Kevin C. Desouza

Queensland University of Technology | QUT · School of Management

Public organisations, such as local governments, underpin the very social fabric of cities. The Metaverse presents itself as a tool with potential to revolutionise local governments’ interaction with citizens, promising multiple benefits but also posing risks. Despite the significance of this area for cities, it remains underexplored in state-of-th...

What happens to newly built resilience capabilities when the pandemic is over? Using the concept of exaptation, we investigate how supply chain organizations have repurposed supply chain resilience capabilities post-pandemic. In particular, we examine the degree of ambidexterity capabilities to identify the exaptation potential from the newly acqui...

Public institutions' chatbots enhance communication when they provide services. Despite their growing popularity and importance, chatbot adoption by government entities is a relatively understudied area of research. This deficiency is even more acute when examining the role of chatbots within local governments, which provide many of the services ci...

Metaverse is expected to be a trillion-dollar market within this decade and to change the nature of entrepreneurship. However, research on metaverse, its opportunities, and challenges, as well as the nature of entrepreneurship remains scarce. This study lays out a framework to explore metaverse-enabled entrepreneurship with its enablers for supply...

Most managers lack guidance on how to address uncertainties associated with deploying artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Drawing on our experiences with public sector projects, we describe patterns related to what AI deployment uncertainties are and strategies to tackle them.

Governments have long faced traditional bureaucratic problems and developed a set of mechanisms to handle them, but few studies have examined the government’s underlying characteristics in addressing such problems. Wicked problems – those with unclear definitions, causal complexity and conflicting goals – are increasingly emerging and are frequentl...

The impact of climate change on cities poses a growing global threat, which is exacerbated by the urban heat island (UHI) effect. The optimal distribution of vegetation and buildings in urban areas is critical to control the UHI effect and stabilize long-term temperature changes. In this article, we develop an optimization model to maximize revenue...

Reducing citizen dissatisfaction with public services is a challenge for good urban governance. Using the case of Public Opinion 110 by Nanjing police, this article finds a new method to proactively, accurately, and timely measure citizen satisfaction and improve inadequate services. The findings confirm the importance of efficient two-way communic...

Understanding robustness and how organizations can configure and adapt is fundamental for their survival. In this paper, we build on the general system theory to conceptualize the underlying mechanisms of organizational robustness. We propose a framework that defines the fundamental notions and typologies of robustness— instrumental, structural, an...

Public agencies have a strong interest in artificial intelligence (AI) systems. However, many public agencies lack tools and frameworks to articulate a viable business model and evaluate public value as they consider investing in AI systems. The business model canvas used extensively in the private sector offers us a foundation for designing a publ...

The recent release of several national artificial intelligence (AI) strategy plans is a certain harbinger of a more AI-centric future for many countries. At present, however, it is difficult to understand which of these plans merely reflect national pride and aspirations versus those that are currently being enacted. Guided by a screening approach...

Digital transformation (DT) is a process that aims to enable an entity’s value creation by triggering significant changes and effective�ness to its external market strategy and internal organization tactics by using digital technologies through combinations of information, computing, communication, and connectivity capabilities [1,2]. For a compre...

The forces of digital transformation have delivered significant benefits like sustainable development and economic growth in a range of early adopter industries such as retail and manufacturing but, despite these potential benefits, the resource and energy sectors have been relative latecomers to digitalization simply because they are frequently sl...

Megaprojects can deliver significant social and economic benefits. However, megaprojects are challenging to manage. They involve multiple stakeholders across various sectors and deliver novel and complex solutions that often require decision makers to deal with persisting tensions to balance conflicting demands. Hence, it is critical to pay attenti...

The ability to recover from disruptions is important for organizations and supply chains. Empirical data were used to investigate factors that affect supply chain recovery from disruptions, including collaboration, visibility, flexibility, analytical orientation, and supply chain risk management. A literature review was conducted to build an online...

