Nordic public sector organizations offer a rich context to understand activities related to digital innovation. In this paper, we report on a recent qualitative case study carried out in a Nordic government agency. We focus on the early-stage innovation activities at a case organization that investigates blockchain-related technology. We show how a concept of navigating landscapes can help to understand and theorize these dynamics. Our findings distill organizational activities into three types: 1) navigating need-solutions landscapes, 2) navigating organizational landscape, and 3) navigating competence landscape. These findings are of interest to IS scholars as well as practitioners interested in public sector innovation involving emerging decentralized technologies (EDTs). © 2024 IEEE Computer Society. All rights reserved.

There is increased interest in understanding how sociotechnical systems can be conceptualized beyond corporate-customer service relationships. Digital ecosystems support flexible, fluid interaction, enabling participation and engagement. In the context of societal integration, these systems can create inclusiveness and ultimately contribute to a more sustainable society. To obtain these benefits, we argue that sociotechnical systems must be deliberately and responsibly designed and that such an approach needs to be integrated into the training of future designers. This paper draws on the Nordic sociotechnical approach to design and theories on digital ecosystem. Building on a qualitative case study on integration and language learning, involving students as designers, we discuss three existing principles of sustainable digital ecosystems: part-of-ness; systemic wisdom and; information ecology. The paper contributes an extended understanding of the design of sustainable sociotechnical ecosystems and a discussion of the role of students in the design.

Work is becoming increasingly digitalized and change, underscores a critical dichotomy; the design of the digital infrastructure can either facilitate or impede the efficacy of workers in their everyday tasks. When the digital infrastructure poses obstacles, workarounds emerge and over time, become an integrated component in work routines.

The aim of this paper is to shed light on workarounds in different professional practices through our cross-case study we explore workarounds within the public sector. The contribution is three-fold: (i) we provide and argue for four general types of workarounds, which we derive from the empirical data from longitudinal data; (ii) we conceptualize workarounds as practices of innovation, evolution, and responsibility in contemporary work, and; (iii) we provide a framework for analyzing workarounds as technology-oriented versus task-oriented and individual versus collective dimensions.

The framework can be used by researchers and practitioners to identify tensions and to contribute to an increased understanding of the dilemmas, difficulties, and opportunities that an intensification of digitalization of work through digital infrastructures that call for extensive workarounds entails.

Demographic changes with an elderly population and more patients living longer with chronic illnesses will result in an increased need for care (OECD/EuropeanUnion 2022, Maresova et al. 2019). Remote patient monitoring (RPM), which allows patients to monitor their health and medical conditions from locations outside of healthcare, such as at home, is one example of a new digital service intended to simplify for patients, nurses, and other health professionals. RPM can broadly be defined as the use of digital technology (apps, sensors, wearables) that enables people to monitor their health and well-being automatically,systematically, and over time – for example, aspects like diet, exercise, sleep, mood,blood pressure and heart rate (e.g., Feng et al. 2021, Azevedo, Rodrigues & Londral2021).

RPM aims at enhancing patients' quality of life through self-care and active participation while also optimizing healthcare resource utilization by reducing in-person visits and hospital admissions. However, there is a lack of evidence of patient benefit and risks (Vallo Hult et al. 2023), and more research is needed regarding how RPM affects clinical practice and how healthcare professionals perceive its impact on their work (Černá 2019;, Vallo Hult et al. 2019; Islind et al.2022).

In this study, we focus on how nurses' work is changed by RPM. In their professional development, it is mandated that nurses should develop the ability to use digital technology in the care of patients, like remote care (Asthma, Allergy,and COPD Nurses Association, 2015). Previous research has identified and outlined challenges and essential knowledge for the digitalization of healthcare, highlighting the need for more research on learning, collaboration and competence development (Svensson 2019;, Vallo Hult et al. 2020; Svensson & Vallo Hult 2022), especially regarding nurses continuous professional development, and what role collegial and collaborative learning and knowledge sharing have for this learning (Khademi et al. 2021, Mlambo, Silén & McGrath 2021).

The aim of this paper is to investigate barriers and opportunities of RPM in relation to nurses’ working, collaborating and learning. The study is guided by the following research question: What are the implications of RPM on nurses’ work, collaboration and learning?

