About the Special Issue
The European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS) invites submissions for a special issue on Theorizing the Data-AI Nexus, launched at the Theorizing Data & AI Conference.
The issue welcomes conceptual and empirical work that theorizes the evolving relationship between data and AI in organizations — how data constitutes AI, how AI produces data, and how this entanglement reshapes knowledge, work, and organizing. A broad range of paradigms is welcome (interpretive, processual, critical, computational, design-oriented).
Focus areas
01
Data and AI co-constitution
How do datasets, data practices, computational architectures, and their entanglement shape what AI systems can know and do?
02
AI as a data-maker
How does AI actively generate, classify, transform, and filter data, including through AI agents and recursive uses of synthetic data?
03
Data decoupled from practice
What happens when increasingly abstracted and standardized data become detached from the situated practices, knowledge, and contexts from which they originate?
04
The social life of the data–AI nexus
How do institutional histories, organizational memory, collective sensemaking, and AI-mediated data work shape the production and interpretation of data and AI?
Key dates
- Call launch: 28 May 2026
- Initial submission deadline: 15 January 2027
- Final revision deadline: 15 January 2028
Guest Editors
Cristina Alaimo
Professor of Information Systems at ESSEC Business School. Her research asks what data are, how they are made, and how data and AI reshape organizations, markets, and society, including how organizations design agentic AI that can act, learn, and be held to account. She co-authored Data Rules: Reinventing the Market Economy (MIT Press, 2024, EGOS Book Award 2025) and serves as Senior Editor at Organization Studies and the European Journal of Information Systems.
Lauren Waardenburg
Assistant Professor at ESSEC Business School. She is mainly interested in the role of technology in occupational emergence and change, as well as the reconfiguration of work and organizing due to intelligent technologies. She has a specific interest in using ethnography as a research method for studying technology in practice.
Jonny Holmström
Professor of Information Systems at Umeå University and director and co-founder of the Swedish Center for Digital Innovation. His research interests include digital innovation, digital transformation, and digital entrepreneurship. His recent work examines how organizations combine domain knowledge with machine learning, particularly in the public sector.
Lior Zalmanson
Associate Professor at Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University, where he studies how artificial intelligence and digital technologies reshape work, organizations, and human agency. His research examines human–AI interaction, algorithmic management, digital platforms, and the changing design and governance of AI-mediated organizations.
Reza M. Baygi
Assistant Professor at VU Amsterdam. He researches how emerging technologies transform work, organizing, and activism. He approaches these topics through practice and process perspectives, with a particular focus on the dynamic flow of human–technology relations.
Associated Editors
| Aleksi Aaltonen | Ida Asadi Someh | Ioanna Constantiou |
| Domenico di Prisco | Mayur Joshi | Ekaterina Jussupow |
| Jannis Kallinikos | Tomislav Karačić | Stan Karanasios |
| Alexander Kempton | Angelos Kostis | Harris Kyriakou |
| Christine Legner | Kalle Lyytinen | Eric Monteiro |
| Jeff Parsons | Mike Power | Jan Recker |
| Paavo Ritala | Marta Stelmaszak Rosa | Lauri Wessel |
Full call & submission
| Manuscript deadline | 15 January 2027 |
| Full Call | Theorizing the Data–AI Nexus |
| Author instructions | Instructions for Authors |
| Submit | Taylor & Francis submission portal |
Questions: waardenburg@essec.edu · alaimo@essec.edu