Special Issue: Information Management in Times of Crisis: The Role of Mindfulness and Digital Resilience for Individuals and Organisations

The recent COVID-19 crisis can be considered as unmanageable in multiple respects. The reactions and attitudes of individuals and organisations have shifted from the normative patterns of the past to ever-changing templates. Everyone has been struggling to adapt to new work routines, ensure business continuity and respond to change. One of the major challenges has been the widespread existence of unreliable information which affects decision-making (Gachter et al. 2010).

Previous research has shown that misinformation and specifically fake news are the equivalents to a 'wildfire' when their diffusion is compared to other types of news, such as genuine news (Dwivedi et al. 2018; Vishwanath 2015). The spread of false information during the COVID-19 pandemic has led to the preventable loss of lives, but also disruptions in business continuity planning (Dwivedi et al., 2020). Circulating misleading information concerning tourism, supply chain alertness, other business activities and innovation processes, has further deepened the existing humanitarian crisis (Blyth & Mallett, 2020). At the same time, WHO and government policies are impacted directly by fake news and false information, therefore making it necessary to rely on mindfulness and digital resilience practices, as well as reliable technologies for effective information management (Endsley 2018).

We consider digital resilience and mindfulness as being equally vital for recovering from and adapting to shocks in times of crisis. On the one hand, digital resilience is typically understood as building mechanisms that instil systems with trust and integrity (Rai, 2020), which support recovery from or adjusting to major disruptions (Boh, Constantinides, Padmanabhan and Viswanathan, 2020). Mindfulness, in turn, denotes individual and organisational alertness and awareness, which allow “resist[ing] bandwagon pressure” and leading to more reliable solutions (Dernbecher & Beck, 2017, p.121). As a result, digital resilience and mindfulness can work complementary towards handling and mitigating the impacts of fake news, misinformation, disinformation and eventually overcoming and recovering from critical events and shocks.

This Special Issue seeks contributions from researchers and practitioners at the crossroad of IT mindfulness and digital resilience during periods of crisis (such as COVID-19, but not exclusively) for the purposes of Information Management. We are interested in the social, environmental and organisational implications, influencing and driving the development and implementation of IT applications and/or services. We are also interested in the various technologies that can be potentially used for supporting digital resilience and/or mindfulness for Information Management. Among such technologies, we note for example Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Analytics and advanced decision support systems, which may disrupt the spread of misleading information and prevent the damage caused and/or support decision-making in times of crisis (Jayawickrama et al. 2019; Roozenbeek and van der Linden 2019), when business continuity, IT mindfulness and digital resilience are of the utmost importance (Dubey et al. 2019). We welcome systematic literature reviews, conceptual papers as well as empirical work, but all contributions must be novel and original.

A list of indicative topics:

• Socio-economic impact of fake news on communities

• Human behaviours and emotions towards fake news and false information

• ICTs for addressing misinformation during crises

• Challenges in the adoption of digital resilience strategies during periods of crisis

• Ethical implications around data sharing in times of crises (for organisations, society and individuals)

• Decision making for IT Mindfulness strategies in organisational contexts during crises

• Combining Crisis Management and Mindfulness strategies for effective Information Management

Manuscript Submission

Articles must be written in higher Standard English. Authors must follow the submission guidelines provided by the Journal https://www.springer.com/journal/10796/submission-guidelines. Authors should submit their manuscripts via the Submission Portal at https://www.editorialmanager.com/isfi and the authors need to select "Special Issue: Information Management in Times of Crisis: the Role of IT Mindfulness and Digital Resilience for Individuals and Organisations" during the submission process.

There will be two forms of submission types:

• This call is an open call; the best submissions from the open call will be selected on a competitive basis.

• However, we may invite a few, extended high-quality, relevant submissions for consideration from ECIS2021 Conference Track 3 on 'AI in IS Research and Practice" http://ecis2021.com/tracks-description and the ICDSST 2021 International Conferencehttps://icdsst2021.wordpress.com/

All submitted papers and invited papers will go through peer review; if an invited conference paper does not receive a satisfactory review, the paper will not be considered for the Special Issue.

Key Dates

• Full paper submissions deadline: 31 July 2021

• Notification of 1st round reviews: 15 October 2021

• Revised manuscript due: 15 January 2022

• Notification of 2nd round reviews: 1 March 2022

• Final version due: 15 April 2022

View the Information Management in Times of Crisis: The Role of Mindfulness and Digital Resilience for Individuals and Organisations here.