Internet and the Digital Economy

The Internet and Digital Economy (I&DE) track focuses on the ways in which the Internet affects people, groups, organizations, and societies (e.g., markets, social networks), as well as fundamental issues in the development and operation of the Internet and Internet applications (e.g., security, open source, and cloud).

Like many other tracks at HICSS, I&DE has a long history, dating to 1997 when it became a standalone minitrack. Over the years there have been over 70 different minitracks held and more than 1400 research papers delivered. Among the variety of minitracks some of the key mainstays have included: Crowd- Based Platforms, Crowdsourcing and Digital Workforce, E-Marketing, Human-Computer Interaction, Cyber Security, Privacy and Economics, Social Shopping, Digital Supply Chain, Internet of Everything, and various issues of E-Commerce, Mobile Commerce and the Digital Economy.

This year the track includes 18 minitracks. Across these minitracks, we received 163 submissions, accepting 78, resulting in a 48 percent acceptance rates. This year’s minitracks are described below:

Artificial Intelligence-based Assistants. This minitrack is primarily focused on two types of AI-based assistants. First, virtual personal assistants and chatbots, such as Amazon Alexa and Google Home, enable the interaction of human beings with applications in new ways. Second, AI-based assistants replacing humans interfacing between two or more application systems.

Behavioral Economics in the Digital Economy: Digital Nudging and Interface Design. This minitrack explores the design, main applications, and effects of digital nudging in information systems design, in particular, research with an emphasis on the effects of interface design on users’ behavior, judgment, and decision making in Internet-based systems.

Crowd-Based Platforms. This minitrack examines the design and effects of a variety of crowd-based platforms including crowdsourcing context, online labor, crowdfunding marketplaces and onlinecommunities. Research in this area originates from various methodologies such as econometrics, field or lab experimentation, field surveys, analytic modeling, or grounded theory approaches.

Crowdsourcing and Digital Workforce in the Gig Economy. This minitrack examines theoretical and empirical studies addressing organizational, managerial, technical, and behavioral perspectives on digital work and crowd work. Research that lies at the intersection of multiple disciplines, namely Information Technology, Organization Science, Human Resource Management, and Behavioral Science will inform innovation in digital work and work re-design.

Enterprise Blockchains. This minitrack deals with fundamental research revolving around the methods and techniques, issues, and key challenges, as well as organizational approaches for understanding the potential of DLTs for business models, value chains, emerging competitive landscapes and new start-ups employing this technology.

Electronic Marketing. This minitrack focuses on understanding effective strategies for attracting customers, increasing their purchases, satisfaction and loyalty, as well as the responses and behavior of customers to various online marketing vehicles and consumer generated media.

Firm and User Generated Content in the Digital Economy: Key Players, Management and Impact. This minitrack considers the communication shift from traditional one-way to two-way communication, with content being a means to earn trust with consumers. Papers dealing with the creation, usage, management and impact of content for digital economy are encouraged.

Global, International, and Cross-Cultural Issues in the Digital Economy. This minitrack focuses on the worldwide spread of interconnected information and communication technologies (ICTs) that are providing the infrastructure for multinational businesses, created new cultural connections irrespective of geographic boundaries and distances, and allowed an increasingly mobile global population to be connected to their friends, families, and cultures no matter where they are. The minitrack welcomes submissions that relate to all aspects of information systems (IS) research situated in a global, international, or cross-cultural context.

Human-centricity in a Sustainable Digital Economy. This minitrack aims to attract research that advances the understanding of human-centricity and end-user empowerment in a sustainable digital economy. It adopts an interdisciplinary perspective, which considers human-centricity and end-user empowerment across application domains (e.g. software development, digital commerce, healthcare, administration, mobile apps, social media, and online services).

Human-Computer Interaction in the Digital Economy. This minitrack explore a wide range of topics related to human-computer interaction using a wide spectrum of research methodologies including, but not limited to, behavioral methods, neurophysiological tools, and design science approaches. Accordingly, papers may draw on various reference disciplines to inform design, such as: computer science, information systems, consumer behavior, psychology, organizational sciences, and neuroscience.

Innovative Behavioral IS Security and Privacy Research. This minitrack provides a venue for innovative research that rigorously addresses the risks to information system security and privacy, focusing on individual behaviors within this nomological net. Domains include work related to detecting, mitigating, and preventing both internal and external human threats to organizational security.

Making Digital Transformation Real. This minitrack explores tools, methods or strategies helping companies to deal with digital transformations through theoretical and applied work. Other focal topics will include metrics and other indicators for measuring the success or degree of digital transformation.

Privacy and Economics. This minitrack provides a platform for academia, industry and government organizations to discuss ties and differences between the EU and the USA from a privacy, as well as an economic angle. This includes discussions on economic perspectives on the regulation in Europe and across the US and on users’ rights to privacy with regards to collection, retention, analysis and transfer of personal data.

Social Shopping: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. This minitrack explores insights and develops theoretical understanding of the topics and issues related to the influence of OSN on consumption orientated shopping decisions.

The Diffusion, Impacts, Adoption and Usage of ICTs upon Society and Small Enterprises. This minitrack provides a “global” perspective of how ICTs are being diffused, used and adopted within society (households and social communities).

The Digital Supply Chain of the Future: Applications, Implications, Business Models. This minitrack focuses on the rise and impact of the agile supply chain and the concomitant rise in smart products and services.

The Internet of Everything: Converging the Internet of People (IoP) and the Internet of Things (IoT). This minitrack addresses issues related to the coming of various emerging smart devices including consumer adoption of wearable and embeddable technologies.

The Internet of Nano Things. The focus of this minitrack is on interconnected nanodevices used to create smart objects, seeking high-quality research papers that investigate technological, managerial and policy innovation in the area of IoNT technologies, IoNT project management, and IoNT applications in areas such as business, health, infrastructure, and smart metering in the utility industry.

Alan R. Dennis
Indiana University
ardennis@indiana.edu

Joseph S. Valacich
University of Arizona
valacich@arizona.edu