Track description n°3

Literature review

Track Chairs

Maike Greve

Copenhagen Business School (Denmark)

Maike Greve is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Digitalization at Copenhagen Business School. She holds a PhD in Information Systems from University of Goettingen, Germany. Her research interest includes the role of data, AI-driven innovation and design of mobile applications in the healthcare sector. She has served the academic community as a track chair at WI, and associate editor at the AIS conferences as well as workshop organizer at ICIS.

Thomas Kude

University of Bamberg (Germany)

Thomas Kude is a professor at the University of Bamberg, where he holds the chair of information systems and platform economy. He previously was an associate professor at ESSEC Business School. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Mannheim. His current research interests include digital platform ecosystems, data platforms, and software development teams. His work has been published in MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Information Systems Journal, and other outlets. He serves as an associate editor for Business & Information Systems Engineering.

Mo Moeini

Warwick Business School (UK)

Mo is an Associate Professor in Information Systems at Warwick Business School (WBS). Prior to this role he was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sussex Business School. Mo holds a PhD in Business Administration (Managing Information Technologies) from HEC Montreal, Canada. His current research focuses on developing theories regarding digital transformation as well as the role of technology in enabling diversity and inclusion in organizations. Mo’s work has been published in MISQ, JAIS, JSIS and JIT. Mo is currently an associate editor at JSIS.

The goal of this track is to provide a forum for literature review articles. Given the increasing pace of change of the phenomena that information systems researchers are studying, literature reviews are particularly important to facilitate a cumulative research process instead of constantly reinventing the wheel. Given the abundance of knowledge and the availability of tools to synthesize existing literature—including (generative) artificial intelligence tools—literature reviews go beyond simply taking stock of what is already there.

Instead, they reflect the interest and intention of the research community to look at phenomena from a specific angle and thus guide the conversation in the academic community in a certain direction. The phenomena that information systems researchers are interested in are increasingly studied by various disciplines, including but not limited to different fields of business and management and computer science. Information systems researchers play an important role in bringing together different perspectives, emphasizing the importance of interdisciplinary literature reviews.

In this track, we are particularly looking for literature reviews that go beyond a pure systematic search for existing studies but provide abstract insights and shape our understanding based on examining existing work, thus laying the groundwork and guiding future research (Leidner 2018). We are also interested on methodological and design-oriented submissions in the context of literature reviews.

Track topics

Topics and questions relevant to the track include, but are not limited to:

Studies following specific literature review approaches, such as theoretical reviews, conceptual reviews, critical reviews, meta-analyses, or bibliometric techniques and tools for literature reviews (Paré et al. 2015)
Reviews on emerging technologies and technological topics: The rapid pace of emerging technologies often exceeds the slower cycles of academic research. Literature reviews, therefore, face a dual lag (first in studies on a topic being published, then on a review to be conducted and published itself) making them prone to being inherently outdated. This track invites not only reviews on emerging technologies but also reflections on how literature reviews of emerging technologies in business and organizational contexts can be accelerated to remain timely, relevant, and impactful, while rigorous.
Interdisciplinary literature reviews bringing together insights form different fields
Theory development: This track particularly invites literature-based attempts to develop new concepts and explanations. Recent studies discuss the evolving role of theorizing and theory in IS (e.g., Burton-Jones et al., 2021), for example, highlighting the importance of speculative insights (Hovorka and Mueller, 2024). This track welcomes further reflections on these evolutions, particularly with a view toward the changing role of literature reviews in the theorizing process.
Artificial intelligence and literature reviews: Recent studies discuss the use of AI for conducting literature reviews (Wagner et al., 2022), and the relevant opportunities as well as the challenges (ethical considerations) of doing so, such as the illusion of understanding (Messeri and Crockett, 2024) and the potential negative impact on the quality of knowledge generated (Ngwenyama and Rowe, 2024).We encourage papers that extend, challenge, and/or contextualize these pioneering works.

References

Burton-Jones, A., Butler, B. S., Scott, S., & Xu, S. X. (2021). Next-Generation Information Systems Theorizing: A Call to Action. Management Information Systems Quarterly, 45(1)(6), 301-314.
Hovorka, D. S., & Mueller, B. (2025). Speculative foresight: A foray beyond digital transformation. Journal of Information Systems Journal, 35(1), 140-162.
Kunisch, S., Denyer, D., Bartunek, J. M., Menz, M., & Cardinal, L. B. (2023). Review research as scientific inquiry. Organizational Research Methods, 26(6), 301-314.
Leidner, D. E. (2018). Review and theory symbiosis: An introspective retrospective. Journal of the Association for Information Systems19(6), 1.
Messeri, L., & Crockett, M. J. (2024). Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research. Nature, 627(8002), 49-58.
Ngwenyama, O., & Rowe, F. (2024). Should we collaborate with AI to conduct literature reviews? Changing epistemic values in a flattening world. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 25(1), 122-136.
Wagner, G., Lukyanenko, R., & Paré, G. (2022). Artificial intelligence and the conduct of literature reviews. Journal of Information Technology, 37(2), 209-226.
Paré, G., Trudel, M. C., Jaana, M., & Kitsiou, S. (2015). Synthesizing information systems knowledge: A typology of literature reviews. Information & management, 52(2), 183-199.