Presenter
Jan Recker
Nucleus Professor for Information Systems and Digital Innovation
University of Hamburg
Abstract
We report on a 16-month ethnographic field study of a German software development company that decided to build its first AI-based software product, a smart assistant tool for HR queries. Through an inductive analysis, we develop a new process theory that conceptualises AI development as a composite teleological and dialectical process during which initial and exogenously “given sense” of the abstract problem and solution space of AI technology is gradually exchanged through a new and recursively formed sensemaking process that involves dialectical actions of sense hiding and sense specification that is eventually materialises in an implemented AI product. This process unfolds in three iterative stages that progress through both abstracting and concretizing practices. Our new theory offers new perspectives on the differences between AI development and traditional software development and provides several implications for how firms can better manage emerging versatile, general-purpose technologies in the future.
Biography
Jan Recker is Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow, AIS Fellow, Nucleus Professor for Information Systems and Digital Innovation at the University of Hamburg and Adjunct Professor at the QUT Business School, Australia.
In his research, Jan explores how firms deal with the opportunities and challenges of digitalization and artificial intelligence. In close collaboration with firms such as Edeka, Woolworths, Volkswagen, Apple, SAP, Hilti, Guidecom, Cognigy, Ultimaker, Vytal, Lufthansa, Ubisoft, and others, he studies how organizations and products are transformed through digital innovations, how entrepreneurial ventures bring new digital offerings to the market, how firms manage artificial intelligence, and how firms can build digital solutions to achieve sustainable development goals.
Jan has published in leading information systems, organisation science, management science, computer science, and sociology journals. His research has been featured in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, California Management Review, television, newspapers, and radio. He has also written popular textbooks on scientific research and data analysis, which are in use in over 500 institutions in over 60 countries. He presently holds Senior Editor roles for the MIS Quarterly, the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and the European Journal of Information Systems. Previously, he was Editor-in-Chief of the Communications of the Association for Information Systems.
Jan features in most rankings of top scientists. Amongst others, he is listed in the database of the top 2% scientists globally, and he is one of three scholars listed in Germany’s top 100 researcher rankings for both business and management as well as computer science. In 2019, he was named #1 business researcher under 40 years of age by the German Magazine Wirtschaftswoche, and he was the youngest academic ever to be named an AIS fellow in 2018.
In his spare time, he produces the “this IS research” podcast together with Nick Berente from the University of Notre Dame.