Dear Colleagues,

In an era of pandemic like COVID-19, we need to rethink fundamentally our ways of living, working and collaborating with other people. We need to use many of our methods and tools more intelligently to adapt to a new environment. Taleb’s 2007 ‘Black Swan’ phenomenon forces us to collaborate with people, companies and organizations totally differently from traditional ways. IoT, AI, Intelligent Systems, Cyber Physical Systems and their roles become much more important in a ‘socially-distanced’ society. COVID-19 has brought new challenges and opportunities to our daily lives. We need new forms of digital collaboration tools, we need new ways to collaborate and we need new core values and methods of collaboration – which triggers the quest to redesign collaboration tools and methods.

Information systems and information technology have long played a major role in supporting sustainability goals, and a substantial research strand on “green IS/IT” has existed for many years. However, motivated by observing positive side effects caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as positive ecological effects through less travel and more virtualized collaboration, we believe that there are many more and not yet understood effects that IT and IS can have on ecological and social sustainability goals, particularly through the virtualization of communication and collaboration. While there are obvious advantages, there are also downsides and challenges which require research activities to detect, understand, and mitigate those. Therefore, this Special Issue holds the potential to make a substantial contribution to the extant literature by adding a new perspective and new domain of ‘sustainability through IT/IS’, with a focus on the role of digital collaboration.

While digital collaboration contributes to ecological sustainability, it also holds potential for social sustainability. An example of how firms use digital collaboration technologies to exhibit social responsibility is ‘impact sourcing’. Underprivileged or marginalized parts of society are enabled to become part of the global workforce and thus to actively participate in a prospering global society. Impact sourcing providers have shown various ways of how to help people leave poverty and create a basis for a self-determined life. However, there are also challenges and pitfalls; research is needed to understand how IS/IT can be used to enable and facilitate higher-level forms of impact sourcing (i.e., more than very repetitive “clickwork”) and contribute to a equalized world of digital labor.

Social collaboration recognizes social needs. It shares visions for the world. Collaboration through social networks facilitates the achievement of something novel and meaningful for the participants. Collaboration outputs are shared feelings, common goals, considerate caring, and purposeful outcomes for social innovation. Universities, institutions, and companies are integrated within a collaborative network, sharing a common goal to improve the understanding of global entrepreneurial talent management. Social collaboration enables us to establish shared values not only with academic partners but also with people we have not yet known around the world. Global virtual teams are sharing the benefits of smart collaboration technologies beyond time and space, and even beyond country borders.

Educating young talent with global mindsets and creativity will be a crucial priority for us in the new world. Young talent is at the forefront of globalization. Young talent is driven by a new set of values: work-life balance value, characterized by an entrepreneurial mindset, continuous propensity to learn, flexibility and creativity. The future of work challenges us to shift our thinking to a post-generational mindset and identify behaviors that unite and build strength across generations.

In conclusion, this Special Issue invites research papers and case studies related to the following sub-topics:

• Sustainability enabled and facilitated through digital collaboration;
• The role of digital collaboration for corporate sustainability strategies and in sustainability reporting;
• The role of digital collaboration for sustainable (global) supply chain management;
• The role of digital collaboration for impact sourcing and other forms of sustainability-focused outsourcing engagements;
• Institutional support for sustainability-driven digital collaboration initiatives in business, education, and society;
• Digital collaboration for intelligent applications;
• Social collaboration using online social networks across countries;
• AI applications supporting virtual teams’ collaboration;
• Motivating factors for global digital collaboration;
• Digital collaboration cases on Big-Data analytics ;
• Challenges of managing cross-organizational/cross-cultural virtual teams;
• Industry-specific and organization-specific case studies on digital collaboration;
• Digital collaboration studies at country, industry, firm, project, team, or individual levels;
• SME case studies on social innovations or talent management;
• Global virtual teams and their cultural and leadership factors;
• Case studies on multi-national collaboration.

Prof. Dr. Ilsang Ko
Prof. Dr. Daniel Beimborn
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• global digital collaboration
• social collaboration
• global virtual teams
• virtual leadership
• talent management
• sustainability
• impact sourcing