Digital Resilience for the Climate Crisis: A Multi-Perspective Analysis
Prof. BOH Wai Fong
Professor of Finance, Accounting and Finance Department, University of Leeds, United Kingdom
Date: 12 May 2025 (Monday)
Time: 10:00 – 11:30
Venue: E22-G015
Host: Prof. Yan LIN, Assistant Professor in Business Intelligence and Analytics
Abstract
This commentary explores multiple perspectives on the potential for digital technologies to improve organizational resilience in the context of climate change. A multitude of new perspectives are needed to address this complex problem space, especially since it encompasses a wide variety of phenomena, including floods and landslides, disruptions to global supply chains, heat waves, biodiversity loss, greenhouse gas emissions, and food insecurity. We assembled diverse sets of six scholarly teams spanning multiple problem topics, research approaches, and theoretical perspectives. Each team identified and problematized a specific facet of digital resilience for the climate crisis. The perspectives cover a wide range of rich narratives, including digital resilience in the context of floods and landslides in Brazil and Indonesia; conceptual development efforts to incorporate the natural environment alongside people and technology; the reconceptualization of the problem space in terms of time and type; and two contextualized applications of digital resilience in the domains of global supply chains and carbon emissions tracking. This research commentary thus presents a comprehensive examination and interrogation into digital resilience for the climate crisis, out of which emerged four transcending themes: the need to integrate nature into sociotechnical thinking, to examine actions at both micro and macro levels, to include both reactive and proactive strategies, and to view the climate crisis as a process rather than a series of events. This commentary aims to motivate other scholars to join us in developing the fundamental knowledge and practical solutions needed to achieve digital resilience for the climate crisis.
Speaker
BOH Wai Fong is President’s Chair and Professor of Information Systems at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. She is currently Vice President for Lifelong Learning and Alumni Engagement for NTU, and she serves as co-Director for NTU Centre in Computational Technologies for Finance (CCTF). She received her PhD from the Tepper School of Business at the Carnegie Mellon University. Her research interests are in the areas of knowledge and innovation management and entrepreneurship. She has published in leading IS and management journals, including Management Science, MIS Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Association Information Systems, Research Policy, and Information & Organization. She has also won multiple awards, including an award for the Top Five IS Publications of the Year 2007. She has served as Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly, and Associate Editor for Management Science and ISR. Further, she is currently on or had been previously on the editorial board of multiple journals, including Journal of Management Information Systems, Organization Science, Journal of Strategic Information Systems and Information & Organization. Prof Boh has also served as Program Co-Chair for ICIS 2019, and served as Doctoral Consortium Co-Chair for PACIS 2018 and 2013. She was recently awarded Singapore’s Public Administration Medal (Silver) and published a book on Identifying Business Opportunities through Innovation. In 2023, she received the AIS Fellow Award and the AIS Sandra Slaughter Service Award.
All are welcome!
