At the beginning of the 21 st century environmental, social and sustainable challenges have reached a scale unprecedented in human history. The rise of the rate of consumption together with population growth put immense pressures on social systems as well as on the environmental boundaries of the planet. The challenge is to achieve an outcome where basic needs such as food, healthcare and education are provided to all human beings, while at the same time solving the current environmental crisis as we create an economic system operating within the global environmental boundaries (Raworth 2018). Organisations and businesses have an important role to play in realizing required changes through collective action.

In this paper, we propose an alternative, relational process conception of IS and demonstrate how such a conception enriches and advances our understanding of IS—what an IS is, what an IS is for, how components make up an IS, and how an IS becomes. In other words, the relational process view of IS embraces both its being and becoming.

Over the last decades Information Technology (IT) has become deeply interwoven into the fabric of organizations of all types and sizes. IT has lead to dramatic improvements in organizational efficiency and productivity, for instance, by automating labor intensive accounting related activities such as the processing of payroll, reporting of financial data through different levels of the organization, procuring goods and services, or the billing of customers. While such business processes are nowadays largely standardized and automated, the change associated with the adoption and use of IT is much more profound than simply an automation of existing tasks. Taking a historical perspective on IT and organizations reveals that the increasing use of IT in organizations led to a massive change in how organizations are structured, how business processes are undertaken, and how goals and targets are set, revised and monitored.

Nobody will doubt that over time organisations change and that to a large extend organisational changes are related to technological development. As new technologies become available they reshape how work is undertaken, for instance, by enabling new forms of work, offering more sophisticated production methods, or enabled new forms of organisational communication. One particular technology associated with wide ranging organisational transformation over the last decades is information technology (IT).This research therefore draws methodologically from business history to investigate organisational change at the crossroad between business information systems and organisational studies.

Commercial organizations are caught in an ongoing tension between the imperative of being perceived as socially responsible yet have persistent pressure to perform economically (Banerjee 2008). These tensions are heightened as organizations are increasingly held to account for their contributions to causes of environmental issues (Wright and Nyberg 2015). Rules and regulations, instituted by governments and industry bodies, are a means to evidence organizations engagement with these social obligations, implying also that the end of a more sustainable treatment of the environment is synonymous with the means by which it is measured. Paradoxically, when social obligations are fulfilled by regulatory compliance alone also the means is established to breach social obligations. Using the example of the VW emissions scandal (or ‘diselgate’) we argue that a possible explanation for this phenomenon is that environmental consequences are rendered invisible to the organization as they become obscured by focus on adherence to rules and regulations. We further argue that environmental reality is performed for management through the reporting process of the organization and successful reporting becomes a proxy for successful performance. This process distances managers from addressing environmental concerns per se and instead brings them closer to a view where they are satisfied with conforming to rules and regulations.

This presentation examines the visibility of LIS research undertaken by Australian LIS academics in eight databases. It uses a list of 382 LIS academics from Australia who worked as academics for more than 2 years over the last 50 years.

Please see the following journal publication for a more advanced description of this research:

Wilson, Concepción S.; Boell, Sebastian K.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia (2011). Publications of Australian LIS Academics in Databases. Australian Academic and Research Libraries. 42(X). XXX-xxx.

This presentation argued that systematic reviews are insufficient for undertaking literature reviews in the social sciences. Instead literature reviews can be better understood as hermeneutic process.

Please see the following journal publication for a more advanced description of this research:

Boell, Sebastian K.; Cecez-Kecmanovic, Dubravka (2010). Literature reviews and the hermeneutic circle. Australian Academic and Research Libraries. 41(2). 129-144.

This presentation reported on the work in progress on a project charting LIS education in Australia since the first library school at an university was establisehd in 1958.

Please see the following journal publication for a more advanced description of this research:

Wilson, Concepción S.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia; Boell, Sebastian K. (2010). Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Academization of LIS educators in higher education institution. Library and Information Science Research. 32(4). 246-257.

