Timeline

• February 28, 2027: Full paper submission deadline

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