Responsible research and innovation in information systems

Public Engagement Practices in EC-Funded RRI Projects: Fostering Socio-Scientific Collaborations

The ‘ambiguity’ of Research and Innovation (R&I) within the present contemporary society triggers increasing manifestations of public concerns concerning science. Apart from some implications it has, this mistrust also functions as a stimuli towards integrating the public view and public (social) needs into the development and implementation of R&I policies. With reference to European communities, the European Commission (EC) has provided funding to various projects aiming to capitalise on the concept of Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) and the RRI ‘key’ of Public Engagement (PE) in order to engage the public in R&I, enhance a human-centric and inclusive R&I approach, and ultimately foster a mutually responsible relation between science and society. This study aims to examine how PE practices are implemented within the context of EC-funded projects addressing RRI-driven public engagement. Seventeen PE practices that have been implemented during the lifespan of five EC projects were qualitatively and thematically analysed. The identified themes indicate the implementation patterns of PE and contribute to reaching a set of conclusions towards realising a participatory, human-centric and inclusive R&I, fostering in its own turn future socio-scientific collaborations. Policy-makers, researchers, practitioners and stakeholders interested in public engagement in R&I can capitalise on the study’s conclusions and contribute to manifestations of responsible innovation.

Project management: openings for disruption from AI and advanced analytics

Purpose

The purpose of this essay is to illustrate how project management “pull” and AI or analytics technology “push” are likely to result in incremental and disruptive evolution of project management capabilities and practices.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is written as a critical essay reflecting the experience and reflections of the author with many ideas drawn from and extending selected items from project management, artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics literatures.

Findings

Neither AI nor sophisticated analytics is likely to elicit hands on attention from project managers, other than those producing AI or analytics-based artifacts or using these tools to create their products and services. However, through the conduit of packaged software support for project management, new tools and approaches can be expected to more effectively support current activities, to streamline or eliminate activities that can be automated, to extend current capabilities with the availability of increased data, computing capacity and mathematically based algorithms and to suggest ways to reconceive how projects are done and whether they are needed.

Research limitations/implications

This essay includes projections of possible, some likely and some unlikely, events and states that have not yet occurred. Although the hope and purpose are to alert readers to the possibilities of what may occur as logical extensions of current states, it is improbable that all such projections will come to pass at all or in the way described. Nonetheless, consideration of the future ranging from current trends, the interplay among intersecting trends and scenarios of future states can sharpen awareness of the effects of current choices regarding actions, decisions and plans improving the probability that the authors can move toward desired rather than undesired future states.

Practical implications

Project managers not involved personally with creating AI or analytics products can avoid mastering detailed skill sets in AI and analytics, but should scan for new software features and affordances that they can use enable new levels of productivity, net benefit creation and ability to sleep well at night.

Originality/value

This essay brings together AI, analytics and project management to imagine and anticipate possible directions for the evolution of the project management domain.

Trends in the conduct of information systems research

With the rapidly changing institutional and technological environment for information systems research, it is useful to examine how the conduct of research itself has been changing. In this Debates and Perspectives article, based on analysis of over 1800 articles, we first describe trends from 2000 to 2015 in co-authorship, research areas, unit of analysis, and research direction-setting initiatives. Our results indicate a rising trend among information systems researchers toward co-authorship. We also find that information systems research converges on a few broad research areas, and there is increasing diversity of topics within these broad themes. Concerning level of analysis, our results indicate a decreasing trend toward macro (organizational) studies. Finally, we note a lack of positive significant trends in the publication of special issue articles, review articles, and meta-analytic studies. We then offer our perspective regarding these trends along with a discussion of the importance of managing vicious and virtuous cycles that may result from community adaptations to environmental changes.

A Mobilising Concept? Unpacking Academic Representations of Responsible Research and Innovation

This paper makes a plea for more reflexive attempts to develop and anchor the emerging concept of responsible research and innovation (RRI). RRI has recently emerged as a buzzword in science policy, becoming a focus of concerted experimentation in many academic circles. Its performative capacity means that it is able to mobilise resources and spaces despite no common understanding of what it is or should be 'made of'. In order to support reflection and practice amongst those who are interested in and using the concept, this paper unpacks understandings of RRI across a multi-disciplinary body of peer-reviewed literature. Our analysis focuses on three key dimensions of RRI (motivations, theoretical conceptualisations and translations into practice) that remain particularly opaque. A total of 48 publications were selected through a systematic literature search and their content was qualitatively analysed. Across the literature, RRI is portrayed as a concept that embeds numerous features of existing approaches to govern and assess emerging technologies. Our analysis suggests that its greatest potential may be in its ability to unify and provide political momentum to a wide range of long-articulated ethical and policy issues. At the same time, RRI's dynamism and resulting complexity may represent its greatest challenge. Further clarification on what RRI has to offer in practice-beyond what has been offered to date-is still needed, as well as more explicit engagement with research and institutional cultures of responsibility. Such work may help to realise the high political expectations that are attached to nascent RRI.