This presentation reported on the work in progress on a project charting LIS education in Australia since the first library school at an university was establisehd in 1958.

Please see the following journal publication for a more advanced description of this research:

Wilson, Concepción S.; Kennan, Mary Anne; Willard, Patricia; Boell, Sebastian K. (2010). Fifty years of LIS education in Australia: Academization of LIS educators in higher education institution. Library and Information Science Research. 32(4). 246-257.

This presentation introduced how journal impact factors can be used similar to the h-index for comparing the participation in top-level research between different larger entities. In this case cancer research by different Australian states.

Please see the following journal publication for a more advanced description of this research:

Boell, Sebastian K.; Wilson, Concepción S. (2010). Journal Impact Factors for evaluating scientific performance: use of h-like indicators. Scientometrics. 82(3). 613-626.

This paper contributes to the sociomateriality research orientation with a critical examination of two concepts – enactment and performance – that have been associated with the notion of performativity. While a preference for the term enactment has been expressed in influential IS literature, we argue that sociomateriality will benefit from an engagement with the body of research that focuses on Goffman’s notion of performance. We provide a critique of Mol’s reading of Goffman’s notions of “persona” and “mask”. We then show how a careful non-dualist reading of his work reveals his opus as relevant and useful for sociomateriality, because his notion of performance affords locating technology in differing roles within a performance. In doing so, we argue that Goffman’s work, largely overlooked within this stream of research so far, contributes important concepts and terminology for making sociomateriality actionable for IS.

General guidelines for conducting literature reviews often do not address the question of literature searches and dealing with a potentially large number of identified sources. These issues are specifically addressed by so-called systematic literature reviews (SLRs) that propose a strict protocol for the search and appraisal of literature. Moreover, SLRs are claimed to be a ‘standardized method’ for literature reviews that is replicable, transparent, objective, unbiased and rigorous, and thus superior to other approaches for conducting literature reviews. These are significant and consequential claims that – despite increasing adoption of SLRs – remained largely unnoticed in the information systems (IS) literature. The objective of this debate is to draw attention of the IS community to SLR’s claims, to question their justification and reveal potential risks of their adoption. This is achieved by first examining the origins of SLR and the prescribed SLR process and then by critically assessing their claims and implications. In this debate, we show that SLRs are applicable and useful for a very specific kind of literature review, a meta study that identifies and summarizes evidence from earlier research. We also demonstrate that the claims that SLRs provide superior quality are not justified. More importantly, we argue that SLR as a general approach to conducting literature reviews is highly questionable, concealing significant perils. The paper cautions that SLR could undermine critical engagement with literature and what it means to be scholarly in academic work.

The central place that education has in the strength and well-being of any profession is widely accepted. Australia presents an interesting case study of a country where LIS education moved from being conducted by practitioners under the guidance of the professional association to being provided in institutions of higher education in 1959. The 50 years (1959-2008) saw substantial changes in Australian LIS education with a rapid proliferation of schools which was later followed by closures, mergers and changes of focus. This chapter charts LIS education during this period focusing on organizational and structural aspects of the placement of LIS education in tertiary institutions, on the academization of LIS educators who had in the early days mainly been drawn from practice, and on the development of LIS educators as academic researchers and authors as represented by their productivity and visibility in national and international databases. In addition to giving an account of these areas of LIS education over the 50 years the chapter seeks to offer explanations for what has occurred and some views of strategies which may assist the development of LIS education in Australia and in other countries which possess similar characteristics.

