Juliette Fronty, IUT Toulouse 3

Christelle Havard, BSB Education

Work in organizations is experiencing numerous changes and is questioned by several challenges. The integration of ecological issues in productive and organizational choices, along with the development of digital technologies and artificial intelligence, is modifying the nature of work performed, its modalities, and the relationships that workers develop with each other and with various organizational stakeholders such as managers, clients, and suppliers. The rise of digital platforms is also changing the relationship to work and the nature of services provided by workers, who become to some extent independent. The growing diversity of worker profiles and expectations, combined with increasing aspiration for remote work, complexifies work situations and disrupts team functioning and managerial relationships.

These challenges put tension on work and on the various forms of social dialogue existing in organizations: institutionalized social dialogue (formal and informal) involving management and employee representatives in instances and negotiation spaces, as well as proximity social dialogue occurring between workers, their direct managers, and employee representatives present in teams. New subjects must be addressed at both dialogue levels: the consequences of ecological and digital transition on work, such as remote work arrangements. New forms of collective representation are also emerging at organizational boundaries, challenging traditional social dialogue actors: neo-unions are emerging around ecological issues; non-unionized collectives represent digital platform workers. Direct participation spaces called professional dialogue by practitioners are created at team levels and question proximity social dialogue. These challenges therefore interrogate social dialogue through its actors (traditional actors like unions and new actors), its objects (work and its regulation), its spaces (infra-organizational and at organizational boundaries), and its modalities (mechanisms aiming to organize these different types and levels of dialogue).

In accordance with the editorial line of the journal @grh, this special issue can welcome theoretical or empirical contributions based on qualitative or quantitative methodologies. Contributions can be written in French or English and concern organizations in France or internationally.

Potential topics

• Effects of remote work on collective representation modalities, proximity social dialogue, and professional dialogue
• How networked or flattened organizational forms modify spaces and modalities of social dialogue on work
• Articulations between social dialogue and professional dialogue, between formal and informal social dialogue concerning work mutations
• Employee access to organizational governance, new forms of participation and voice, and dialogue about work
• Use of virtual tools and artificial intelligence, their effects on work, and dialogue by actors about these technologies
• Spaces where ecological transformation effects on work are discussed, actors involved, and the nature of ecological social dialogue
• Collective representation of independent workers and platform workers, conceptions of work they promote, and dialogue instances
• Digital transformation and artificial intelligence effects on work nature, modalities, and worker relationships
• Ecological transition challenges in productive and organizational choices
• Diversity of worker profiles and expectations, remote work aspirations, and impacts on team functioning and managerial relations
• New collective representation forms emerging at organizational boundaries challenging traditional social dialogue actors
• Direct participation spaces called professional dialogue created at team levels

Timeline

• June 1, 2024: Publication of call for contributions
• January 15, 2025: Paper submission deadline
• April 1, 2025: Feedback to authors
• June 1, 2025: Reception of revised article versions
• September 1, 2025: Final acceptance of selected articles
• December 1, 2025: Publication of special issue

Florence Laval, Université de Poitiers

Anass Mawadia, Université de Poitiers

Aurélie Dudézert, IMT-BS

Nathalie Mitev, University of Münster

This special issue focuses on the plasticity of working methods in the digital workplace, examining how organizations and individuals adapt their work practices in response to digital technologies and transformations. The issue explores the flexibility, malleability, and evolution of work methods as they are shaped by digital tools, platforms, and organizational contexts.

Potential topics

• Plasticity of working methods in digital environments
• Digital workplace practices and adaptability
• Evolution of work methods in response to digital transformation

Timeline

• February 3, 2024: Deadline for submitting an abstract to the workshop organized at the AIM Conference
• April 3, 2024: Response to the authors for participation in the workshop
• May 27, 2024: Preparatory workshop to support the authors and offer them constructive feedback in order to improve the articles before submission
• September 1, 2024: Deadline for submission of manuscripts for the special issue of the journal
• October 15, 2024: Response to the authors
• November 30, 2024: Deadline to submit the final version

Stefano Bresciani, University of Torino

Jawad Abbas, James Cook University

Fauzia Jabeen, Abu Dhabi University

In today's dynamic evolving technology landscape, firms face a transformative wave caused by technological advancements which are omnipresent, from automating manufacturing processes to leveraging big data analytics for strategic decisions. This development warrants entrepreneurial firms to develop digital capabilities strategically to navigate these changes, effectively positioning themselves for innovation and growth and enabling them to improve their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance.

This call for papers focuses on exploring the strategies employed by entrepreneurial firms in building digital capabilities to enhance their ESG performance, addressing challenges, and leveraging opportunities in sustainable business practices.

In an ever-changing technological milieu where technological proficiency is synonymous with competitive advantage, fostering digital capabilities becomes a survival necessity, empowering firms to orchestrate agility, resilience, and sustainable performance. The digital age has ushered in transformative opportunities and challenges, redefining the landscape for entrepreneurial firms striving to align with ethical, social, and environmental responsibilities.

Entrepreneurial ventures, characterized by innovation, agility, and risk-taking, are at the forefront of shaping the future of business. Their unique characteristics make them prime actors in navigating the complexities of integrating digital capabilities for improved ESG outcomes. Improving ESG performance is imperative for organizations, transcending mere compliance to embody a commitment to sustainable and ethical practices. This commitment holds profound implications for various stakeholders, ranging from shareholders to customers, suppliers, employees, and others.

Improved ESG performance mitigates risks associated with environmental impact and social responsibility, enhances corporate reputation, and attracts conscientious investors. Stakeholders increasingly scrutinize ESG metrics as a reflection of an organization's ethical standing and long-term viability. It fosters a symbiotic relationship, aligning corporate objectives with societal expectations and contributing to building a more responsible and resilient business ecosystem.

This Collection aims to unravel the intricate role of building digital capabilities in entrepreneurial firms' improved ESG performance. By exploring this intersection, we seek to understand how digital capabilities can contribute to a more environmentally and socially responsible entrepreneurial firm with a strong governance structure. We invite experimental, conceptual, theoretical, and empirical studies exploring the convergence of digital capabilities in shaping entrepreneurial firms' ESG performance, shed light on challenges, and explain solutions.

While the listed topics and questions are primary interests, we remain open to manuscripts that explain other complexities relevant to digital capabilities and ESG performance. We are keen to receive manuscripts that employ innovative methods and engage deeply with the prevailing dilemmas and dialogues in entrepreneurial research. Your insights and academic rigor will help broaden our collective comprehension of the complexities, challenges, and impacts surrounding building digital capabilities strategies and their implications for ESG performance.

Potential topics

• How do entrepreneurial ventures define and measure ESG performance in the digital era? And what critical digital capabilities contribute to their improved ESG performance?
• What challenges do entrepreneurial firms face in integrating digital solutions to enhance environmental sustainability? What could be the best practices for tackling those challenges?
• What are the possible learning mechanisms and knowledge-sharing processes within entrepreneurial ecosystems that could foster development of digital capabilities for ESG goals?
• What roles do leadership and organizational culture play in fostering digital capabilities for superior ESG performance in entrepreneurial firms?
• How can entrepreneurial firms effectively utilize digital technologies to measure and improve their environmental performance within ESG frameworks?
• How can digital capabilities be harnessed to address diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) challenges in entrepreneurial firms, contributing to improved social sustainability?
• How do digitalization efforts impact the governance structures of entrepreneurial firms in the context of sustainability? What actions could be taken to improve it?
• To what extent do regulatory frameworks influence the adoption of digital strategies for ESG compliance in entrepreneurial settings?
• How do digital technologies facilitate transparency and accountability in ESG reporting for entrepreneurial firms?
• How can entrepreneurial firms balance profitability goals with sustainable practices through digital transformations? Under this scenario, which opportunities and challenges could arise?
• What lessons can we learn from recent, real-world cases that showcase the impact of digital capabilities on ESG performance in different industries, particularly entrepreneurial firms, and how can new guidelines lead toward improved ESG performance?

