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Item Feedback and formative assessment—looking backwards to move forward(Discover, 2025) McCarthy, Nora; Neville, Karen; Pope, AndrewThe terms ‘feedback’ and ‘formative assessment’ are ubiquitous in education, but their conceptual boundaries are ill-defined. This perspective piece explores the meaning of ‘feedback’ and ‘formative assessment’, revealing the entanglement and confusion that exists between these two terms. An argument for clarity of terms is made, to avoid ambiguity and to create a common language. A suggestion is made to re-embrace the original definition components of ‘feedback’, as all of the original parameters of this term, when well established in industry and biology, did not migrate into education. Incorporating the original definition components into the current definition of ‘feedback’ in education circles may negate the need for the term ‘formative assessment’ altogether, which carries with it the inevitable negative connotations associated with the word assessment. Words matter. Medical education, with the introduction of competency-based medical education (CBME) and entrustable professional activities offers a timely opportunity to re-visit such terms, with ‘feedback’ and ‘formative assessment’ being central to these processes. While we use medical education as an example to explore how looking backwards and incorporating all aspects of the original feedback definition can help us to move forward with clarity of terms, we mainly seek to bring new perspectives and hope to encourage necessary conversations on ‘feedback’ and ‘formative assessment’ entanglement. © The Author(s) 2025.Item Theorising the digital artefact in dark sides research(AIS Electronic Library (AISeL), 2025) McCarthy, Stephen; Busch, Peter AndréRapid advancements in the sophistication and diffusion of advanced digital technologies such as AI warrant repose to consider their unintended consequences or ‘dark sides’. While more attention has been directed towards the ethical implications of disruptive technologies, discussions on the underlying materiality of the digital artefacts are often missing. In this article, we call for IS researchers to better conceptualise how technical objects contribute towards the emergence of negative outcomes for users, either intentionally or unintentionally. Examples are provided of conceptual and empirical papers that have sought to open the ‘black box’ of technology to elucidate this issue. We propose sociomateriality as a theoretical lens to guide studies in this area and present a future research agenda that encourages novel methodological approaches such as design science to uncover the dark side of emerging digital artefacts.Item Boundary spanning and practical impact in is research: a bourdieusian analysis(John Wiley & Sons Ltd., 2024) McCarthy, Stephen; Scholta, Hendrik; Hausvik, Geir Inge; Busch, Peter AndréInformation systems (IS) research often seeks to deliver practical impact in addition to the traditional requirement for theoretical contribution. While an admirable goal, it is nevertheless a challenging prospect, as key questions remain around how best to facilitate a relationship between IS academic and practitioner communities. To explore this issue, we analyse multi-case study data from interviews with 24 IS practitioner doctorates, industry contact points, and senior IS academics who sought to create a joint field between academia and practice during their research. Our findings reveal several boundary spanning activities needed to traverse field boundaries and maintain the joint field's existence across the stages of proof-of-concept, proof-of-value, and proof-of-use. Building on insights from the work of Pierre Bourdieu, we further discuss how IS practitioner doctorates operationalised capital, doxa, and habitus to achieve varying degrees of practical impact in their work. Action-oriented recommendations are presented to support practical impact going forward including creolised messages and the mobilisation of capital to change inter-field relationships. By adapting Bourdieu's Theory of Practice to the engaged scholarship discourse in IS, we contribute new insights into how the academia-practice gap might be addressed.Item A socio-cognitive perspective of knowledge integration in digital innovation networks(Elsevier B.V., 2025) McCarthy, Stephen; O’Raghallaigh, Paidi; Kelleher, Carol; Adam, Frédéric; Science Foundation IrelandDigital innovation is a complex process in which actors seek to create new value pathways by combining digital resources in a layered modular architecture. While IS scholarship has a rich tradition of research on developing and implementing digital artefacts within intra-organisational contexts, our understanding of knowledge integration across distributed innovation networks is nascent and under-theorised. This is an important area of research given the rising importance of digital innovation networks and the challenges faced in integrating specialised knowledge, especially given the greater diversity, speed, reach, and scope made possible by digital technologies. Drawing on in-depth case study findings from a health IoT project involving multiple organisations and disciplines, we explore how knowledge is integrated across boundaries during the initiation stage of a digital innovation network. Our findings point to boundaries related to the digital platform’s organising vision, resource allocation, delivery roadmap, technical architecture, and intellectual property, to name but a few challenges. We then reveal five socio-cognitive modes of knowledge integration which actors strategically enact to cross syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic boundaries: Signalling, Assembling, Contesting, Discounting, and Finalising. The choice of mode depends on the perceived knowledge status (‘what they know’) and social status (‘who they are’) of network actors, which highlight the salience of both social and cognitive dependencies for knowledge integration. We further discuss the contribution of design objects for overcoming differences and distinctions between specialist actors in a digital innovation network.Item The critical success factors for Security Education, Training and Awareness (SETA) program effectiveness: a lifecycle model(Emerald, 2023-03-30) Alyami, Alyami; Sammon, David; Neville, Karen; Mahony, CarolannePurpose: This study explores the critical success factors (CSFs) for Security Education, Training and Awareness (SETA) program effectiveness. The questionable effectiveness of SETA programs at changing employee behavior and an absence of empirical studies on the CSFs for SETA program effectiveness is the key motivation for this study. Design/methodology/approach This exploratory study follows a systematic inductive approach to concept development. The methodology adopts the “key informant” approach to give voice to practitioners with SETA program expertise. Data are gathered using semi-structured interviews with 20 key informants from various geographic locations including the Gulf nations, Middle East, USA, UK and Ireland. Findings: In this study, the analysis of these key informant interviews, following an inductive open, axial and selective coding approach, produces 11 CSFs for SETA program effectiveness. These CSFs are mapped along the phases of a SETA program lifecycle (design, development, implementation and evaluation) and nine relationships identified between the CSFs (within and across the lifecycle phases) are highlighted. The CSFs and CSFs' relationships are visualized in a Lifecycle Model of CSFs for SETA program effectiveness. Originality/value: This research advances the first comprehensive conceptualization of the CSFs for SETA program effectiveness. The Lifecycle Model of CSFs for SETA program effectiveness provides valuable insights into the process of introducing and sustaining an effective SETA program in practice. The Lifecycle Model contributes to both theory and practice and lays the foundation for future studies.