The ability to recover from disruptions is important for organizations and supply chains. Empirical data were used to investigate factors that affect supply chain recovery from disruptions, including collaboration, visibility, flexibility, analytical orientation, and supply chain risk management. A literature review was conducted to build an online...

Digital transformation (DT) is the process of combining digital technologies with sound business models to generate great value for enterprises. DT intertwines with customer requirements, domain knowledge, and theoretical and empirical insights for value propagations. Studies of DT are growing rapidly and heterogeneously, covering the aspects of pr...

The COVID-19 pandemic, a worldwide health and humanitarian crisis, has created unique challenges for citizens, governments, and organizations alike. Business leaders ask ‘what is the new normal, post-pandemic?’ while industries become more complex and uncertain. Premises sit empty, employees work remotely, and customers possess less disposable inco...

Since 2015, several countries have shown significant interest in artificial intelligence (AI) and have released national-level AI strategic plans. These plans reflect the country’s rationale for embarking on AI. To identify what factors influence the AI approach of a country, this study employs the signaling theory to decode strategic national AI p...

Transformation into a prosperous smart city has become an aspiration for many local governments across the globe. Despite its growing importance, smart city transformation readiness is still an understudied area of research. In order to bridge this knowledge gap, this paper identifies the key factors affecting smart city transformation readiness in...

The complexity of emergencies continues to increase; thus, responding to them often stretches beyond the capabilities and capacities of any single public agency. Hence, collaboration among public agencies is to prepare, respond to, and recover from emergencies. However, collaboration among public agencies seldom takes place in an effective or effic...

Chatbots are being used in an increasingly wide range of public services. Chatbots present several benefits for public service delivery (e.g. cost efficiency for public organizations and better service accessibility for service applicants). However, obtaining effective service outcomes from a chatbot-mediated service delivery requires designing a s...

Today, information systems are regularly weaponized for political disruption. This threat now encompasses electoral processes, given their increasing dependence on information systems both directly and indirectly. The chapter elaborates on a framing devise—ALERT (the Actors, Levers, Effects, and Response Taxonomy)—to study how information systems c...

Evidence of election interference by foreign states or their proxies has become a regular feature of national elections and is likely to get worse in the near future. Information and communication technologies afford those who would interfere with new tools that can operate in ways previously unimaginable: Twitter bots, Facebook advertisements, clo...

Advanced persistent threat (APT) is widely acknowledged to be the most sophisticated and potent class of security threat. APT refers to knowledgeable human attackers that are organized, highly sophisticated and motivated to achieve their objectives against a targeted organization(s) over a prolonged period. Strategically-motivated APTs or S-APTs ar...

Policy and technology responses to increased temperatures in urban heat islands (UHIs) are discussed in a variety of research; however, their interaction is overlooked and understudied. This is an important oversight because policy and technology are often developed in isolation of each other and not in conjunction. Therefore, they have limited syn...

The urbanization problems we face may be alleviated using innovative digital technology. However, employing these technologies entails the risk of creating new urban problems and/or intensifying the old ones instead of alleviating them. Hence, in a world with immense technological opportunities and at the same time enormous urbanization challenges,...

Cognitive Computing Systems (CCSs) are increasing in prominence in the public sector. This paper develops a framework drawing on public value and information technology service management literature to guide the management of CCSs in the public sector. We draw on academic literature, gray literature, legislation and government reports, and examples...

Organized, sophisticated and persistent cyber-threat-actors pose a significant challenge to large, high-value organizations. They are capable of disrupting and destroying cyber infrastructures, denying organizations access to IT services, and stealing sensitive information including intellectual property, trade secrets and customer data. Past resea...

As the sophistication of artificial intelligence (AI) systems develops and AI becomes a key element of organizational strategy across a wide spectrum of industries, new demands are being placed on senior leaders. To understand the growing challenges leaders will face in the age of AI, we conducted interviews with 33 senior leaders in several countr...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a powerful technology with an increasing popularity and applications in areas ranging from marketing to banking and finance, from agriculture to healthcare and security, from space exploration to robotics and transport, and from chatbots to artificial creativity and manufacturing. Although many of these areas closely...

