Organizational and ethical issues in the information society

European Journal of Information Systems (2006) 15, 343–344. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ejis.3000628 The ever more ubiquitous and pervasive nature of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has profound organizational and societal implications, enabling and shaping an ‘e-society’. Yet, research in this area remains underrepresented in the ‘mainstream’ information system (IS) conferences and journals. How we use and shape ICT in all areas of our lives has a profound impact on the way we conceptualize and shape the IS we encounter within the workplace and vice versa. The e-society track of the 13th European Conference in Information Systems raised interesting and important questions on the opportunities, threats and dilemmas that citizens, organizations and decision–makers face concerning issues such as awareness, access, technology adoption, participation, fairness and education in the context of the e-society. Following from this stimulating debate, we solicited submissions for this special issue on Organizational and Ethical Issues in the Information Society, based on selected papers from the e-society track. Specifically, we invited the authors of all accepted papers, the associate editors of the track and the authors of highly ranked papers that were submitted but not included in the e-society track to submit an updated version of their research work on the e-society to EJIS. Twelve papers were submitted to the special issue and underwent a double-blind review with the assistance of 23 reviewers. The authors of five of the papers were invited to resubmit. Following an editorial review, one of the resubmitted papers was rejected and two were asked to undertake further revisions. The four papers that have been included in this special issue focus on different aspects of organizational and ethical issues in the information society. Broadly stated, two adopt an ‘organizational’ perspective, focusing on the behavior of employees using ICT; the other two adopt a broader ‘societal’ perspective, although they are inspired by the influence of ICT on the interaction of employees (female information technology (IT) workers and teleworkers) within the formal organization. The papers also cover the broadest spectrum of research paradigms: positivist, interpretive and critical. Although this is incidental, we are delighted that we could provide in this special issue an illustration of the value that multiple paradigms bring to IS research. In particular, we anticipate that the two critical approaches (feminist and Marxist) adopted in the latter two papers, will be instrumental in raising the profile of this stream of research, provoking or even challenging our own behavior in the work place as well as in the family environment.