Grief in the Digital Age - Review, Synthesis, and Directions for Future Research

Presenter Information

Marlene Blaß, FIM Research Center, University of Augsburg Project Group Business & Information Systems Engineering of the Fraunhofer FITFollow
Valerie Graf-Drasch, Chair of Digital Management, University of Hohenheim, and FIM Research Center, Project Group Business & Information Systems Engineering of the Fraunhofer FIT, GermanyFollow
Doreen Schick, Fraunhofer FIT, FIM und Chair of Management Information Systems, University of Bayreuth, GermanyFollow

Description

Death and grief are going digital. Start-up companies are working on avatars that people feed with personal information while alive so that relatives can communicate with this artificial self after death. This is supposed to make it easier to say goodbye. Considering these digital innovations, the IS community should be the leading discipline for handling grief. However, IS scholars attribute grief to other disciplines, such as psychology. Like any crisis, also grief cannot be merited to one single discipline. We conduct a literature review and synthesis alongside the ‘BAO framework’ [1]. Findings suggest that IS research has so far not grasped the consequences of grief on either individual or organizational and societal levels. To spark future research, we propose 9 clear-cut IS research questions. The provided comprehensive understanding of IS intersecting grief is crucial for different (also practical) stakeholders to leverage the potential of IS in coping with grief.

Recommended Citation

Blaß, Marlene; Graf-Drasch, Valerie; and Schick, Doreen, "Grief in the Digital Age - Review, Synthesis, and Directions for Future Research" (2022). Wirtschaftsinformatik 2022 Proceedings. 7.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/wi2022/wi_interdisciplinary/wi_interdisciplinary/7