Aim To advance the understanding and use of 'information' and 'information system', two key concepts for Information Systems (IS).
Relevance To date these two concepts remain fuzzy, contradictory or arbitrarily defined. However, being fundamental to the IS field, they require continuing attention and insightful discourse, which have so far been missing. This thesis follows a call expressed by several IS academics over the past decades to engage with these concepts.
Methodology Several hundred publications engaging with information at a conceptual and theoretical level from a wide range of disciplines, as well as dozens of definitions of IS from within IS are reviewed. These publications were critically analyzed regarding their underlying epistemological and ontological assumptions, as well as their strengths and limitations. This critical engagement with the literature provided a basis for further theoretical development.
Major Findings (Chapter 2) A taxonomy of five different views of information: the material, engineering, objectivist, subjectivist and inter-subjective view. (Chapter 3) A facet based approach to information identifying 15 aspects associated with the semiological dimensions of information, namely its physical inscription, the rules of sign systems, meaning, and usage. (Chapter 4) Five views of IS are critically investigated: technological, social, socio-technical, modelling, and process oriented; in addition a sixth view is developed understanding IS as ongoing sociomaterial entanglement.
Contributions (1) The taxonomy of approaches to information identifies and critically reflects on different views on information, thus enabling conceptual clarity to the question of what is information and how information is seen differently. Moreover, shifting between views enables the generation of new ways of looking at existing research problems. (2) The facet view approaches information from a Wittgensein'ian perspective using description rather than definition. This enables researchers as well as practitioners to appreciate and appropriate various social and technical facets of information simultaneously and integratively in a meaningful way. (3) The review of 'information system' contributes to critical theoretical debate in IS, with the proposed sociomaterial understanding providing a solid ontological footing for approaching and investigating the entanglement of seven aspects associated with IS: practices, social actors, technology, data, information, development, and organizations.

Background In most academic disciplines journals play an important role in disseminating findings of research among the disciplinary community members. Furthermore, based on Bradford's Law of scattering, one can assume that previous research in many journals, but also that there are some 'core' journals.
Aim This thesis aims to compile a comprehensive list of journals of relevance to Library and Information Science (LIS). A method to rank journals is introduced; key characteristics of the disciplines journals are discussed; and databases are compared.
Method A list of LIS journals was created by combining the journal listings of secondary sources indexing the field's literature. These sources were: INFODATA, Current Contents, Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA), Library Information Science Technology Abstracts (LISTA), Information Science and Technology Abstracts (ISTA), Library Literature and Information Science (LLIS), Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Academic Search Premier, and Expanded Academic ASAP, and the Elektronische Zeitschriften Bibliothek. Journals were ranked by the number of occurrences in multiple databases.
Results A comprehensive list of 1,205 journals was compiled. 968 journals are active, mostly published in English in the USA and UK. Fifteen core journal could be identified. Databases have between five to 318 journals in common. Overlap with a wide range of subjects exist, especially Computing Studies, and Business and Economics.
Conclusion The extensive journal list can contribute to understanding of scholarly communication within the LIS discipline and provide academics and practitioners with a better understanding of journals within the discipline. Journal could be ranked by occurance in databases.

In this review, I will first look at the key idea of Lanzara’s book and then talk in more detail about the research approach taken by the author. I will conclude this review by my assessment of who I believe will benefit from reading this book.

The main aim of the project is to determine the quantity and quality of recent publications on cancer research produced in New South Wales vis-à-vis the other States of Australia. Subsidiary aims are to determine the relative contribution of Australia to research on cancer world-wide, and to compare the quantity and quality of Australian.
Analyses in this report are based on two censuses of the cancer literature, from SCI-SSCI and from Medline, with primary focus on SCI-SSCI. The Medline database also provided a census of the medical literature.

This report provides an overview of cancer research in New South Wales (NSW). The report is presented in two sections. Part One draws on information gathered in two separate surveys of cancer research in NSW covering the periods 2001-2003 and 2004-2006. Part Two of the report provides an alternate view of the impact of the cancer research activity by assessing the research publications between 1999 and 2006.

The main aim of the project is to determine the quantity and quality of recent publications on cancer research produced in New South Wales vis-à-vis the other States of Australia. Subsidiary aims are to determine the relative contribution of Australia to research on cancer world-wide, and to compare the quantity and quality of Australian.
Analyses in this report are based on two censuses of the cancer literature, from SCI-SSCI and from Medline, with primary focus on SCI-SSCI. The Medline database also provided a census of the medical literature.