tend to reinforce polarized opinions. This paper studies the temporal dynamics of negative emotions during uproar episodes in online communities. We investigated negative react...
Open strategy is an inclusive, transparent IT-enabled approach to organizational strategy used by several well-known organizations (e.g., Daimler, IBM, Wikimedia). Open strategy has received increased research attention; however, this emerging research literature is not well integrated. No comprehensive “state of the art” review of open strategy re...
The use of information technologies (IT) transforms “work”, with the corresponding discourse often using labels such as “the future of work” (Forman, King, & Lyytinen, 2014), “digital work” (Orlikowski & Scott, 2016) or “the changing nature of work” (this workshop). In this domain, a new and exciting phenomenon is emerging: “digital nomading”. This...
Over the past two decades, openness (e.g., 'open' innovation, 'open' education and 'open' strategy) has been of increasing interest for researchers and of increasing relevance to practitioners. Openness is often deeply embedded in information technology (IT), and can be both a driver for and a result of innovative IT. To clarify the concept of 'ope...
An increasing number of organisations (e.g., Daimler, IBM and Red Hat) have adopted what has been called “open strategy”: involving large groups of people in strategy making via information technology (IT). Our review of the recently emerged research stream on open strategy reveals inconsistencies in the use of explicit definitions and implicit con...
While the use of social IT-enabled "internal crowdsourcing" with employees in organizations has substantially increased in recent years (e.g., LEGO, IBM), internal crowdsourcing is not well understood from a theoretical point of view. In this research in progress, we build on the literature on new forms of organizing to improve our theoretical unde...
Open strategy is a transparent, inclusive and IT-enabled strategy practice. In this paper, we develop a theory on how strategy practices emerge and dissolve. This theory is based on our study and analysis of CarCo's open strategy community. This IT-enabled open strategy effort ran in the period from 2008 to 2015. We used the " Gioia methodology " t...
Traditional theories are reaching their limits in explaining new phenomena of IT-enabled work practices. Practice theory is considered a contemporary and promising theoretical lens to overcome such limitations. This paper presents intermediate results from a review of practice theory use in IS research. Our review shows that IS scholars have increa...
The use of IT-enabled crowdsourcing with employees in enterprises has increased substantially in recent years. This phenomenon, which we refer to as “internal crowdsourcing”, is distinct both from external crowdsourcing with end users and from hierarchy-based work with employees. A literature stream has emerged that corresponds with the increased r...
This paper presents the findings from a meta-analysis of the motivation of participants in crowdsourcing. We analysed quantitative primary studies of participation in crowdsourcing using meta-analytical statistical techniques. The findings of the meta-analysis are aggregated knowledge claims as far as they can be made based on the analysed studies...
In this paper, we examine the relation between social media use and the absorptive capacity of organisations. Over the past ten years, many organisations have systematically adopted social media. Trade press and consulting companies often claim that the systematic use of social media increases the performance of organisations. However, such claims...
Crowdsourcing marketplaces are increasingly becoming popular for the online transactions of services. On these marketplaces, profile information of providers, especially feedback left by previous customers, is the main information source for choice decisions of prospective customers. In the study reported in this paper, we examined the impacts of v...
This special theme of Electronic Markets focuses on research concerned with the use of social technologies and “2.0” principles in the interaction between organization (i.e., with “inter-organizational systems [IOS] 2.0"). This theme falls within the larger space of Enterprise 2.0 research, but focuses particular on inter-organizational use (betwee...
Open approaches to operational work in organizations (e.g., crowdsourcing and open source development) have been of particular interest to information systems (IS) researchers. Recently, organizations, including IBM, Red Hat and Wikimedia Foundation, have also embraced openness principles for strategic work (e.g., planning, forming and implementing...
Well-designed peer review and assessment tasks have been shown in several studies to increase students' engagement in courses and to help their ability to critique and evaluate work. These positive effects are primarily achieved through a "change of hats " , from writer to reviewer. Peer assessment by three to five students has been shown to be as...
Crowdsourcing has been used widely for the collection of stated preference data (e.g., responses in a survey) by researchers. However, the use of crowdsourcing for collection of revealed preference data (e.g., real-life data collected in natural experiments) is much less common. The study reported in this short (research-in-progress) paper shows ho...
Crowdfunding is an information technology (IT)-enabled, online model for raising funds for charity that can be used as an alternative to traditional, offline charity models (e.g., bake sales, doorknocking or society events). Over the past three years, more and more charity organizations have turned to crowdfunding in addition to, or instead of, tra...
The standards-based, multi-provider cloud IT sourcing model implemented by CBA enables applications to be frequently and rapidly shifted between cloud providers. The model moved CBA toward pay-as-you-go IT, cut some infrastructure provision and maintenance costs by 40%, and reduced time to market for new applications by several weeks. Implementing...
Extant organizational learning theory conceptualizes organizational learning as an internal, member-based process, sometimes supported by, yet often independent of, IT. Recently, however, several organizations have begun to involve non-members systematically in their learning by using crowdsourcing, a form of open innovation enabled by state-of-the...
