Human Flourishing in the Digital Age: What Responsibilities does/should the Researcher(s) Have? Perspectives from the AIS Community

Abstract

In this paper, we report on a panel discussion at the 2023 European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2023) held in Kristiansand, Norway. This panel discussed what role human flourishing plays in information systems (IS) research and what information systems researchers can do to promote it in increasingly digitalized societies. We believe that we, as IS researchers, are able to develop new and valuable insights regarding the challenges and opportunities of digital technologies and how this can be ameliorated into hope for a world where humans can live well. Hence, the panelists discussed and debated their perspectives on human flourishing and how information systems (IS) researchers can take the lead as well as become more sensitive to the ways we study human flourishing in the world. We use their rich discussion to develop four pathways for exploring the impact of digital technologies on human flourishing and offer an agenda for future research.