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Submission deadline

Jasmina Berbegal-Mirabent, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya

Angelo Cavallo, Politecnico di Milano

Antje Fiedler, University of Auckland

Esteban Lafuente, Instituto Tecnológico de Costa Rica

The accelerated diffusion of digital technologies has redefined the strategic landscape for both private and public organizations—e.g., universities, hospitals, and local administrations—which are often exposed to similar constraints in terms of access to resources, agility, and strategic planning. This digital transformation has opened new avenues for innovation, performance improvement, and competitive positioning, yet the literature remains fragmented on how digitalization is conceptualized across functional areas and levels of analysis. While large organizations have traditionally led digitalization efforts thanks to their greater resource availability, entrepreneurial ventures, SMEs, and public service providers are increasingly embarking on the digitalization journey to survive, remain competitive, or grow.

The integration of digital technologies into organizational and individual practices goes beyond a mere technological adoption process, and constitutes a profound socio-technical transition that reconfigures the interplay between human capabilities, technological resources, and institutional arrangements. These transitions unfold through co-evolutionary dynamics in which human practices, organizational routines, and digitally-enabled capabilities influence one another over time. Instead of focusing on technology adoption patterns, understanding these dynamics requires examining how human-technology interactions and architectures develop, and how these configurations shape long-term technological trajectories and pathways of organizational transformation.

Despite their transformative potential, leveraging digital technologies also brings significant challenges. Digital technologies put to the test traditional managerial paradigms, requiring better alignment between firms' digitalization processes, strategic planning, and execution, and internal resource bases. For firms, digitalization can generate benefits in various dimensions (e.g., operational efficiency, innovation, and financial and non-financial outcomes), but technology adoption is also associated with risks of misalignment between technology and strategy, and exposure to cybersecurity threats. At the individual level, digitization and particular AI tools create new possibilities for automation, augmentation, and personalized learning, but simultaneously raise concerns about motivation, overreliance, and responsible use. Consequently, scholars have begun to unpack the complex relationship between digitalization and performance, suggesting that technological adoption must be contextualized within firms' strategic capabilities and operational models and individuals' motivations and expected outcomes.

Nevertheless, organizations face a 'digitalization paradox': while digitalization can unlock significant performance benefits—including innovation, knowledge spillovers, internationalization, and sustainability goals—its adoption process is fraught with resource constraints, knowledge gaps, and organizational inertia. Recent empirical evidence focused on SMEs emphasize the positive outcomes of digitalization, but only when firms possess the necessary internal capabilities, strategic orientation, digitally skilled workforce, and leadership and innovation capacities to effectively leverage digital technologies. These tensions underscore the need for a more nuanced understanding of how digital strategies are conceived, deployed, and leveraged across private and public organizations, where legacy processes, regulatory rigidity, and funding limitations often delay or complicate digital transformation.

Moreover, the 'dark side' of digitalization—such as technology-resource misfit, digital fatigue, or misalignment between strategy and technology adoption—remains underexplored. In this context, digitalization cannot be treated as a monolithic enabler, but rather as a contingent process shaped by organizational, technological, and environmental antecedents. Qualitative evidence suggests that when decision rights, data flows, and competencies are not redesigned in concert, technology-organization misalignments can erode anticipated performance gains despite greater data availability. Digitization, particularly AI, may also introduce additional complexity and shift the nature of uncertainty, requiring organizations to further adapt and reconfigure their decision-making processes. Whether digitalisation benefits incumbents or entrepreneurs remains unresolved, as emerging evidence points to asymmetric outcomes in which new technologies can both entrench existing power structures and catalyse entrepreneurial entry.

The challenge for researchers is to further scrutinize how organizations orchestrate digital tools and capabilities to enhance performance outcomes, and how various (organizational, technological, or contextual) variables condition these relationships. Researchers should adopt a critical perspective that allows for new insights on the outcomes of performance-enhancing strategic actions that rely on digital technologies in different economic settings.

This special issue encourages rigorous inquiry into the processes, mechanisms, and contingencies that underpin the adoption and impact of digital technologies in private firms and comparable service-oriented public institutions. One key area of interest concerns the organizational, technological, and institutional antecedents that drive organizations to engage in digital transformation. Despite growing awareness of the need to digitalize, firms and public institutions continue to exhibit heterogeneity in the strategic reconfiguration of their business models, knowledge assets, and innovation portfolios, leading to varied pathways of digitalization and performance outcomes. Contributions are invited that investigate the motivations, contextual pressures, and capability configurations that influence these digitalization pathways.

Another critical research area relates to the performance consequences of digitalization processes. While numerous studies have shown the potential of digital technologies to generate both financial and non-financial benefits, more research is needed to fully unveil the mechanisms through which such outcomes emerge in different organizational settings and for different units of analysis (e.g., at the firm, product, or team level). Studies are welcomed that assess how digitalization affects performance metrics—such as innovation capacity, internationalization, operational flexibility, market-related metrics, and environmental outcomes—particularly in light of the specific resource endowments that most organizations have to deal with. Contributions that examine how universities and other public service organizations manage their digital transformation journey—such as the adoption of hybrid learning platforms, e-administration, and AI-enabled service delivery—and how these transformations influence their specific outcomes (e.g., students' performance, service delivery, and operational restructuring) are also of interest. Research exploring how these changes affect the capacity of public institutions to contribute to regional innovation ecosystems and to support their stakeholders, such as SMEs, entrepreneurs, and larger organizations, is also welcomed.

Prospective contributors are encouraged to adopt novel theoretical lenses or robust empirical strategies to investigate how firms and public service institutions initiate, manage, and assess their digitalization efforts, and how such efforts interact with internal resources and external environments to influence their outcomes. In methodological terms, case-based, conceptual, and empirically based submissions are encouraged. Review articles (i.e., bibliometric studies, systematic reviews, or meta-analyses) will not be considered for publication. Authors are recommended to pay explicit attention to the managerial implications of their findings.

Potential topics

• What are the key organizational, technological, institutional, and market-related antecedents that influence SMEs' digitalization strategies? Are there differences between industries or economic contexts?
• What strategic choices underpin the digitally-induced actions of organizations? And, what prerequisites support such strategies at the organization and operational level?
• How do socio-technical system readiness factors—including technical infrastructure, organizational culture, workforce capabilities, and data governance maturity—interact to shape the adoption of digital technologies in different organizational contexts?
• How do ecosystem characteristics (e.g., governance structures, network density, public-sector involvement) shape the emergence of digitally enabled interactions among actors?
• How can digital technologies be integrated into firm operations to promote the development of value-adding strategies? What organizational resources, processes, and competencies support the integration of digital technologies in firm operations?
• For what strategic purposes (automation, augmentation, cybersecurity, or innovation) do firms integrate digital technologies in their routines and processes?
• How do digital literacy, ethical concerns, organizational culture, and managerial practices shape the adoption and usage of digital technologies?
• How do public service organizations with constrained resources plan, govern, and execute their digitalization processes?
• What lessons can be drawn regarding leadership, governance structures, and resource orchestration in public institutions? To what extent do their digital initiatives (e.g., e-administration, hybrid learning platforms, AI-enabled service delivery) generate spillover effects that foster innovation and digital readiness among regional SMEs?
• How do collaborations between public sector and industry influence the adoption and scaling of digital technologies? What governance models, knowledge-sharing mechanisms, or incentive structures enhance the co-creation of digital solutions and help firms develop stronger absorptive capacity? Are such partnerships more effective in certain sectors or regional ecosystems, and what are their long-term performance outcomes for both parties?
• How does a digitalization process influence individual-level outcomes (e.g., productivity, learning, creativity, and decision quality) and firm-level outcomes (e.g., innovation, internationalization, operational and team efficiency, and sustainability)?
• What mechanisms explain the heterogeneous outcomes resulting from digitally-enabled transformations across individuals, teams, and firms? Moreover, how do digital literacy, human-technology interactions, and strategic use of digital technologies shape these outcomes?
• Do organizations aligning their strategic competencies and digital technologies achieve superior competitive and performance outcomes?
• How do digital transformation processes reshape power between entrants and incumbents, and with what performance consequences?