Offentlig sektor skall verka för uppfyllande av FNs globala mål för hållbar utveckling (SDGs). Samtidigt visar tidigare forskning på brister i genomförande och effekt som följd av bristfällig integrering av hållbarhetsaspekter i styrning. Forskning visar också att digitalisering är en nödvändig förutsättning för uppfyllande av en majoritet av globala utvecklingsmål. Genom analys av ett urval digitala utvecklingsinitiativ i Göteborgs stads kommunkoncern visar denna studie på mönster i hur SDGs integreras i digital transformation. Digitaliseringsinitiativen stödjer ett urval av sju av 17 SDGs ojämnt fördelat mellan projektmål, förvaltningar och bolag, med ett fokus på dimensionerna ekonomisk- och social- hållbarhet framför ekologisk. Resultaten härleds till bristande rutiner kring integrering av SDGsi digitala initiativ. Rapporten rekommenderar vidare förstärkning av stadens rutiner för att öka medvetenheten kring FNs mål för hållbar utveckling vid effektmålsformulering, prioritering, genomförande och uppföljning.

This review discusses the challenges associated with the sustainability of remote workplaces, which have become more prevalent due to the growing trend of work digitalization and the pandemic-induced push to remote work. These challenges are highlighted in literature across various disciplines, including information systems, but these discourses have remained isolated from each other. In this review, we consolidated and synthesized research on remote work from the perspective of individual workers by reviewing 187 articles published between 1999 and 2020 in recognized academic journals from fields including information systems, organizational studies, economics, human resources, sociology, and psychology. We identified five key themes that concern opportunities and challenges to sustainable remote workplaces: (1) key characteristics, (2) work-life boundaries; (3) health and well-being; (4) social interaction, and (5) leadership. Building on our findings we created a framework that recognizes two interrelated categories of factors influencing remote workplace sustainability – rigid base characteristics and contextual remote workplace variables – that together shape the trajectory of remote workplace sustainability in the long term. The framework also identifies the potential role of information systems in modulating the impact of the base characteristics to build continuities that encourage more sustainable remote workplaces. The paper concludes by offering a research agenda for information systems for sustainable remote workplaces based on the three IS theoretical frames: inclusion, dignity, and boundary objects.

New emerging digital technologies are evolving at an unprecedented pace. These advancements create increasing expectations for public sector organizations. However, we do not yet know much about the processes of these organizations when approaching emerging technologies. Such early innovation processes are critical to reaping the benefits of emerging technologies. We conducted a case study of a Nordic government agency to explore how a potentially paradigm-changing idea involving blockchain,evolves through an innovation process. We investigated the characteristics of early innovation search processes as a public sector organization approaches emerging technologies. Our contribution shows 1) how the search focus shifts over time - focus can be more about the solution, the need or the need–solution pair, and 2) how the conceptualization of technology plays an important role in the process.The findings increase our understanding of innovation processes in the public sector.

Social audit approaches to sustainable development in the textile industry predominate in worldwidepractice. However, research indicates that there are persistent structural non-compliance cases,demonstrating repetitive and harmful patterns and that creating codes of conduct as part of sustainability practices can only marginally improve worker rights on an overall level across industries. Due to these constraints associated with social audits, there's been a rising discourse about moving beyond these audits.In this paper we examine alternative approaches to social auditing to gain understanding, knowledge, collaboration, and empowerment within the value chain of brands, suppliers, and their employees. We target this emerging issue as a challenge for sustainable development of the textile industry. With a qualitative case study of a textile industry value chain as a base, and with the frames of the global sustainable development discourse, and ecosystem thinking, we suggest an alternative digital practice to social auditing in the textile industry, that gives workers a voice to speak with, that empowers the suppliers to take own control and responsibility over social conditions of their employees and that balances the present power takeover of brands. Merging the sustainable development discourse with digital ecosystems thinking when conceptualizing, theorizing or designing information systems (IS), we argue, is a way forward for IS to meet grand societal challenges. 

Being one of the worst industries in the world in terms of human and environmental abuse, the tex tile industry is in urgent need for sustainable transformation. Textile workers in the global south belong to a particularly precarious group of workers; they are mainly women, often young, migrant and in vulnerable job market positions. Social audit is a practice that brands engage in to measure, understand and report on social and ethical performance in their supply chain. However, research shows that social audits marginally improve worker rights and a lot of structural non-compliance is recidivist: that is, it is repetitive and pernicious. Therefore, the discussion of going beyond auditing towards distributed communicative governance among participant organizations in the supply chain is becoming both attractive and urgent. In this paper we present a research proposal that explores alternative practices to social auditing . . .