Robust Action Strategies in a Connected, but Unequal World: Revisiting American Pragmatism for Social Justice-Focused Research in Information Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we elucidate robust action as a research framework for the information systems (IS) field. We contend robust action provides a suitable frame to conduct pragmatist research in IS and can be useful in researching the multi-faceted terrain of social justice. The robust action frame has its roots in pragmatism, and, moreover, given the history of American pragmatism as rooted in social justice, robust action can provide a suitable frame to confront broad-scale issues on a societal scale-a topic that little IS research has examined. We define robust action's components, illustrate its philosophical rooting in the pragmatist tradition, and show how one can use it.

Generating impactful situated explanations through digital trace data

“…This does not only imply that students learn to work with existing algorithms and computational techniques; they should also be able to conceptualize and design their own algorithms and techniques to be able to account for the idiosyncratic features of problem contexts to produce situated explanations and design effective solutions. Finally, since the value of a situated explanation lies in its usefulness to address a given problem (Agerfalk, 2010; Levy et al, 2020), there is no objective criterion to immediately determine when a right or wrong situated explanation has been found. Hence, it is important that aspiring information systems researchers learn to deal with various degrees of uncertainty as they assess and evaluate situated explanations.…”

“…Therefore, it will be more important to produce temporal sequences of representations quickly, rather than having a method that might produce a near-perfect representation but takes excessive computation time. Hence, the value of any representation should be evaluated by how timely and useful it is to depict a given problem context effectively (Agerfalk, 2010; Levy et al, 2020).…”

“…Since the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular, there has been a rising expectation for scientists to provide relevant and timely advice in order to inform political decision-making and policy-making (Maani and Galea, 2021; Pataro et al, 2021; Van Bavel et al, 2020). We sketch how the development of situated explanations can enable information systems researchers to realize such expectations by leveraging their unique socio-technical competences (Agerfalk, 2010; Díaz Andrade et al, 2019; Levy et al, 2020; Sarker et al, 2019).…”

Big Tech’s power, political corporate social responsibility and regulation

“…Professionals need to cultivate a heightened sense of ethical responsibility for the systems they help bring into being, since they are in a better position to ‘recognize and understand the consequences of the adoption and use of information systems’ (Du Plooy, 2003). Relevant work has been carried out in the computer-ethics arena also (Stah and Eden, 2014), and scholars have recently revisited American pragmatism and notions of social justice in information systems (Levy et al, 2020).…”