University West is located right in the middle of Trollhättan.
The world of humans has undergone rapid developments of technological innovation during the recent few decades. Consensus exists around the very fact that our modern ways of living and interacting with humans, organizations, and society, is heavily influenced by the implications of digital technologies. At the same time, the challenges of coping with the increasing effect of digital technologies creates incentive for humans, organizations, and society to develop knowledge and skills that make them resilient towards emerging relationships with future digital technologies.
The notion of being ‘resilient’ is defined differently depending on the research context. For instance, in the context of building an information system, Pulley & Wakefield (2001) define resilience as: “… resilience provides the ability to recover quickly from change, hardship or misfortune. It is associated with elasticity, buoyancy, and adaptation. Resilient people demonstrate flexibility, durability, and attitude of optimism, and openness to learning. A lack of resilience is signaled by burnout, fatigue, malaise, depression, defensiveness, and cynicism”. Resilience on system and society level is becoming critical, as we face environmental challenges and geopolitical tensions, both of which make the digital systems and communication networks at the same time very important and vulnerable. As such, for this conference, we position the notion of a resilient future as a future where humans might have to develop flexible abilities for adapting, recovering, and sensing change.
One thought that arises as we move into the future is: how can the development of knowledge and innovative digital technology help us to develop abilities and skills for a resilient future? Design Science Research (DSR), aims to bridge the development of technologies that are useful for humans, organizations, and society, with the development of research knowledge that contributes to a scientific discourse of methodological and conceptual/theoretical foundations for doing IS-research.
The theme of the 19th International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST 2024) therefore encourages the DSR community to contemplate DSR-studies from an innovative and pragmatically useful perspective for contributing to a resilient future. Research papers, panels, prototypes, and workshops will thus be requested to address challenges faced by humans, organizations, and society. The organizers believe that the conference will be both impactful and meaningful in addressing a nuanced space of solutions and thinking around how to do design science research for a resilient future.
References
Pulley, M. L., & Wakefield, M. (2001). Building resiliency: How to thrive in times of change. Center for Creative Leadership.