In this paper, we use a design science approach to develop a mobile app for lung cancer patients that facilitates their interactions with their clinicians, manages and reports on their health status, and provides them access to medical information/education. This paper contributes to the information systems literature by demonstrating the value of...

Little is known about how organizations leverage business analytics (BA) to develop, process, and exploit analytical information in cybersecurity incident response (CSIR). Drawing on information processing theory (IPT), we conducted a field study using a multiple case study design to answer the following research question: How do organizations expl...

Chatbots — computer programs designed to interactively engage with users, replicating humanlike conversational capabilities during service encounters — have been increasingly deployed across a wide range of Internet-based public services. While chatbots provide several advantages (e.g., improved user experience with reduced waiting times to service...

Records management in the public sector is integral for delivering public good. However, several institutional challenges inhibit the required implementation of innovative and information‐centric tools to transform records management in response to the challenges of digitization and to capitalize on new opportunities in the digital economy. In this...

In this paper, we examine the understudied issue of the pathways to smart cities. While the extant literature on smart cities offers several insights into what smart cities are, with a few notable exceptions, it has less to say about how they come to be. With this latter question in mind, we identify three pathways to smart cities: (1) a greenfield...

Nations have recognized the transformational potential of artificial intelligence (AI). Advances in AI will impact all facets of society. A spate of recently released national strategic AI plans provides valuable insights into how nations are considering their future trajectories These strategic plans offer a rich source of evidence to understand n...

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has started to manifest itself at an unprecedented pace. With highly sophisticated capabilities, AI has the potential to dramatically change our cities and societies. Despite its growing importance, the urban and social implications of AI are still an understudied area. In order to contribute to the ong...

Artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the most disruptive technologies of our time. Interest in the use of AI for urban innovation continues to grow. Particularly, the rise of smart cities—urban locations that are enabled by community, technology, and policy to deliver productivity, innovation, livability, wellbeing, sustainability, accessibility,...

Many organisations jumped on the bandwagon and implemented conversational agents (CAs) as a new communication channel. Customers benefit from shorter resolution times, ubiquitous availability, and consistent and compliant responses. However, despite the hype around CAs and the various benefits for customers, we know little about the effects o...

Artificial intelligence applications in cognitive computing systems can be found in organizations across every market, including chatbots that help customers navigate websites, predictive analytics systems used for fraud detection, and augmented decision-support systems for knowledge workers. In this article, we share reflections and insights from...

Digital assets of organizations are under constant threat from a wide assortment of nefarious actors. When threats materialize, the consequences can be significant. Most large organizations invest in a dedicated information security management (ISM) function to ensure that digital assets are protected. The ISM function conducts risk assessments, de...

Information systems continue to be used by actors who want to undermine public institutions and disrupt political systems. In recent times, actors have engaged in acts of information warfare ranging from attempts to compromising voting systems, to spreading false propaganda and even direct attacks on public infrastructure via information systems. I...

Both citizens and public servants have both voluntary and mandatory interactions with government through technology and these interactions range from unstructured to highly structured based on the technology or business processes implemented. Using data on the 50 U.S. states, we develop taxonomies of IT-enabled innovation along two dimensions – vol...

Advanced persistent threat (APT) is widely acknowledged to be the most sophisticated and potent class of security threat. APT refers to knowledgeable human attackers that are organized, highly sophisticated and motivated to achieve their objectives against a targeted organization(s) over a prolonged period. Strategically-motivated APTs or S-APTs ar...

Many organizations and industries are undergoing a significant transformation due to digital technologies. In our research, we study digital business model innovation in relation to Professional Services Firms (PSFs). In this conceptual paper, we contrast the traditional, human-centered, knowledge-intensive business model of PSFs with the new, comp...

The broad expansion of digital collaboration tools has led to the emergence of novel modes of collaboration, especially in the field of new technology development. However, the relationship between the architecture of a technology thus developed, on the one hand, and the structure of the underpinning collaboration, on the other, remains enigmatic....

