•  
•  

Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems

Editorial

Welcome to the second issue of volume 29 of the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. We take the opportunity to thank our authors, reviewers, and readers for your support for the journal. This issue of the journal includes three research papers and a new section, which we call Reflection Notes.

In line with the profile of the journal the research papers all investigate design topics. Lars Kristian Roland, Terje Aksel Sanner, Johan Ivar Sæbø and Eric Monteiro investigate how off-the-shelf software and complex IT architectures challenge traditional participatory design approaches. Building on a longitudinal eHealth project in South Africa, the study highlights how an emergent platform architecture and its surrounding ecosystem co-constitute a platform for participation in design.

Arnvør á Torkilsheyggi and Morten Hertzum present an intensive study of design-in-use. They investigate the introduction of an electronic whiteboard throughout a Danish hospital in which management substituted a local design-in-use process, driven by super users, for a centrally organized implementation process. They discuss the circumstances under which a local design-in-use process may, partly, replace conventional systems implementation.

Magnus R.P. Hansen and Jan Pries-Heje investigate innovation in business networks. Building on design science research they propose 5 design principles for designing IT tools that can support the facilitation and improvement of knowledge networks. They also suggest a new type of value proposition that constitute a ‘nascent’ design theory for knowledge network improvement.

The Reflection Notes is a new section in the Scandinavian Journal. As part of the IRIS community, we wish to engage in the topics being discussed at the annual IRIS and SCIS conference. We have asked the two keynote speakers to write a short paper based on their presentations, and invited interested researchers to comment on them.

Hanne Cecilie Geirbo has written “Smart environments? Reflections on the role of metaphors in IS”, claiming that metaphors are analytical devices that help us make sense of the world, but they become normative devices when being used to design and implement new systems and technologies. The essay of Per-Anders Hillgren is “Democratizing the city. Democratic configurations and imagination”. He argues that, if we really want to pursue a democratic change and simultaneously be able to deal with the urgent societal challenges that we face in the urban sphere today, then we have to invent and explore a wide repertoire of metaphors and alternative rationalities. Both keynotes offered insights from research traditions outside the core IS field, but they demonstrate the value of bringing in perspectives from other disciplines to enrich the IS field. To illustrate the overlap and at the same time contribution to the domain three IS researchers were invited to share their observations from the keynotes. The SJIS editors deliberately chose to invite both very experienced IS researchers along with a novice in the field: Yvonne Dittrich, Christian Casper Hofma and Jeffry Babb have really engaged in the topics, and offered their inspired comments and reflections. Thank you!

We also thank our production manager, Jacob Nørbjerg. We hope that you find this issue interesting. We look forward to receiving your best papers with a view to publishing them in the Scandinavian IS community’s own journal - the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. 

Bendik Bygstad, Magnus Bergquist, Helle Zinner Henriksen, and Arto Ojala