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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.

Purpose
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.


Design/methodology/approach
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.


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


Research limitations/implications
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.


Practical implications
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.


Originality/value
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.

Purpose
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.


Design/methodology/approach
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.


Findings
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.


Research limitations/implications
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.


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


Social implications
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.


Originality/value
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.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report the findings of an in‐depth case study into virtual teamworking practices in a large petro‐chemical company.Design/methodology/approachBy drawing on the case study the paper offers a theoretical conceptualization of the development of commitment and personal trust relationships in a virtual teamworking context.FindingsThe paper argues that the durability of virtual teamworking depends largely on commitment and personal trust relationships, which may gradually dissipate over time without collocated, face‐to‐face social interactions. The virtual teamworking technologies alone may have limited scope in contributing to reproduction and reinforcement of commitment and personal trust relationships.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is based on an investigation in one organization that used a set of virtual teamworking technologies, which have been constantly improving in terms of capabilities and usability. In a business context investigated in this paper, the team working was not continuous, and the level and the range of activities varied over time. Future research should seek to explore whether personal and abstract trust can develop through continued online interaction.Practical implicationsFindings indicate that virtual teams should seek to manage expectations of the use of such technologies in their interactions. Human relationships, rather than technologies are therefore important for nurturing both personal and impersonal trust relationships, which is vital for durable virtual teams.Originality/valueThis paper argues that the long‐term virtual teamworking without face‐to‐face social interactions leads to a gradual dissipation of personal trust relationships, and subsequently loss of impersonal trust relations.

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.

This book is intended to mark the turn of the first century of the information age. The purpose of the book is to denote the transition from past to current to future investigations of the relationships and interactions among four major components: information systems (IS), information technology (IT), organizations, and society. These investigations share a primary focus on the interrelationships, not on the components themselves. The contributions to the book deal with the history of IS theory and technology, with the directions faced by those sharing the concerns of the field in its future research, and with attempts to draw these two views together. Five discourses collectively answer the key question: `What is the status of IS, as related to organizations and society, now that we stand at the juncture of the new century?' These discourses deal with the fundamental concepts, the classical and novel challenges, the conceptualization processes, automation, and new technology. What is our story as we turn the first century of the information age? We believe that IT is even more critical in social interaction in organizations, that human language barriers form fundamental roadblocks to IT implementation, that newer forms of IS integrate horizontally rather than vertically, and that the mix of skills and knowledge is changing. We also find that we lack integrated approaches to risk management, that new social costs are being unleashed on people by the wiring of society, and we are rushing headlong into globalized systems with our eyes closed. We reveal how the old end-user tension between central control and innovation has reappeared in the intranet world, how IT has been converted into a cultural commodity, and explore how the video screen has become the central means for discovering our relevance to our universe. We explore the surprising ways that machines have acquired human status, not through robotics, but rather through social construction. We discover new norms for defining the relationships and exchanges between human beings and computers. For example, gender defines IS success and web design defines social relationships. Consequently, we show how systems must now be developed interpretively, rather than through rational&endash;technical IS design principles used in the last century