Timeline

• February 28, 2026: Open for submissions
• January 31, 2027: Paper submission deadline
• April 30, 2027: First-round review decision to authors
• July 30, 2027: Revised manuscript due
• October 31, 2027: Second-round review decision to authors
• January 31, 2028: Final revised manuscript due
• April 30, 2028: Final author notification of acceptance

Jyoti Choudrie, University of Hertfordshire

Sherah Kurnia, The University of Melbourne

Gabrielle Peko, University of Auckland

David Sundaram, University of Auckland

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are driving profound transformations across organisational, economic, and societal contexts, reshaping value creation, structures, and processes. As technologies such as generative and agentic AI, blockchain, and the Internet of Things (IoT) continue to evolve, scholarly attention must increasingly move beyond initial adoption toward understanding how these technologies are integrated, adapted, and leveraged over time. While prior research has extensively examined technology adoption decisions, comparatively less attention has been paid to post-adoption dynamics, including continuance, adaptation, and routinization. Moreover, the realization of value from ICT and AI investments remains uneven and insufficiently understood, as adoption does not necessarily translate into organizational or societal benefits. These gaps highlight the need for deeper theoretical and empirical insights into how technologies generate sustained value and transformation.

At the same time, the widespread deployment of ICTs and AI introduces complex risks and tensions, including ethical concerns, digital inequality, cybersecurity threats, and unintended consequences. In parallel, emerging forms of human–AI interaction and digital platforms are reshaping work practices, decision-making, and socio-technical relationships in ways that require renewed scholarly attention.

This special issue seeks to advance cutting-edge research that moves beyond initial adoption to examine post-adoption phenomena, value realization, and transformation across individual, organizational, and societal levels. While this special issue emphasizes post-adoption and impact, we also welcome novel perspectives on early-stage adoption where they offer new theoretical insights or address emerging technologies and contexts.

We invite original contributions employing diverse methodological approaches, including empirical, theoretical, experimental, design science, and review-based research.

Potential topics

• Technology assimilation, routinization, and deep integration
• Post-adoption behaviors: continued use, discontinuance, and switching
• Value creation, capture, and measurement in ICT and AI use
• Cross-cultural and comparative post-adoption studies
• Changes to work practices, organizational structures, and decision-making
• ICT-enabled institutional and governance transformation
• Digital platforms, ecosystems, and network effects
• Public sector and societal impacts of sustained technology use
• Success and failure of digital transformation initiatives
• Algorithmic bias, transparency, and accountability
• Privacy, cybersecurity, and data governance challenges
• Overuse, misuse, and unintended consequences of ICTs and AI
• Environmental and societal externalities of digital technologies
• Regulation and governance of AI and digital technologies
• Organizational strategies for effective post-adoption management
• Public policy for sustainable and ethical technology use

Timeline

• July 15, 2026: Submission of abstract (up to 300 words)
• August 15, 2026: Notification of abstract acceptance
• December 4, 2026: Submission of full paper
• April 5, 2027: Notification of first-round reviews
• July 1, 2027: Revised manuscripts due
• October 29, 2027: Notification of second-round reviews
• November 30, 2027: Final versions due
• January 31, 2028: Expected final decision

Brian King, Texas A&M University

Babak Taheri, Texas A&M University

Danae Manika, Brunel University of London

Kyoung Jun Lee, Kyung Hee University

The aim of this special issue is to advance scholarly understanding of Responsible and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in tourism and hospitality, by assembling cutting-edge research, innovative methodologies, and critical reflections. As AI technologies become embedded in service delivery, marketing, operations, and consumer experience, transformative opportunities are accompanied by potential ethical challenges. Issues of fairness, accountability, transparency, and trust are particularly pressing as the sector adopts AI in pursuit of personalization, efficiency, and engagement. Responsible AI is linked with the concept of trustworthy AI, which reflects a stronger technological view and focuses on systems that are lawful, ethical, and robust throughout their lifecycle. Earlier research in tourism and hospitality has shown the need for interdisciplinary inquiry regarding the technical, managerial, legal, and societal dimensions of responsible AI adoption.

This special issue aims to provide a dedicated forum for interdisciplinary inquiry into the tensions and synergies that are evident between innovation, ethical responsibility, and human experience. It particularly encourages submissions that highlight the design, adoption, and governance of AI-enabled digital platforms, data-sharing ecosystems, and information infrastructures shaping tourism and hospitality. Papers may investigate the broader societal impacts of AI and topics such as bias and fairness in algorithmic decision-making, consumer trust in AI systems, sustainable and frugal AI applications, digital twins for experience innovation, and governance and regulatory frameworks and human-centered design. This builds on prior Electronic Markets contributions on responsible and trustworthy AI and extends them into the domain of tourism and hospitality. This special issue will foster dialogue across disciplines to highlight best practices as well as challenges in the design, deployment, and governance of responsible AI systems. Ultimately, it seeks to open up pathways that will ensure enhanced customer experiences through AI-driven innovation in tourism and hospitality, while upholding ethical, social, and environmental responsibility.

Electronic Markets is a Social Science Citation Index (SSCI)-listed journal in the area of information management and information systems. All papers should fit the journal scope. This special issue invites submissions that investigate the critical dynamics, challenges, and transformative potential of responsible and trustworthy AI in tourism and hospitality. We welcome studies that deploy quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods approaches, providing that they demonstrate methodological rigor and scholarly relevance. Suitable contributions may include conceptual and theoretical papers, empirical investigations, case-based analyses, position papers, and integrative reviews.

Potential topics

• Ethical AI frameworks in tourism and hospitality: fairness, accountability, transparency, and inclusivity.
• AI-driven consumer experiences: balancing personalization, convenience, and privacy.
• AI robustness and risk: testing booking, pricing, and chatbot vulnerabilities, modeling threats, and strengthening resilience.
• Trust, reliability and safety: building consumer trust, ensuring reliable performance, and managing risks.
• Auditing AI systems: ongoing evaluations in pursuit of fairness, accuracy, and compliance.
• Generative AI in marketing: pursuing responsibility in branding, engagement, and consumer journeys.
• Sociotechnical and cultural dimensions: cross-cultural and historical perspectives on AI adoption.
• AI, sustainability, and CSR: supporting or hindering responsible and sustainable practices in tourism and hospitality.
• Future directions: conceptual frameworks and policy challenges for responsible and trustworthy AI in service innovation and resilience.
• Social and labor impacts: the effects of adopting AI on employment, equity, and workforce well-being.
• Frugal AI and digital twins: cost-effective and resource-conscious applications for operations and guest experiences.
• Algorithmic transparency and rights: making AI decisions understandable and offering recourse for affected consumers.
• Dark side of AI: risks of manipulation, surveillance, over-automation, and addictive design.
• Corporate digital responsibility (CDR) in the age of AI within tourism and hospitality.
• AI on digital platforms: exploring recommender systems, marketplaces, and platform governance.
• Data ecosystems: sharing and leveraging user/usage data across digital travel and hospitality platforms.
• Trustworthy AI principles: ensuring AI systems in tourism and hospitality are lawful, ethical, and technically robust.
• Verification, validation, and explainability: designing AI that is interpretable and auditable for multiple stakeholders.
• Trustworthy AI and consumer journeys: balancing automation with transparency and user empowerment.

Timeline

• September 15, 2026: Submission deadline

Christian Bartelheimer, University of Göttingen

Daniel Beverungen, Paderborn University

Sara Hofmann, University of Agder

Lysanne Lessard, University of Ottawa

Digital transformation continues to reshape how organizations create, deliver, and capture value. At the same time, service has become a crucial lens for understanding contemporary information systems (IS) phenomena. Value is co-created across organizational boundaries, enacted through digital technologies, and embedded in networks, platforms, and ecosystems. The Topical Collection on Digital Transformation & Service at Electronic Markets seeks to advance theoretically grounded and relevant IS research at the intersection of digital transformation and service.

We invite submissions that foreground service and digital transformation as they are established, debated, and further developed within the IS discipline, and in particular in Electronic Markets. Submitted articles should demonstrate a clear engagement with core IS literature to identify a well-defined research gap that matters for practice and theory, and articulate a convincing contribution to recent IS conversations. We are particularly interested in papers that move beyond broad claims about the consequences of digital transformation and instead examine how information technology (IT) artifacts ought to be designed and how they can be applied to foster value co-creation.

A central expectation of this Topical Collection is that submissions 'white-box' the role of IT artifacts. We seek papers that explicate how IT artifacts shape and are shaped by the digital transformation of organizations, for instance by enabling or transforming customer relations, value propositions, and service exchange. Studies may focus on (smart) service systems or ecosystems at varied levels, including communities, organizations, inter-organizational arrangements, platforms, data spaces, and society. In contrast, we do not seek papers that treat information systems as 'black boxes' or limit their analysis to summative business implications without theorizing the underlying structures, mechanisms, and affordances of IT artifacts through which these implications emerge. Manuscripts presenting IT artifacts that use or expand large language models or other large-scale artificial intelligence technologies must also be unpacked and contextualized, and presented in a way that is theoretically anchored and generates contributions at the intersection of digital transformation, service, and information systems.

