Special Topics in Organizational Systems & Technology

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10125/112550

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    An Analysis of Opioid Trafficking on the Surface Web
    (2026-01-06) Powell, Kaleigh; Adams, Austin; Glisson, William Bradley
    Turns out, your everyday search engine might be hiding more than comedic videos and cooking blogs. While opioid trafficking is often associated with the dark web, recent studies suggest that illegal drug markets are creeping into the more visible corners of the internet. This research set out to investigate whether opioid trafficking can be identified on the surface web by combining a custom-built web crawler with a Large Language Model (LLM) to analyze web page text. On an initial test crawl of 75 webpages, the system flagged 17 as high-confidence cases of trafficking, most involving semi-synthetic opioids like Hydrocodone and Oxycodone. Strikingly, every flagged instance was attributed to sellers, not buyers, highlighting the commercial nature of these listings. These findings suggest that the surface web is not only being used for illicit activity, but that automated tools can meaningfully detect and categorize this behavior.
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    Does Virtuality Really Matter? Studying Virtuality, Socio-technical Readiness, and Shared Understanding in Virtual Collaborations
    (2026-01-06) Bullard, Alva; Paul, Souren
    Business organizations are increasingly relying on virtual work environments as they provide access to global talent pool, reduce costs, and support business agility and scalability. Development of shared understanding is key to the success of teams engaged in virtual work. Prior research suggests that being virtual reduces shared understanding in virtual work environment. Given that considerable progress has been made in collaboration technology and virtual work has become quite common in recent times, some of the earlier challenges of virtual teams may not be relevant now. We conducted a study to capture the perception of the employees engaged in virtual work environments. Our findings suggest that socio-technical preparedness for virtual collaboration influences shared understanding in virtual work environments. We did not find any effect virtuality on shared understanding. Consistent with prior research, we found that shared understanding has a positive influence on the performance in virtual work.
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    Management Emotion and Firms’ IT Budget: A View of the Behavioral Theory of the Firm
    (2026-01-06) Zheng, Will(Weijun); Zeng, Shuo
    The antecedents of IT investment decisions are to large extent a “blind spot” in the literature. The extant research assume managers are rational in their IT budgeting decision. With a unique dataset combining multiple data sources, this research attempts to empirically test the influences of management emotion on level of firms’ IT budget in the framework of the Behavioral Theory of the Firm (BTOF). The findings of this paper provide insights of the under-researched human affective antecedent of firms’ IT budget.
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    Chatting for Change: A Design Science Study into Crafting a Chatbot System for Corporate Sustainability
    (2026-01-06) Schrade-Grytsenko, Lisa; Ibrahimli, Ulvi; Kappler, Karolin Eva; Bockshecker, Alina; Smolnik, Stefan; Winkelmann, Axel
    Conversational agents (CAs) are emerging as valuable information system artifacts with the potential to drive sustainability practices within corporate environments. Despite the growing significance of corporate sustainability, the systematic integration of CAs in this domain remains largely unexplored. Addressing this gap, our study employs a design science research approach to explore how CAs can be designed to support sustainable corporate behavior through the lens of the Fogg behavior model. Using a pre-study, literature review, and a series of interviews, we derive meta-requirements, design principles, and a conceptual framework to guide the development of sustainability-oriented chatbots. Our findings contribute to information systems (IS) research by advancing knowledge on socio-technical system design and IS-enabled sustainable practices. By providing prescriptive insights, we highlight how chatbots can shape employee behavior, reinforcing their potential as enablers of corporate sustainability.
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    A Theoretical Model of Information Systems Analogical Learning
    (2026-01-06) Fadel, Kelly; Mills, Robert; Siggard, Reagan
    As organizations routinely replace information systems to support evolving business needs, employees must often adapt to new systems to complete familiar tasks. Despite widespread acknowledgment of the learning burden imposed by such transitions, the cognitive processes that guide users' adaptation, particularly how prior system knowledge is leveraged, remain under-theorized in the information systems literature. This paper introduces Systems Analogy Learning Theory (SALT), a cognitive framework grounded in analogical learning theory, to explain how users draw on mental models of a prior (base) system to make sense of a new (target) system. SALT outlines a process of analogical reasoning composed of access, mapping, and transfer, and identifies four prototypical learning pathways based on users’ perceived surface and structural similarities between systems. These pathways are theorized to yield distinct learning trajectories and implications for training and system design.
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