2023 SSHRC Insight Development Grants

The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) is the federal research funding agency that promotes and supports research and training in the humanities and social sciences.

Emmanuelle Vaast Professor in Information Systems winner of AIS Fellow Award

Desautels’ event highlights innovative research and recognizes scholars

On Friday, May 13, members of the Desautels Faculty of Management gathered to celebrate the innovative and impactful research conducted by its scholars. 

Fifteen professors were on hand to deliver two-minute presentations of their most interesting and research.

Professors Vaast and Pinsonneault awarded 2021 SSHRC Insight Grant

Emmanuelle Vaast, Professor of Information Systems and Alain Pinsonneault, Professor of Information Systems, awarded 2021 SSHRC Insight Grant

A Seat at the Table and a Room of Their Own: Interconnected processes of social media use at the intersection of gender and occupation

Author: Emmanuelle Vaast Publication: Organization Studies, Forthcoming Abstract:

Theorizing Process Dynamics with Directed Graphs: A Diachronic Analysis of Digital Trace Data

Authors: B. Pentland, Emmanuelle Vaast and J. Ryan Wolf Publication: MIS Quarterly, Forthcoming Abstract:

The growing availability of digital trace data has generated unprecedented opportunities for analyzing, explaining, and predicting the dynamics of process change. While research on process organization studies theorizes about process and change, and research on process mining rigorously measures and models business processes, there has so far been limited research that measures and theorizes about process dynamics. This gap represents an opportunity for new Information Systems (IS) research. This research note lays the foundation for such an endeavor by demonstrating the use of process mining for diachronic analysis of process dynamics. We detail the definitions, assumptions, and mechanics of an approach that is based on representing processes as weighted, directed graphs. Using this representation, we offer a precise definition of process dynamics that focuses attention on describing and measuring changes in process structure over time. We analyze process structure over two years at four dermatology clinics. Our analysis reveals process changes that were invisible to the medical staff in the clinics. This approach offers empirical insights that are relevant to many theoretical perspectives on process dynamics.

Unveiling the relevance of academic research: A practice-based view

Authors: M. Marabelli, and Emmanuelle Vaast Publication: Information and Organization, Volume 30, Issue 3, September 2020, 100314 Abstract:

When Digital Technologies Enable and Threaten Occupational Identity: The Delicate Balancing Act of Data Scientists

Authors: Emmanuelle Vaast and Alain Pinsonneault Publication: MIS Quarterly, Forthcoming Abstract:

Occupations are increasingly embedded with and affected by digital technologies. These technologies both enable and threaten occupational identity and create two important tensions: they make the persistence of an occupation possible while also potentially rendering it obsolete and they bring about both similarity and distinctiveness of an occupation with regard to other occupations. Based on the critical case study of an online community dedicated to data science, we investigate longitudinally how data scientists address the two tensions of occupational identity associated with digital technologies and reach transient syntheses in terms of “optimal distinctiveness” and “persistent extinction.” We propose that identity work associated with digital technologies follows a composite life-cycle and dialectical process. We explain that people constantly need to adjust and redefine their occupational identity (i.e., how they define who they are and what they do). We contribute to scholarship on digital technologies and identity work by illuminating how people deal in an ongoing manner with digital technologies that simultaneously enable and threaten their occupational identity.

Professor Emmanuelle Vaast received Best Paper Award in Academy of Management Annals

Professor Emmanuelle Vaast's paper published in the Academy of Management Annals, "Social Media and Their Affordances for Organizing: A Review and Agenda for Research," with Paul M. Leonardi were co-winners for the Best Paper Award for Volume 11 (2017).

The mission of Annals is to publish up-to-date, in-depth and integrative reviews of research advances in management.

Emmanuelle Vaast awarded ISR Runner-up for Best Paper 2016

Professor Emmanuelle Vaast's paper published in Information Systems Research, "Folding and Unfolding: Balancing Openness and Transparency in Open Source Communities," with Maha Shaikh has been awarded the runner-up for the best paper award for papers published in 2016 at ISR.

Social Media Affordances or Connective Action: An Examination of Microblogging Use During the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Authors: Emmanuelle Vaast, Hani Safadi, Liette Lapointe, and Bogdan Negoita

Publication: MIS Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4, 2017, pp. 1179-1205

Abstract: This research questions how social media use affords new forms of organizing and collective engagement. The concept of connective action has been introduced to characterize such new forms of collective engagement in which actors coproduce and circulate content based upon an issue of mutual interest. Yet, how the use of social media actually affords connective action still needed to be investigated.

Mixed methods analyses of microblogging use during the Gulf of Mexico oil spill bring insights to this question and reveal, in particular, how multiple actors enacted emerging and interdependent roles with their distinct patterns of feature use. The findings allow us to elaborate upon the concept of connective affordances as collective level affordances actualized by actors in team interdependent roles. Connective affordances extend research on affordances as a relational concept by considering not only the relationships between technology and users but also the interdependence type among users and the effects of this interdependence onto what users can do with the technology. This study contributes to research on social media use by paying close attention to how distinct patterns of feature use enact emerging roles.

Adding to IS scholarship on the collective use of technology, it considers how the patterns of feature use for emerging groups of actors are intricately and mutually related to each other.

Read full article: MIS Quarterly

Matters of visuality in legitimation practices: Dual iconographies in a meeting room

Authors: Vaujany, F.X., Vaast, E. 

Publication: Organization 

Abstract: 

Social Media and Their Affordances for Organizing: A Review and Agenda for Research

Authors: Leonardi, P., Vaast, E. 

Publication: Academy of Management Annals 

Abstract: 

Folding and Unfolding: Balancing Openness and Transparency in Open Source Communities

Authors: Vaast, E., Shaikh, M.

Publication: Information Systems Research 

Abstract: 

Congratulations to Associate Professor Emmanuelle Vaast of Information Systems on receiving the 2016 Best Paper Award by Information & Organization

Congratulations to Associate Professor Emmanuelle Vaast of Information Systems on receiving the 2016 Best Paper Award by Information & Organization for "Speaking as One, But Not Speaking up: Dealing with New Moral Taint in an Occupational Online Community". 

Authors: Vaast, E., Levina, N.