We invite contributions from various epistemological positions and methodological traditions common in the IS discipline. Suitable submissions may include (action) design science, conceptual papers, qualitative studies, including case studies and Delphi studies, quantitative research, including experiments, surveys, and data-driven studies, and mixed-methods work. Literature reviews are also welcome, provided that they deliver strong theoretical implications and develop a forward-looking research agenda that reaches considerably beyond reporting the current state of research.

We particularly encourage submissions that investigate the role of digital technologies in real-world service scenarios. Studies that focus on inter-organizational contexts such as service networks, digital platforms, data spaces, or business ecosystems are especially relevant, as they touch on core topics of Electronic Markets. Submissions may examine established organizations, start-ups, public-sector organizations, communities, or other actor constellations in which digital technologies enable, constrain, or transform service exchange and value co-creation.

Potential topics

• Digital transformation and service in information systems
• Design and application of IT artifacts to foster value co-creation
• Smart service systems and ecosystems at multiple levels (communities, organizations, inter-organizational arrangements, platforms, data spaces, and society)
• Customer relations, value propositions, and service exchange enabled by digital technologies
• Role of digital technologies in real-world service scenarios
• Inter-organizational contexts such as service networks, digital platforms, data spaces, and business ecosystems
• Digital transformation in established organizations, start-ups, public-sector organizations, and communities
• IT artifacts using or expanding large language models and other large-scale artificial intelligence technologies
• Generative AI and digital responsibility in service contexts

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Submission deadline

Cristina Mele, University of Naples Federico II

Francesco Polese, University of Salerno

Jim Spohrer, International Society of Service Innovation Professionals

Bård Tronvoll, Karlstad University

The digital transformation characterizing business and society has opened up a whole new world of possibilities. The vast amount of online information facilitates data access and gathering, trend analysis, prediction, and prescriptions, and supports informed decisions. On the one side, actors have been strengthened in their decision-making capacities thanks to the prompt and easy access to a wide range of sources such as online databases, academic journals, online communities, social media, and search engines. On the other side, the conceptualization of service and service research needs to adapt and adhere to the fact that companies, communities, businesses, and society are in an era of significant change due to artificial intelligence, augmented reality, intelligence augmentation, the internet of Things, blockchain solutions, industrial automation and servitization. In other words, technology can enable value co-creation in multiple directions, not always through market sustainable behaviors.

Markets can be interpreted as service ecosystems, a perspective that frames a deep understanding of value co-creation dynamics between actors, also between human and non-human actors. Diverse actors' knowledge, intentions, and awareness of institutional arrangements and emergent properties can give rise to market emergence, market multiplicity in terms of multiple perspectives, purposive actions to create, maintain and change institutional arrangements market shaping and, definitely, market viability. The spread and adoption of technological advances, thus, generates opportunities and innovations that continually challenge markets, stimulating unforeseen emerging situations and contexts and new service platforms for service research opening up numerous exciting research streams.

Potential topics

• Service research and digital transformation
• Human-machine interactions and robots in value co-creation
• Technologies as enablers of market emergence and transformation
• Technologies and market shaping and market viability
• Phygital customer journey and metaverses
• Service research in complex industry settings (e.g., Industry 4.0)
• Business models to manage networks and service systems
• Emergence and institutionalization in service eco-systems
• Application of service-dominant logic to networks and markets
• Advances in combining network theory and service science

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Submission deadline

India at the intersection of global commerce, technological capabilities, and cultural dynamics presents a unique context for strategic information systems research. This special issue seeks to explore how organizations in India are navigating rapid technological acceleration while maintaining distinct commercial practices and cultural values.

Timeline

• September 30, 2026: Full paper submission deadline

Timeline

• December 31, 2026: Full paper submission deadline

Timeline

• August 31, 2026: Submission deadline

Rosanna Fornasiero, CNR IEIIT

Luis M. Camarinha-Matos, NOVA University Lisbon

Xavier Boucher, Mines Saint-Étienne

Angel Ortiz, Universitat Politècnica de València

Hybrid Collaborative Networks (HCNs), involving human-AI collaboration, are emerging as central to value creation in digitally enabled, globally distributed and socio-technically managed ecosystems. Based on the complex interplay between humans and artificial intelligence, these networks combine very heterogeneous actors—such as organizations, individuals, intelligent systems, embodied AI, and platforms—interacting across physical, digital, and organizational boundaries. Understanding the dynamics of such networks is critical to ensure their design, management, resilience, adaptability and sustained performance in rapidly changing environments. Analysing and managing the dynamic nature of HCNs includes examining how hybrid collaborative structures emerge, evolve, adapt, and dissolve over time.

The dynamics of interactive performance and role distribution for such networks, but also the change of collaboration patterns over time, together with the managerial frameworks required to ensure adaptive governance of HCNs open strong scientific challenges, where technological added-value should be deeply associated with socio-human approaches.

The 26 years of scientific background developed by PRO-VE in designing and managing collaborative networks stands as the basis to design and manage the life cycle of hybrid human – AI collaborative networks. The very adaptative and changing nature of HCNs calls for a very open multidisciplinary science of collaborative networks, where engineering disciplines collaborate constantly with socio-human and managerial scientists. Beyond the complexity to ensure effective human-AI integration, scalability and evolution of AI systems or trust in hybrid collaboration, require defining innovative design methods and frameworks, adaptive governance and life-cycle management models.

PRO-VE 2026 is a forum for sharing and discussing current developments and experiences regarding the role of collaborative networks in the age of combined intelligence between humans and AI. Contributions to this special issue are selected from the papers submitted to the conference. A limited number of self-submission papers can be accepted for publication in this SI.

The SI aims to integrate multiple and diverse disciplines such as Engineering, Managerial and Socio-Human sciences: industrial and electrical engineering, computer science, manufacturing, organization science, logistics, management, and social sciences, among others.

Potential topics

• Digital platforms for HCNs
• Collaborative dynamics among human and AI teams
• Agile design and management of hybrid networks
• Design of AI teammates
• Knowledge life cycle in distributed cognitive systems
• Collaboration and coopetition in untrustworthy environments
• Life cycle of collaborative cognitive cyber-physical systems
• Combination of human expertise with AI systems
• Scalability and adaptability of HCNs
• Collective decision making, value creation and creativity
• Digital twins for HCNs
• Governance framework for HCNs
• Understanding and explainability of HCN decisions
• Advanced collaborative robotics
• Complex hybridization of collaboration – organizations, people, smart machines, intelligent systems
• Resilience & antifragility in HCNs
• Ethics, security, & trust in HCNs
• AI integration for logistics and transportation networks
• AI for collaborative risk and crisis management
• Society 5.0 and collaborative networks
• CN applications and case studies in multiple fields

Timeline

• March 31, 2027: Manuscript deadline

Varun Grover, University of Arkansas

Nik Rushdi Hassan, University of Minnesota Duluth

Tina Blegind Jensen, Copenhagen Business School

Paul Lowry, Virginia Tech

Kalle Lyytinen, Case Western Reserve University

Angsana Techatassanasoontorn, Auckland University of Technology

The pervasive and unprecedented digitization of organizational and human experience represents a major challenge to past and existing theorizing methods. Recent efforts emphasize that with the rise in complexity in this digitized world, we need to rethink our theories and create new theories to guide us. What is needed are new theories that connect new concepts to grasp the unprecedented and link them to existing concepts or other new concepts, that explain and answer why such phenomena are happening.

This special issue calls for native IS theories that explain the nexus between digital technology and social and organizational phenomena. Building theories is highly challenging, but essential to establish the field as a socially and intellectually influential discipline. Theory should not be restricted to causal mechanisms or viewed too inclusively, but rather take the form of scientific understanding and systematic explanation that contains logically interconnected sets of propositions, symbolic conjectures, and empirical generalizations, tied to the IS discourse.