This exploratory empirical research looks at the impact of societal culture on organizational social media. Data from 500 organizations regarding their external use of social media has been collected and analyzed. The findings indicate that societal culture is indeed a determinator of organizational social media.
Cloud computing is moving from the pre-adoption to the post-adoption phase with many cloud client organizations having established relationships with cloud providers. Hence, the most critical cloud computing question for information technology (IT) executives shifts from the issue of adopting cloud computing to the issue of managing existing relati...
While the concept of crowdsourcing has generated significant interest in the information systems (IS) research community, the application of crowdsourcing for research itself remains limited. This limitation in the adoption of crowdsourcing by researchers is partly explained by the lack of a crowdsourcing platform that is suitable for their needs....
Just as most people are not WEIRD, the assumption of industry uniformity may not be true in all cases. Several reviews showed that IS research does not take industry seriously enough. Neglecting industry context can have a severe effect on research results by underspecifying theory or by leading to general explanations that do not hold in other con...
IT and entrepreneurship are having a ‘love affair’. Rapid developments in ICT, especially the rise of the Internet, have enabled digitized business models and fostered a flourishing environment of innovation and disruption. However, many promising new ventures fail or run out of funding.
The business models concept has seen increasing attention fro...
There is a considerable amount of entrepreneurial activity in the information technology (IT) industry, especially in the Web. Many claim that the founders are the single most critical factor in startup success. The entrepreneurial self-efficacy theory and the jack-of-all-trades theory suggest that founders with diverse skills and broad experience...
The use of social media has significant impact on various areas of society. In the past few years, firms have systematically embraced social media as a major means of communication, collaboration, as well as exploration and exploitation of knowledge. In the practice literature, many claim that social media use increases the competitive advantage an...
Electronic service marketplaces (ESMs) have become major exchange platforms for the online outsourcing of different services – especially software development – to providers. Provider profiles on ESMs encompass extensive information regarding the activities and transactions of providers and they are a main source of information for customers. Such...
Over the last two decades, the cultural and cognitive artifacts that information and communication technologies circulate have become entangled with human and technical actors to the point of inseparability. These entanglements are primarily driven by the proliferation and wide adoption of online and mobile technologies. As a result, we discern the...
This research-in-progress paper evaluates the literature regarding "distress" in information systems (IS) development projects. An IS project is seen as distressed when experiencing critical problems that may ultimately result in project failure. This paper first discusses the notion of IS project distress in contrast to IS project failure and brie...
This research-in-progress study aims to propose – and later test – a theoretical model to review the impact of e-learning environments on student learning outcomes and graduate attributes. While the use of web-based technologies has increased rapidly in higher education, the different factors impacting on actual learning outcomes remain poorly unde...
This exploratory empirical research looks at the impact of societal culture on organizational social media. Data from 500 organizations regarding their external use of social media has been collected and analyzed. The findings indicate that societal culture is indeed a determinant of organizational social media.
In this research-in-progress, we review the literature on an emerging new type of information systems: social information systems. Social information systems are information systems based on social technologies and open collaboration. The paper provides categories defining social information systems and a framework for existing and future research...
In this research-in-progress paper, we present a two-step approach to measure the impact of cultural values on organizational social media adoption. We build on the GLOBE framework to measure societal culture and the Competing Values Framework to measure organizational culture. We define organizational social media adoption as the use of social net...
In our study we strive to develop a framework for the management of open value creation adoption. We conducted eighteen in-depth interviews with IS (information systems) executives and consultants responsible for open value creation projects. We combine the results of our software-supported qualitative analysis with insights from a broad range of e...
Open Value Creation extends Chesbrough's R&D concept of Open Innovation to all value creating processes within organizations. It encompasses all forms of organizational value creation that are enabled or enhanced by the inclusion of external knowledge. I am specifically interested in how organizations can benefit from end-consumer knowledge by open...
In the smartphone sector we are discerning a competition between Symbian, Apple, and Google for the dominating mobile platform. In the design of their mobile platforms and operating system these organizations use varying degrees of “openness” on different platform elements. We follow a design science approach to construct and apply a framework to b...
Currently, many organizations open parts of their information systems (IS) via the Internet to the public in order to co-create value with from end-consumer contributions. Yet, these practices of openness are still to be integrated into the existing strategic management theories (Chesbrough and Appleyard, 2007). We use a resource-based perspective...
Obwohl der Wertbegriff sowohl in der Praxis als auch in vielen wissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zur Anwendung kommt, ist die eigentliche Bedeutung nicht eindeutig (Heyde 1926, S. 7). Diese Unschärfe ist in der Anwendungsdomäne der IT ebenfalls zu erkennen (Krcmar 2005, S. 395). Es zeigt sich, dass sowohl in der Theorie als auch in der Praxis untersch...
In medieval times, experts in alchemy and other disciplines believed in secrecy being the key element of their scientific success and in hiding their results from curious eyes (paradigm of closedness). This principle changed with the advent of the European Renaissance around 1600, when the modern universities got established: Scientists published t...
Traditional resource-based theories explain competitive advantages and resulting rents of firm through their ability to protect valuable resources. We discuss deficiencies of these theories with regard to accounting for firm’s success through opening valuable resources to the public or getting involved in value creation processes using open resourc...