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The purpose of this study is to show how the presence of change caused a shift in the roles and responsibilities of the internal audit function (IAF).

The methodological design/approach was constructed by combining specific aspects of widely known management accounting and organizational change frameworks. The theoretical premise was based on the old institutional economics component of institutional theory. As such, this study used the case study method to examine and analyze the impact of this change in eight specific organizations using the new two-tiered organizational change framework.

This new framework analyzes the multidimensional facets of organizational change in the IAF. From the findings, it was observed that the change can be evolutionary, episodic, continuous and/or teleological, and people, organisms and organizations that are subject to it will react or respond to that change in a myriad of ways.

Moreover, the implications of change can be environmental, socioeconomic and political.

This study makes an intellectual contribution by introducing a new two-tiered organizational change framework to explain the IAF’s response to the environmental change factor of regulation.

The purpose of this paper is to use translation theory to develop a framework (called FTRA) that explains how companies adopt agile methods in a discourse of fragmentation and articulation.

A qualitative multiple case study of six firms using the Scrum agile methodology. Data were collected using mixed methods and analyzed using three progressive coding cycles and analytic induction.

In practice, people translate agile methods for local settings by choosing fragments of the method and continuously re-articulating them according to the exact needs of the time and place. The authors coded the fragments as technological rules that share relationships within a framework spanning two dimensions: static-dynamic and actor-artifact.

For consistency, the six cases intentionally represent one instance of agile methodology (Scrum). This limits the confidence that the framework is suitable for other kinds of methodologies.

The FTRA framework and the technological rules are promising for use in practice as a prescriptive or even normative frame for governing methodology adaptation.

Framing agile adaption with translation theory surfaces how the discourse between translocal (global) and local practice yields the social construction of agile methods. This result contrasts the more functionalist engineering perspective and privileges changeability over performance.

The use of translation theory and the FTRA framework to explain how agile adaptation (in particular Scrum) emerges continuously in a process where method fragments are articulated and re-articulated to momentarily suit the local setting. Complete agility that rapidly and elegantly changes its own environment must, as a concomitant, rapidly and elegantly change itself. This understanding also elaborates translation theory by explaining how the articulation and re-articulation of ideas embody the means by which ideas travel in practice.

Physical social cues can influence the buyer and seller in business-to-business (B2B) marketing. The current behavioural model does not account for the role of implicit bias. The purpose of this paper is to present that relationship and introduce a process model to weaken implicit bias through training with the employment of transformational conversation.

With social cues as the predecessor to inferences, there is the potential for implicit bias to derail relationship building in a B2B context. The author’s qualitative field study offers guidance for businesses to make informed decisions about implicit bias training.

The study findings show that an interactive workshop following a process model with the addition of transformational conversation can weaken implicit bias.

The research was conducted with a small cohort of information technology professionals. More research should be done specifically with sellers and buyers in various industries over a longer period of time with periodic follow-up on sales performance and relationship building.

Minority groups had a combined buying power of $3.9tn in 2018. For sellers to succeed, they have to be able to modulate the implicit biases that interfere with good sales relationships.

This paper introduces implicit bias as a moderator into the conceptual framework of the behavioural response to social cues in the B2B context and offers a model of implicit bias training using a process model with transformational conversation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a process model (comprising of seven dimensions), for identifying online customer engagement patterns leading to recommendation. These seven dimensions are communication, interaction, experience, satisfaction, continued involvement, bonding, and recommendation.

The authors used a non-participant form of netnography for analyzing 849 comments from Australian banks Facebook pages. High levels of inter-coder reliability strengthen the study’s empirical validity and ensure minimum researcher bias and maximum reliability and replicability.

The authors identified 22 unique pattern of customer engagement, out of which nine patterns resulted in recommendation/advocacy. Engagement pattern communication-interaction-recommendation was the fastest route to recommendation, observed in nine instances (or 2 percent). In comparison, C-I-E-S-CI-B-R was the longest route to recommendation observed in ninety-six instances (or 18 percent). Of the eight patterns that resulted in recommendation, five patterns (or 62.5 percent) showed bonding happening before recommendation.