To fulfill the criterion that theory be tied to IS discourse, the special issue seeks studies that focus on the uniqueness of phenomena, assumptions, boundary conditions, concepts, and logic to IS. Every theory proposed should be tied to an explicit why question about an IS phenomenon. Articles may apply one of two major approaches: either deeply engage with existing theory and demonstrate how these theories address or don't address unprecedented IS phenomena, or propose novel native IS theories that are different from established theories and explain why new theoretical positions are needed.

The special issue seeks articles that either deeply engage with existing theories or propose new native IS theories on unprecedented emergent IS phenomena. Researchers are encouraged to investigate emerging phenomena that are capturing the attention of society and in need of better explanations, such as digital technologies shaping public opinion, algorithmic amplification of social tendencies, threats to cybersecurity and privacy, deepfakes and synthetic newsrooms, ethical and legal implications from emerging technologies, disruption from artificial intelligence generative content, and societal impacts from misinformation and disinformation. There are also opportunities in areas such as energy informatics, green IS, and sustainability digital initiatives that can benefit from native IS theories.

Potential topics

• Digital strategy and technology-enabled business models
• IT-enabled fake news, misinformation, and disinformation
• Technology-infused hyperconnected society and social networks
• Disruptive technologies and their organizational impacts
• Surveillance capitalism and privacy concerns
• Big Data analytics and implications
• Social media effects and algorithmic amplification
• Generative artificial intelligence and AI-generated content
• Deepfakes and synthetic media
• Cybersecurity threats from technology-enabled organizations
• Ethical and legal implications of emerging technologies
• Energy informatics and green IS
• Sustainability digital initiatives
• Digital transformation and technological change
• Public opinion shaping through digital technologies

Timeline

• June 29, 2026: Deadline for Extended Abstracts
• December 1, 2027: Deadline for Paper submissions

Kieran Conboy, University of Galway

Sirkka L. Jarvenpaa, The University of Texas at Austin

Brian T. Pentland, Michigan State University

Efpraxia D. Zamani, Durham University

Technology has fundamentally transformed the way we experience time and temporality, having permeated all aspects of our lives. It influences the way we work, how we live, and aspects of our identity, by shifting the way we communicate with others, accelerating information flows and enabling constant connectivity. As technologies evolve and digital infrastructures increasingly shape organisational and societal life, questions of temporality—speed, duration, sequencing, rhythm, and timing—become central to how we design, adopt, use, and study Information Systems (IS).

While time is an inherently complex, multifaceted, subtle concept and is by nature socially embedded, it is often examined simplistically, adopting a clock-time perspective, with the focus being on speed and duration. Some disciplines such as Organisation Studies are making significant progress in understanding and theorising various aspects of temporal complexity and structuring. Yet, within the IS discipline, IS researchers are often quick to highlight the impact of information systems on the speed of organisational and social life, but can be slow to address the polymorphous, complex and nuanced nature of time in IS research. Despite a few notable exceptions, studies with a temporal dimension tend to address temporal complexity partially rather than comprehensively. Time remains theoretically elusive in contemporary studies of information systems, often excluded or included only as a 'hidden dimension'. IS literature on time and temporality emerges as fragmented and lacks the cumulative tradition and theoretical glue necessary. As the field matures, treating time as a central concept and construct is essential to theory development and progress.

This is particularly problematic in IS, given the centrality of time to many aspects of study in the field. Time, and more specifically speed, is often the raison d'etre of emerging technology, with promises of enabling real-time decision-making and implementation of action at unprecedented speed and scale. Data typically has a time value, where a data report five minutes before a meeting may be incredibly valuable, but one second after the meeting the value drops to zero. However, data can also increase in value over time as it is combined or new uses are found. Technology is usually developed under time pressure, with a rarely questioned assumption that organisations' use of technology must help them survive and thrive in the seemingly never-ending environment of dynamism and acceleration. IS researchers often use speed as a methodological proxy and even a synonym for IS value and success. However, technological speed and acceleration can undermine learning and collective creativity, and limit participation by those who are irreversibly impacted.

Temporality in information systems manifests across multiple temporal scales, ranging from moment-to-moment interactions to decades-long institutional transformations. The special issue encourages submissions that illuminate how digital technologies shape, mediate, or are embedded within temporal structures, rhythms, paths, and trajectories at any of these scales.

Across all temporal scales, the special issue especially welcomes work that advances theoretical and methodological discussions of time in Information Systems research. This includes analyses of flows, sequences, rhythms, tempos, trajectories, paths, and path nets, with more explicit attention to how temporal constructs are represented, theorised, and operationalised in IS scholarship.

The special issue also encourages contributions that link IS, temporality, and grand challenges such as climate change, pandemics, inequality, and social movements, which require multi-generational coordination, long-term data stewardship, and sustained digital infrastructures. Additionally, the special issue seeks cross-level insights into how temporal assumptions are embedded in IS and how they reshape experiences and outcomes.

The majority of empirical IS studies use time from a methodological perspective to merely strengthen causal claims. The special issue contends that the IS field is uniquely positioned to not just apply temporal techniques gleaned from other disciplines, but to inform and lead how the study of time and temporal complexity can be conducted. IS researchers can now analyse vast amounts of trace data on an unprecedented scale and engage in computationally intensive theory construction, with many emerging techniques that could be used or adapted for studying the complexities and nuances of time and technology.

The special issue envisions providing a deeper understanding of time to clarify and enhance knowledge that can explain phenomena important to IS. While contributions from other disciplines are welcome, papers where the IS artefact is foregrounded, being the central focus of the paper, are prioritised. The special issue welcomes empirical and conceptual contributions, all methodological approaches and paradigms, and studies at different levels of analysis. The journal values contrarian papers that challenge conventional assumptions, theories, and methods.

Potential topics

• How digital interfaces, notifications, and data streams reconfigure everyday temporal experience, including attention, interruption, multitasking, and asynchronous collaboration
• How people make sense of their digital pasts through data archives or online traces, and how they anticipate algorithmic or digitally mediated futures
• How workflow systems, dashboards, collaboration platforms, enterprise analytics, or predictive tools recalibrate shared temporal expectations and influence coordination
• How temporal orientations embedded in tools or analytics shape decision processes, innovation, or strategic flexibility
• Digital artefacts' temporal properties—update cycles, data retention logics, algorithmic refresh rates, and security time horizons—and how they interact with user and organizational temporal practices
• How data governance, privacy regimes, or AI systems handle conflicting temporal demands
• Temporal sensemaking challenges in artefact-centred networks, decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs), or other digitally constituted arrangements
• Why certain digital transformations accelerate rapidly while others evolve slowly and unevenly
• How digital standards, platforms, and protocols sediment, diffuse, or become institutionalised over time
• How temporal imaginaries, time horizons, or long-term digital trajectories shape fields, industries, and societies
• Theoretical and methodological discussions of time in IS research, including analyses of flows, sequences, rhythms, tempos, trajectories, paths, and path nets
• Explicit attention to how temporal constructs are represented, theorised, and operationalised in IS scholarship
• Linking IS, temporality, and grand challenges such as climate change, pandemics, inequality, and social movements
• Cross-level insights into how temporal assumptions are embedded in IS and how they reshape experiences and outcomes
• Algorithmic schedules, design and development methods such as design science, agile, continuous development and flow, and real-time vs. asynchronous communication
• How temporal assumptions align or collide with individual or cultural constructions of time
• Methodological papers and techniques for studying time and temporal complexity in IS research

Timeline

• November 1, 2026: Initial paper submission deadline
• February 1, 2027: First round authors notification
• April 15, 2027: Invited revisions deadline
• July 15, 2027: Second round authors notification
• September 30, 2027: Final revision deadline

Associate editors

• Jeremy Aroles, University of York
• Reza M. Baygi, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
• Catriona Burke, University of Limerick
• Omar El Sawy, University of Southern California
• Anne-Laure Fayard, NOVA School of Business and Economics
• Thomas Grisold, Vienna University of Economics and Business
• Amir Haj-Bolouri, University West
• Susan Hilbolling, Aarhus University
• Robin Holt, University of Bristol
• Astri Moksnes Barbala, SINTEF
• Rohit Nishant, Queen's University
• Mahya Ostovar, University of Galway
• Omid Omidvar, Warwick Business School
• Henri Pirkkalainen, Tampere University
• Frantz Rowe, University of Nantes
• Markus Salo, University of Jyväskylä
• Yingqin Zheng, University of Essex
• Aljona Zorina, NEOMA

Sanjay Singh, University of Dundee

Sateesh Shet, Northumbria University

Tanya Bondarouk, The University of Twente

Paresha Sinha, University of Waikato

James Duggan, Cork University Business School

The acceleration of digital transformation across industries has reshaped the nature of work and the workforce. In this evolving landscape, a new kind of employee has emerged, one that is digitally fluent, technology-enabled, and increasingly reliant on digital tools to perform, collaborate, and innovate. This digitally-savvy workforce brings with it a unique set of expectations, behaviors, and capabilities that are fundamentally altering traditional models of Human Resource Management.

