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Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems

Editorial

Welcome to the summer issue of the 32nd volume of the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (SJIS).

The beginning of this year has been exceptional. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted work practices and forced people around the world to find new ways of carrying out daily routines. Most universities closed their physical premises and moved teaching and research activities to the virtual realm. This change has taken a lot of extra time and effort to reorganize activities and to learn new ways of doing things. However, although we are in a very unusual and disconcerting situation at the moment, we are happy to report that the number of high-quality submissions to SJIS is increasing. We would like to thank all the authors who have been active and submitted their manuscripts to our journal. Increasing numbers of submissions also require a lot of effort from reviewers who have done an excellent work and provided comments that help authors to improve the quality of their articles. We would like to thank all reviewers for their valuable input. Last, but not least, we thank all the readers of the journal. In 2020, there have been changes in the editorial team of the SJIS. We thank the Danish editor Helle Zinner Henriksen for her community service and contribution to the journal during the last four years and welcome our new editor from Denmark Sune Dueholm Müller from Aarhus University. As of volume 32, Arto Ojala takes on the role as editor-in-chief.

This issue includes five research articles. Traditionally, we aim to invite and publish one or two high-quality papers from the Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems (SCIS) conference in SJIS through a fast-track process. In this issue, we present one SCIS 2019 paper selected by the editorial board due to its quality and fit with the journal. The manuscript went through the normal double-blind review process, and the authors significantly improved it based on comments provided by our editorial board and the reviewers. In that article, Elena Parmiggiani and Miria Grisot study data governance and address the research question: how can we characterize data governance in practice? By using an exploratory case study, they find that data curation forms a fundamental element of data governance practice. They present an analytical framework which specifies the unfolding of user involvement in data infrastructures-in-use, which can be used as a sensitizing lens to capture usage patterns and as a basis for both informing and monitoring strategies of data governance. In addition to the fast-track paper from SCIS, this issue includes four regular articles. In his article “Design Science Epistemology – A Pragmatist Inquiry”, Göran Goldkuhl, contributes a clarification of a design science epistemology by presenting different epistemic types related to three stages of the research process. It provides an excellent understanding of emergent research approaches within the IS field and offers suggestions in terms of epistemic claims in relation to design science research. In the article “Sense-able process innovation in digital health infrastructures”, Egil Øvrelid and Terje Aksel Sanner examine how lightweight IT (consumer-oriented, context-aware, and flexible) can extend digital infrastructures (resilient, secure, and stable) to support process innovation in hospital coordinative practices. Using the sense and respond framework by Overby et al. (2006) the article contributes a model for sense-able process innovation with lightweight IT.

The article “Emotional Bonds as Promotors of IT Capability: A Study of Affective Commitment in Industrial Business Relationships” by Cecilia Thilenius Lindh and Emilia Rovira Nordman focuses on the effect of affective commitment on IT capability, and it reveals the importance of emotional bonds in developing interfirm IT capability. In order to increase their IT capabilities to enhance performance, firms are advised to continuously consider the emotional environment of relationships within and between firms.

Finally, in the article “Theorizing Affordance Actualization in Digital Innovation from a Socio-Technical Perspective: The Case of the Video Game Industry”, Hrafnhildur Jónasdóttir and Sune Dueholm Müller investigate the relationship between digital technology and video game developers in supporting and hindering digital innovation. They identify four affordances and theorize the affordance actualization process and mechanism. The article brings awareness to the stimulating and releasing conditions of affordance actualization and provides guidance to practitioners engaged in digital innovation.

Arto Ojala, Polyxeni Vassilakopoulou, Katrin Jonsson, and Sune D. Müller