The authors limited the data collection to Facebook pages of major banks in Australia. The authors did not assess customer demography and did not share the findings with the banks.

The findings will guide e-marketers on how to best engage with customers to enhance brand loyalty and continuously be in touch with their clients.

Most models are conceptual and assume that customers typically journey through all the stages in the model. The work is interesting because the empirical study found that customers travel in multiple different ways through this process. It is significant because it changes the way the authors understand patterns of online customer engagement.

There is an increasing movement towards emergent organizations and an adaptation of Web‐based information systems (IS). Such trends raise new requirements for security policy development. One such requirement is that information security policy formulation must become federated and emergent. However, existing security policy approaches do not pay much attention to policy formulation at all – much less IS policy formulation for emergent organizations. To improve the situation, an information security meta‐policy is put forth. The meta‐policy establishes how policies are created, implemented and enforced in order to assure that all policies in the organization have features to ensure swift implementation and timely, ongoing validation.

Action research (AR), which emphasises collaboration between researchers and practitioners, is a qualitative research method that has much potential for the information systems (IS) field. AR studies of IS phenomena are now beginning to be published in the IS research literature. However, the rigour of many AR studies in IS can be improved. When AR has been published, the findings have frequently been emphasised at the expense of the process. In this article, we look at the process in AR projects, and look at some of the key choices and alternatives in controlling AR. We discuss three aspects of control: the procedures for initiating an AR project, those for determining authority within the project, and the degree of formalisation. We analyse seven recent AR projects in IS and from this analysis distil recommendations for determining these control structures.

The purpose of this paper is to suggest that translating a design theory (DT) into practice (e.g. creating an instance design artifact (IDA)) is hardly straight-forward and requires substantial creativity. Specifically the authors suggest that adopting a DT embodies a creativity passdown effect in which the creative thinking of a team of design theorist(s) inherent in DT invokes a creative mind of a team of artifact instance designer(s) in creating an IDA. In this study, the authors empirically investigate the creativity passdown effect through an action case in which a DT (DT nexus) was applied in creating an IDA (multi-outsourcing decision-making tool).

The case methodology applied here is described as an action case. An action case is a hybrid research approach that combines action research and interpretive case approaches. It combines intervention and interpretation in order to achieve both change and understanding. It is a form of soft field experiment with less emphasis on iteration and learning and more on trial and making. The approach is holistic in philosophy, and prediction is not emphasized. The intervention in the case was that of an instance designer team introducing a previously published DT as a basis for creating an IDA.

The experience in the action case suggests that using a DT in creating an IDA may encourage design thinking, and in certain way increase its power and practical relevance by fostering the creative mind of instance designers. Indeed, DTs provide a scientific basis for dealing with an instance problem, and this evokes the creativity mind of instance designers. Without such a scientific basis, it is a lot more challenging for instance artifact designers to deal with instance problems.

This study contributes to the literature concerning design science research, as it challenges the notion that adopting scientific design knowledge limits creativity inherent in creating IDA by illustrating creative elements involved in adopting DT as a basis for creating IDAs.

This study offers implications to practice, as it provides new insights regarding how DT can be used in instance design activities.

A report of this research previously appeared as a conference paper. However, the attached journal version has been completely rewritten to additionally contribute to the literature concerning design science research beyond the conference version. More specifically, in this version, the authors conceptualize adopting a DT to build an IDA as a theoretical basis, and the authors challenge the notion that adopting scientific design knowledge limits creativity inherent in creating IDA by illustrating creative elements involved in executing DT as a basis for creating IDAs.

Action researchers contend that a complex social process can be studied best by introducing changes into that process and observing the effects of these changes. The approach used by organizational consultants must also introduce change, but in this case, the theoretical development and the rigorous empirical foundation are prerequisite elements of the activity. Participative case studies are a common scientific report proceeding from consulting projects. This paper discusses the contrasts between the action research method, consulting, and participative case studies. Ethical problems arise when action research is knowingly or unknowingly conflated with consultation practices, since this combination makes the usual set of action research dilemmas even more problematic. An improved understanding of the action research‐consulting contrasts aids in distinguishing the contributions of participative case studies to the information systems literature.