As organizations navigate this shift, HRM must move beyond conventional practices to align with the realities of a workforce deeply embedded in digital ecosystems. The integration of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, virtual collaboration platforms, and HR analytics is not only transforming operational HR functions but also reshaping strategic priorities around talent acquisition, workforce planning, performance management, employee engagement, and learning and development.

The significance of this transformation extends beyond technology adoption, requiring the need for redefining work design, leadership, culture, and employee experience in a digital-first world. The increasing demand for flexibility, autonomy, continuous learning, and meaningful digital interactions places HRM at the centre of driving organizational agility and future-readiness. Questions around digital equity, ethics in algorithmic decision-making, surveillance, digital fatigue, and the digital divide call for exploration and evidence-based solutions.

The rise of the digitally-savvy workforce marks a structural inflection point in the evolution of work and HRM. The digitally-savvy workforce encompasses a broader, cross-generational cohort of employees who have acquired advanced digital competencies through education, experience, or continuous upskilling. This workforce does not merely use technology, they strategically engage with digital tools, platforms, and data as core enablers of their work, collaboration, and innovation.

There is a critical gap in research concerning the mental health and well-being challenges unique to digitally-savvy employees in the workplace, such as digital burnout, blurred boundaries between work and life, and stress from social media. Furthermore, HRM has long been concerned with employee well-being, yet digitally-savvy employees' constant connectivity and digital-centric lifestyles introduce new risks that are underexplored in the literature.

For HRM, this presents both transformative potential and considerable complexity. On one hand, digitally-savvy employees are key assets in driving automation, agility, and innovation. On the other hand, their expectations for real-time feedback, flexible work structures, digital autonomy, and continuous learning challenge the static assumptions that underpin many legacy HRM practices. There is an increasing mismatch between the agility of the workforce and the inertia of HR systems still grounded in procedural and administrative logic.

While there is growing interest in digital transformation, there remains a critical gap in our understanding of how HRM can effectively align with and support a digital-savvy workforce. Issues such as workforce planning for digital roles, work design for tech-mediated environments, AI-driven performance management, and ethical concerns around digital monitoring remain under-theorized. Equally, the psychological impacts, such as techno-overload, digital presenteeism, and the erosion of work-life boundaries, are insufficiently addressed within the current HRM discourse.

This Special Issue seeks to explore these challenges and opportunities by reframing the HRM research agenda through the lens of digitally-savvy workforce readiness and transformation. It calls for contributions that examine how HRM can evolve to strategically manage and empower a digitally capable workforce while balancing human-centric values and organizational imperatives. Furthermore, it seeks to investigate the technological expectations that digitally-savvy workforces bring to the workplace, including their demand for flexibility, autonomy, digital communication, and purpose-driven work.

This Special Issue seeks to advance new theoretical contributions that reflect the shifting realities of HRM in the context of a digitally-savvy workforce. Contributions should foreground digital capabilities as core constructs in HRM theory and examine how the integration of digital technologies into daily work life reshapes the employee experience. Technological affordance theory, digital transformation theory, HRM systems theory, social exchange theory, ecological systems theory, and the job demands-resources model offer valuable frameworks for examining these issues.

A fundamental transformation is underway in how talent is managed across borders, driven by the growing presence of a digitally-savvy workforce. Across diverse international contexts, digitally savvy employees are challenging long-established HRM systems through expectations shaped by AI-enhanced workflows, platform-based collaboration, hybrid work models, and a heightened demand for flexibility, autonomy, and continuous development. These expectations are filtered through local institutional logics, labor market structures, and cultural norms, creating varying patterns of digital adoption, employee engagement, and HRM innovation around the world.

This call for papers seeks to illuminate how multinational organizations, international institutions, and global HR functions are reevaluating leadership, organizational culture, performance systems, learning pathways, and inclusion practices in response to the evolving digital capabilities of their workforce. As the digitalization of work becomes increasingly global in scale but locally embedded in practice, the need for comparative, cross-national HRM research becomes critical.

Potential topics

• Strategic workforce planning for the digital era, including forecasting digital talent needs, digital upskilling frameworks, and bridging digital skills gaps
• Work design for digitally enabled workforce, encompassing job roles in technology-mediated environments, digital flexibility, autonomy, work-life integration, and remote work impacts
• Emerging digital technologies and HRM transformation, including AI, blockchain, virtual reality, chatbots, intelligent automation, and HR digital twins
• Redefining talent acquisition for digitally-savvy workforce through social media recruitment, gamified assessments, AI in recruitment, and employer branding
• Performance management in tech-driven organizations, covering digital dashboards, algorithmic evaluation, surveillance, real-time feedback, and fairness implications
• Employee engagement and experience in digital workspaces, including digital platforms, AI-driven personalization, digital fatigue, and tech-enabled burnout
• Ethics, privacy, and surveillance in digital workplace, addressing algorithmic monitoring, employee autonomy, and ethical HR technology adoption
• Inclusion, equity, and accessibility in digital HR practices, focusing on digital exclusion reduction, neurodiverse talent support, and fair AI-driven decision-making

Timeline

• Invalid DateTime: Publication of Special Issue
• August 1, 2026: Manuscript submission window opens
• September 30, 2026: Manuscript submission deadline

Lydia Bals, Mainz University of Applied Sciences

Virpi Turkulainen, Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences

Organization design has been proposed to be contingent upon a broad spectrum of external and internal factors since the 1960s. Recent developments in technologies and geopolitical landscape offer a timely and important research area. Novel perspectives are needed on how processes and organization designs in operations and supply chain management (OSCM) are changing. Both sound theoretical base and appropriate methodology should drive novel perspectives on how OSCM processes and organization designs are evolving. Novel insights can pertain to the domain, the variables, variable relationships as well as predicted outcomes.

The acceleration of digitalization and new technologies has the potential to support better decision making by eliminating biases and allowing pooling of more information, yet it has increased the complexity of managing supply chains. There is now a need to share assets and information that were not considered appropriate to share before, and new types of alliances and agreements need to be created. From self-service procurement and autonomous buying to sourcing strategies and artificial intelligence utilization for data analytics, procurement departments are being digitized through new applications, smart platforms and pilot projects.

Geopolitics also increase the complexity of managing global supply chains. The global semiconductor market exemplifies this, with the majority of global semiconductor production concentrated in Taiwan, with microchips production reaching even over 90%. Recent shortages in electricity have forced factory closures globally in various sectors, making it evident that extreme global dependency on a very limited number of actors in today's geopolitical context poses severe consequences.

OSCM is at the crossroads: it can either embrace such disruptions proactively or react to them passively. New emerging technologies and changing geopolitical context force OSCM to reconsider how to adapt. Two main responses to the changes are management of the processes and organization design, aligning organizational considerations with the process landscape. Contingency theory and information processing theory are helpful theoretical underpinnings for research in this area. Contingency theory accounts for the relationship between organization design and internal or external factors such as size, strategy, and uncertainties in the task environment. Information processing theory proposes that an organization's design with its information processing capacity should fit the organization's need for information. These theories have been applied in the OSCM field to examine how different procurement organizational structures facilitate information processing capacity or how various factors affect production location decisions in high cost countries. The question remains whether these considerations hold true under the changed contextual conditions of our times and whether new variables need to update previous theoretical work.

In response to recent disruptions such as COVID-19 and the US-China trade war, companies have developed supply chain structural ambidexterity, referring to dual structures with separate roles. Work that proposes how disruptions are affecting strategic shifts in business models and subsequent adaptations to the organization design of OSCM functions would be relevant. This follows the idea that structure follows strategy. How to organize OSCM functions might need to change in the wake of new requirements; what might have been effective and efficient ways to manage and organize these functions traditionally might be less so in times of AI utilization, autonomous processes, current wars, and new trade barriers.

