Speaker: Prof. Dragos Vieru

Abstract: The Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) concept, driven by an EU directive, has significantly engaged firms and academics due to the challenges in reporting ESG data. Manual data collection is labor-intensive and prone to errors, complicated by fragmented data across various retrieval systems. Digital platform ecosystems (DPE) are viewed as crucial for managing ESG initiatives, offering vital support in data sharing and mitigating data-related risks. These platforms need to monitor, collect, and analyze ESG data efficiently, despite the lack of regulatory standards and fragmented essential knowledge among stakeholders. This research project examines how a team comprising a platform owner, a complementor, and a user co-designs ESG reporting features using an ecosystem approach within a multi-boundary digital platform context. Employing Action Design Research (ADR), the first part identifies and addresses ten design challenges, while the second part applies four knowledge boundary-spanning mechanisms to develop an explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) tool for ESG reporting. Recent advancements in understanding human-AI interactions highlight a gap in XAI research, particularly in grasping real-world user needs for AI transparency and the practical requirements for developing explainable AI tools. Our study emphasizes the necessity of design support to navigate the technical and practical challenges in crafting transparent algorithmic solutions on ESG platforms.

Short Bio: Dragos is a Full Professor at TELUQ University in Montréal, Canada, and a researcher at the Research Group in Information Systems of HEC Montréal. He holds a Ph.D. in IT management from HEC Montréal, and his research interests are in IT-enabled organizational change, global IT digital sourcing, and ethics in IT. His work has been published in journals such as the Journal of Knowledge Management, Information Systems Management, International Journal of Information Management, and the Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases. Dragos’ current research involves organizational IT ambidexterity and digital platform ecosystems.