Illegal dumping is an increasingly costly problem with profoundly negative consequences for the livability and sustainability of our communities. The problem of illegal dumping is particularly acute in the developing world. While the literature is rich in descriptive studies on illegal dumping, few studies leverage large-scale spatial-temporal data...

BACKGROUND Mobile technologies are increasingly being used to manage chronic diseases, including cancer, with the promise of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of care. Among the myriad of mobile technologies in healthcare, we have seen an explosion of mobile apps. The rapid increase in digital health apps is not paralleled by a similar tre...

Background: Mobile technologies are increasingly being used to manage chronic diseases, including cancer, with the promise of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of care. Among the myriad of mobile technologies in health care, we have seen an explosion of mobile apps. The rapid increase in digital health apps is not paralleled by a similar...

Situation faced: This case examines how the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) executed its information technology (IT) modernization effort. In 2013, the FCC was spending about 80% of its IT budget on maintaining its legacy systems. Further, the FCC had experienced constant changes in top leadership that resulted in several fragmented IT...

With the continuous rise of global urbanization, city planners and policymakers are increasingly concerned with urban heat islands (UHI), which are metropolitan areas that are significantly warmer than their surrounding rural areas. We address the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 11 “Sustainable Cities and Communities,” and we design an...

Mega-scale information technology (IT) projects in the public sector are significant undertakings operating within an ecosystem of stakeholders, resources, and constraints. The track record of these projects is abysmal. Employing an ecosystems lens, we study three failed mega-scale public sector IT projects: the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation...

Cities, like any complex adaptive systems, may become increasingly fragile if not properly managed. To date, the literature has focused primarily on the examination of cities within fragile countries. This has resulted in a dearth of studies that have looked at how developed (or even advanced) cities that operate in relatively stable countries and/...

Cognitive computing systems (CCSs) are debuting in a variety of fields and, in many of those deployments, the outcomes have exceeded expectations, causing interest in CCSs to spike. At the same time, there have also been spectacular failures. Most often, these failures are due to organizations underappreciating the differences inherent in dev...

Social media platforms are valuable tools for political campaigns. In this study, we analyze a dataset representing over 22 thousand Facebook posts by candidates and over 48 million comments to understand the nature of online discourse. Specifically, we study the interaction between political candidates and the public during the 2016 presidential e...

Les projets de technologies de l'information (TI) à grande échelle dans le secteur public sont des entreprises importantes qui opèrent dans un écosystème d'intervenants, de ressources et de contraintes. En utilisant le concept d'écosystème, ce projet de recherche étudie trois projets TI à grande échelle dans le secteur public qui ont échoué: le U.S...

Cities around the world are investing significant resources toward making themselves smarter. In most cases, investments focus on leveraging data through emerging technologies that enable more real-time, automated, predictive, and intelligent decision-making by agents (humans) and objects (devices) within the city. Increasing the connectivity betwe...

2016 Presidential Campaigns on Facebook

2016 Presidential Campaigns on Facebook

2016 U.S. Presidential Campaigns on Facebook

In the public sector, the strategic quest for IT-based innovation often starts by hiring a successful private sector CIO and hoping his or her prior experience will transfer. However this often ignores the existence and influence of other entities and IT governance structures that form the innovation ecosystem. Applying the legal view of agency the...

We have more data everbefore no all kinds of thing planners care about ranging from fixed objects such as building to dynamic activites such as driving behavior and at all levels of granularity from cities to individuals and everything in between.in addition .we have unprecedented access to data in real time which gives us new capacities to monitor...

In the private sector, research on information technology (IT) governance has frequently applied the classical view of agency theory and focused on the controlling role played by the board of directors in constraining a potentially opportunistic manager/agent. However, in the public sector, the board of directors does not exist and there may be les...

Social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook and Twitter, are important spaces for political engagement. SNS have become common elements in political participation, campaigns, and elections. However, little is known about the dynamics between candidate posts and commentator sentiment in response to those posts on SNS. This study enriches computa...