Potential topics

• OSCM processes: implications of emerging technologies and geopolitical disruptions on different aspects of OSCM processes, such as how absorptive capacity influences technology adoption, or how specific new technologies (e.g., regenerative AI, additive manufacturing, blockchain) or new regulations affect supply network dynamics
• OSCM organization design: incorporating technologies and geopolitics as contingency factors in models of organization design, managing division of tasks and coordination of work between IT and supply chain, operations, procurement and logistics functions, moving beyond human-centric organization designs toward designing systems composed of human and non-human knowledge workers, understanding how geopolitical disruptions affect organization design aspects on a global scale
• Technology-based decision-making: understanding factors affecting division of labor between humans and AI, coordinating work between technology and humans as decision-makers, integrating robot bosses into OSCM processes
• Competence development: identifying competences OSCM personnel need considering emerging technologies, understanding critical situations that OSCM professionals need to cope with

Timeline

• February 1, 2026: Closing date for abstract/proposal submission
• March 1, 2026: Opening date for manuscript submissions
• October 31, 2026: Closing date for manuscript submission

Jens Hogreve, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

Ilias Danatzis, King's Business School

Joy Field, Boston College

Kristina Lindsey Hall, Louisiana State University

Marah Blaurock, Catholic University of Eichstatt-Ingolstadt

The service-profit chain (SPC) is one of the most influential concepts in service research. Introduced by Heskett et al. (1994), the SPC emphasizes the significance of both internal and external service quality for a firm's long-term financial performance. It bridges service companies' internal and external environments by positing employee satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity as mediators between internal and external service quality, and customer satisfaction and loyalty as mediators between external service quality and financial outcomes. In doing so, the SPC links three domains: (a) internal marketing, encompassing internal service quality and employee attitudes and behaviors; (b) external marketing, reflecting external service quality and customer attitudes and behaviors; and (c) firm performance, including revenue growth and profitability. Over the past three decades, the SPC has gained considerable scholarly attention and continues to inspire organizations that place employees and customers at the center of their strategies.

Now is a particularly timely moment for the Journal of Service Management to devote a special issue to the SPC. Despite its widespread influence, recent developments have challenged its original assumptions, calling for both revision and reimagination. Three developments in particular highlight the need for renewed scholarly attention.

First, the digital transformation of service work, including the rise of service robots, automation, and artificial intelligence (AI), is profoundly reshaping the roles of service employees. These changes alter the meaning of internal service quality and affect how customers evaluate service encounters. SPC research must therefore account for the opportunities and unintended consequences of AI-driven transformations.

Second, employee and customer well-being have become central concerns in both academic scholarship and practical applications. Well-being increasingly influences transformative service research and may complement—or even substitute—the SPC's traditional satisfaction measures. Understanding whether well-being is a stronger predictor of loyalty and performance outcomes is a critical next step.

Third, external shocks and turbulent environments, from pandemics to economic crises, challenge the stability of SPC relationships. These shocks not only critically disrupt service provision but also have profound effects on customer-employee interactions. Service employees must quickly adapt to shifting processes, environments, and often enforce service rules that are not well received by customers, adding another layer of stress to their already challenging jobs. Disruptive events, therefore, raise questions about how resilient the SPC framework is and how firms can adapt internal and external marketing practices to maintain performance in uncertain times.

Taken together, these challenges provide an impetus to further develop and extend the SPC. This special issue aims to build on its rich legacy while critically assessing how it must evolve to remain relevant. By explicitly including practitioners' perspectives, the issue will not only illustrate how the SPC is lived in practice but also identify where its core links need to be rethought. We call for an interdisciplinary perspective, engaging scholars across marketing, management, operations, finance, and human resources to reflect, revise, and reimagine the SPC for the next generation of service research.

Potential topics

• How do service employees adapt to and engage with AI and automation, and impact SPC relationships? What roles do technostress, co-design opportunities, or AI functions play in shaping acceptance?
• How does AI reshape customer experiences and loyalty? Does it complement or substitute for human frontline interactions, and what unintended effects may emerge?
• What are the optimal levels of AI implementation within the SPC across contexts, and how do they vary by industry, leadership, or employee/customer loyalty levels?
• Does employee or customer well-being serve as a stronger predictor of loyalty and performance than traditional satisfaction measures?
• How do well-being and satisfaction interact, and what are their respective short-term versus long-term effects on firm performance?
• How do external shocks and turbulent environments moderate SPC relationships?
• How do service employees adapt to shifting processes, environments, and interaction demands during disruptive events, and how does this adaption affect key SPC links?
• How does enforcing service rules - especially when facing customer resistance or misbehavior - affect employee well-being, service quality, and the strength of SPC linkages?
• To what extent are SPC links universal versus context-sensitive (e.g., across industries, cultures, or service types)?
• What new methodological approaches (e.g., longitudinal, experimental, multi-source, big data) can uncover causal, non-linear, or feedback effects within the SPC?
• How do under-researched internal service marketing practices (e.g., workplace design, digital tools for customer service) influence employee satisfaction, loyalty, and productivity?
• Which HRM systems and practices are most effective in enhancing internal service quality, and how do they jointly shape employee and organizational outcomes?
• How do alternative work arrangements (e.g., gig, remote, hybrid) influence employee satisfaction and SPC outcomes?

Timeline

• January 7, 2026: Opening date for manuscripts submissions
• January 11, 2026: Closing date for manuscripts submission

Achieving net-zero targets poses significant challenges for economies, governments, and societies worldwide. Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are central actors in this transition, both as developers and adopters of renewable energy and low-carbon technologies. As primary boundary spanners, they manage global value chains and partnerships across diverse institutional contexts and consumer markets. MNEs increasingly navigate a complex landscape of incentives, sanctions, and regulatory barriers that vary by sector, technology platform, country, and region. Politically motivated disruptions—including shifting tariff and non-tariff barriers and uneven low-carbon policies—compound these challenges, placing premium value on managerial capabilities.

Two emerging developments motivate this Special Issue. First, digital technologies offer new potential to enhance firm-level capabilities for coordinating and adapting cross-border networks, while reshaping competitive dynamics between incumbents, startups, and scale-ups. Second, China's ascendancy as both innovator and regulator—particularly in new energy technologies—and its growing geopolitical influence demand renewed scholarly attention.

While MNEs' contributions to sustainable development goals have received growing research attention, significant gaps remain. Circular economy models require reverse logistics and integrated, cross-border collaboration, making their configuration highly dependent on regional policies, resource availability, and digital applications. Limited research examines how circular supply chains are configured globally or regionally, or what drives their development.

We are particularly interested in the microfoundations, routines, and recombinative capabilities underlying sustainability practices. We encourage international comparative studies examining how MNEs bridge institutional differences to establish circular business models and progress toward net-zero. Methodological innovation—including causal inference, longitudinal designs, and empirical approaches capturing complexity and measuring environmental outcomes—is also welcome.

Potential topics

• Multinational enterprises
• Sustainability
• Circular economy
• Global value chains
• Digitalization
• Geopolitics
• Institutions
• China
• Emerging industries
• How do MNEs navigate and shape the complex policy and stakeholder landscape accelerating net-zero goals?
• What roles do digital technologies play in advancing sustainability and circularity, and what new complexities do they introduce?
• How do governance differences and regulatory regimes affect firms, sectors, and stakeholders differently?
• Are international innovation races helpful or harmful, and to what extent are they regionally demarcated?
• Do MNEs customize practices locally or transfer superior practices across regions, and with what strategic implications?

Timeline

• January 7, 2026: Opening date for manuscripts submissions
• October 20, 2026: Closing date for manuscripts submission

As digital technologies increasingly transform industrial operations, integrating industrial management with information systems (IS/IT) research has become essential. Key domains such as supply chain resilience, digital innovation, and data-driven decision-making require methodological approaches that can address both technical complexity and organizational dynamics.

However, many existing studies still rely predominantly on either primary or secondary data, with relatively few exploring the benefits of strategically combining the two. Integrating primary data (e.g., surveys, interviews, experiments) with secondary data (e.g., ERP logs, platform analytics, archival datasets) enables deeper theory development by revealing both behavioral patterns and underlying mechanisms.

Mixed-methods purposefully integrate qualitative and quantitative data to provide both explanatory breadth and contextual depth—enabling researchers to explore "how" and "why" phenomena unfold. Multi-methods, which combine multiple techniques within the same paradigm, can improve robustness, triangulation, and construct validity. Both approaches are particularly valuable for studying evolving topics such as AI deployment, digital trust, platform governance, and organizational resilience.

Despite their promise, challenges persist: integration logic is often implicit, philosophical tensions may arise, and quality assessment frameworks are still emerging. Key areas remain underexplored, including how to align methodological choices with research aims, how to evaluate integration rigorously, and how to distinguish among mixed, multi, and hybrid methods in IS research.

This special issue aims to address these gaps by encouraging submissions that embrace methodological pluralism, combining primary and secondary data to produce practically relevant, empirically grounded, and theoretically robust contributions. By crossing methodological borders, we hope to foster innovative approaches that better reflect the complex realities of digital transformation in industrial systems.

Potential topics

• Mixed-/Multi-Method Designs in Digital Transformation and Process Innovation - Exploring methodological integration, trade-offs, and complementarities in examining technology-enabled changes in workflows, decision-making, and organizational processes.
• Integrated Analytical Approaches to Supply Chain Innovation and Resilience - Applying mixed-/multi-method strategies to investigate logistics transformation, disruption management, and sustainable operations in volatile environments.
• Human-AI Collaboration and Decision-Making Coevolution - Combining qualitative and quantitative methods to understand trust, cognition, and co-production dynamics in evolving human-AI systems.
• Social Media, Digital Marketing, and E-Commerce Ecosystem - Utilizing mixed-/multi-method approaches to study online engagement, influencer strategies, consumer behavior, and brand reputation in digital platforms.
• Sustainability and Green IS through Methodological Pluralism - Investigating environmental performance, circular economy practices, and sustainable innovation through integrated technical, organizational, and social lenses.
• Contextualized Adoption of Generative AI Technologies - Examining sector-specific adoption patterns, drivers, challenges, and impacts of GAI using comprehensive, multi-perspective research designs.
• Ethical, Educational, and Security Dimensions of AI - Addressing privacy, trust, risk, and AI literacy through mixed-/multi-method inquiries into responsible and secure use of AI in organizational and societal contexts.

Timeline

• April 2, 2026: Opening date for manuscript submissions
• September 30, 2026: Closing date for manuscript submissions

Contemporary organisations are increasingly operating under conditions of continuous transformation shaped by digital disruption, artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid work arrangements, sustainability transitions, and persistent workforce uncertainty. Unlike earlier planned and episodic approaches to organisational change, transformation today is experienced as ongoing, psychologically demanding, and open-ended, placing sustained pressure on employees, managers, and teams to adapt and remain engaged under conditions of deep uncertainty. At the same time, organisations are expected not only to transform effectively, but also to sustain employee wellbeing, resilience, inclusion, meaningful work, and healthy organisational functioning throughout prolonged change processes.

Recent scholarship has generated important insights into organisational transformation, digitalisation, and technological adaptation. However, transformation research continues to privilege structural, strategic, and technological dimensions of change over the lived psychological experiences of employees navigating continuous transformation. Emerging evidence increasingly points to the psychological consequences of ongoing transformation, including burnout, change fatigue, technostress, disengagement, identity disruption, declining trust, and the erosion of meaningful work in digitally intensive environments.

Simultaneously, growing attention is being directed towards the conditions that enable employees and organisations to sustain resilience, psychological safety, adaptive capacity, and collective thriving during prolonged uncertainty and change. This special issue seeks to advance more psychologically informed and human-centred understandings of organisational transformation. It aims to foreground employee experience, resilience, wellbeing, inclusion, and human sustainability as central concerns in contemporary transformation research.

The issue is particularly interested in how employees psychologically experience, interpret, sustain, resist, and adapt to transformation across diverse organisational contexts, including AI-enabled workplaces, hybrid work environments, sustainability-driven reform, and digitally intensive organisations. The special issue is also timely given the increasing societal and organisational importance of creating psychologically sustainable workplaces capable of supporting both organisational adaptation and employee wellbeing. In this regard, the issue aligns closely with contemporary debates surrounding healthy work environments, meaningful work, psychosocial safety, inclusion, and sustainable organisational development.

Associated with the British Academy of Management 2026 Annual Conference and its 40th anniversary theme, "Thriving Together: Impact, Innovation, and Inclusion in Business and Management," this special issue aims to contribute toward a forward-looking research agenda for understanding the psychological dynamics of organisational transformation in increasingly uncertain and rapidly changing workplaces.

Potential topics

• Employee resilience, wellbeing, and psychological adaptation during organisational transformation
• Change fatigue, burnout, technostress, and employee engagement in digitally intensive workplaces
• Human experiences of AI-enabled work and algorithmically mediated organisational environments
• Meaningful work, psychological safety, trust, and identity during continuous transformation
• Inclusion, diversity, belonging, and human sustainability in changing workplaces
• Leadership, resilience, and psychologically sustainable approaches to organisational transformation
• Hybrid work, digital transformation, and the future of employee experience
• Future-oriented theoretical and empirical perspectives on continuous organisational transformation

Timeline

• September 30, 2026: Opening date for manuscripts submissions
• November 30, 2026: Closing date for manuscripts submission

Jason Chan, University of Minnesota

Alan Dennis, Indiana University

Daniel Gozman, The University of Sydney

Kalle Lyytinen, Case Western Reserve University

Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) encompasses essential systems and services that are vital for societal stability, economic security, and national safety. The increasing digitalization of these infrastructures has introduced unprecedented efficiencies that have transformed economies, enabling faster service delivery, improved public safety, reduced corruption, and enhanced crisis response through data sharing and analytics.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) supports digital public infrastructure (DPI) as a driver for financial inclusion, social protection, and governance reforms. Digital advancements have also driven sustainability, with smart grids, environmental monitoring, and optimized resource management with potential for reducing carbon footprints and increasing resilience.

Furthermore, technological innovation in financial services, transportation, and energy has the potential to stimulate economic growth through enabling new business models. While the increasing digitalization of Critical National Infrastructure has introduced efficiencies, it also created unprecedented vulnerabilities, including cyberattacks, cascading failures, and systemic interdependencies that amplify risks.

Recognizing these challenges, governments in the UK, US, and Australia have developed regulatory frameworks such as the UK’s National Cyber Security Strategy, the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) guidelines, and Australia’s Security of Critical Infrastructure Act (SOCI Act) to enhance resilience and mitigate emerging threats.

CNI spans multiple critical sectors, each with unique security and operational challenges, including energy and utilities, telecommunications and information networks, financial services and payments, healthcare and public health, transportation and logistics, emergency services and law enforcement, and government and public sector infrastructure.

As efforts to build CNIs have accelerated, issues around CNI security, resilience, and adaptability are becoming increasingly critical. At the same time significant research gaps remain in cybersecurity practices at the system level, governance, integration and management of emerging technologies such as Autonomous Driving Systems, and threat intelligence sharing.

Addressing these gaps is essential for policymakers, businesses, and infrastructure operators to mitigate threats, optimize performance, and ensure long-term continuity.

This Special Section aims to advance research on the design, adoption, and impact of digital solutions and services critical in building CNI to enhance governance, economic development, and public service delivery and safeguard CNI. We invite interdisciplinary contributions that explore how digital technologies and services can enhance CNI or impose new risks and challenges for the operation of CNIs. Papers that do not explicitly address or theorize about CNI design and operation and their digital components will be returned without review.

Potential topics

• Emerging Technologies and Digital Transformation: Innovative technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twins, Blockchain and IoT are transforming CNI, enabling predictive analytics, smart grids, and cyber-physical security enhancements.
• Cybersecurity, Resilience, and Risk Management: Cyber threats such as ransomware, insider attacks, and cyber-physical vulnerabilities continue to grow. Risk assessment frameworks and mitigation strategies are essential.
• Governance, Policy, and Public-Private Partnerships: CNI governance requires polycentric collaborative efforts between government agencies, private sector entities, and international stakeholders.

Timeline

• June 1, 2025: Expression of Interest: one-page abstract, optional
• January 31, 2026: Initial Submission Due
• May 31, 2026: Notification of First Round Decision
• September 30, 2026: 1st Resubmission Due
• January 31, 2027: Notification of Second Round Decision
• April 30, 2027: 2nd Resubmission Due
• June 15, 2027: Final Decision