Podcast appearances and mentions of Richard T Watson

In 2010, the Association for Information Systems formed a special interest group () to nurture an international community of academics that study the role of digital technologies in fostering environmentally, economically and socially sustainable development. Fifteen years later, we sit down with , the current SIGGreen president, to reflect on the progress we have made. What do we know about how digital technologies help greening our planet? What efforts in empirical, theoretical, and design work is still needed? Is our role to understand the role of digital technologies or do we need to push and enact change ourselves? We conclude that environmental questions and problems are now firmly on the radar screen of our discipline but more work needs to be done for information systems academics to transform the way we think about and use digital technologies.  Episode reading list Corbett, J., & Mellouli, S. (2017). Winning the SDG Battle in Cities: How an Integrated Information Ecosystem can Contribute to the Achievement of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. Information Systems Journal, 27(4), 427-461. Seidel, S., Recker, J., & vom Brocke, J. (2013). Sensemaking and Sustainable Practicing: Functional Affordances of Information Systems in Green Transformations. MIS Quarterly, 37(4), 1275-1299. Hasan, H., Ghose, A., & Spedding, T. (2009). Editorial for the Special Issue on IT and Climate Change. Australasian Journal of Information Systems, 16(2), 19-21. Watson, R. T., Corbett, J., Boudreau, M.-C., & Webster, J. (2011). An Information Strategy for Environmental Sustainability. Communications of the ACM, 55(7), 28-30. Jenkin, T. A., Webster, J., & McShane, L. (2011). An Agenda for 'Green' Information Technology and Systems Research. Information and Organization, 21(1), 17-40. Watson, R. T., Boudreau, M.-C., & Chen, A. J. (2010). Information Systems and Environmentally Sustainable Development:  Energy Informatics and New Directions for the IS Community. MIS Quarterly, 34(1), 23-38. Elliot, S. (2011). Transdisciplinary Perspectives on Environmental Sustainability: A Resource Base and Framework for IT-Enabled Business Transformation. MIS Quarterly, 35(1), 197-236. Kahlen, M., Ketter, W., & van Dalen, J. (2018). Electric Vehicle Virtual Power Plant Dilemma: Grid Balancing Versus Customer Mobility. Production and Operations Management, 27(11), 2054-2070. Gholami, R., Watson, R. T., Hasan, H., Molla, A., & Bjørn-Andersen, N. (2016). Information Systems Solutions for Environmental Sustainability: How Can We Do More? Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 17(8), 521-536. Corbett, J., & El Idrissi, S. C. (2022). Persuasion, Information Technology, and the Environmental Citizen: An Empirical Study of the Persuasion Effectiveness of City Applications. Government Information Quarterly, 39(4), 101757. Degirmenci, K., & Recker, J. (2023). Breaking Bad Habits: A Field Experiment About How Routinized Work Practices Can Be Made More Eco-efficient Through IS for Sensemaking. Information & Management, 60(4), 103778. Zeiss, R., Ixmeier, A., Recker, J., & Kranz, J. (2021). Mobilising Information Systems Scholarship For a Circular Economy: Review, Synthesis, and Directions For Future Research. Information Systems Journal, 31(1), 148-183. Haudenosaunee Confederacy. (2025). Values. . The Stakeholder Alignment Collaborative. (2025). The Consortia Century: Aligning for Impact. Oxford University Press. Hovorka, D. and Corbett, J. (2012) IS Sustainability Research: A trans-disciplinary framework for a ‘grand challenge”. 33rd International Conference on Information Systems, Orlando, Florida. Hovorka, D. S., & Peter, S. (2021). Speculatively Engaging Future(s): Four Theses. MIS Quarterly, 45(1), 461-466. Gümüsay, A. A., & Reinecke, J. (2024). Imagining Desirable Futures: A Call for Prospective Theorizing with Speculative Rigour. Organization Theory, 5(1), . Kotlarsky, J., Oshri, I., & Sekulic, N. (2023). Digital Sustainability in Information Systems Research: Conceptual Foundations and Future Directions. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 24(4), 936-952. Gray, P., Lyytinen, K., Saunders, C., Willcocks, L. P., Watson, R. T., & Zwass, V. (2006). How Shall We Manage Our Journals in the Future?  A Discussion of Richard T. Watson's Proposals at ICIS 2004. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 18(14), 2-41. Saldanha, T. J. V., Mithas, S., Khuntia, J., Whitaker, J., & Melville, N. P. (2022). How Green Information Technology Standards and Strategies Influence Performance: Role of Environment, Cost, and Dual Focus. MIS Quarterly, 46(4), 2367-2386. Leidner, D. E., Sutanto, J., & Goutas, L. (2022). Multifarious Roles and Conflicts on an Inter-Organizational Green IS. MIS Quarterly, 46(1), 591-608. Wunderlich, P., Veit, D. J., & Sarker, S. (2019). Adoption of Sustainable Technologies: A Mixed-Methods Study of German Households. MIS Quarterly, 43(2), 673-691. Melville, N. P. (2010). Information Systems Innovation for Environmental Sustainability. MIS Quarterly, 34(1), 1-21. Edwards, P. N. (2013). A Vast Machine. MIT Press. Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W. (1972). The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's Project on the Predicament of Mankind. Universe Books. Over the Hedge. (2006). . McPhearson, T., Raymond, C. M., Gulsrud, N., Albert, C., Coles, N., Fagerholm, N., Nagatsu, M., Olafsson, A. S., Niko, S., & Vierikko, K. (2021). Radical Changes are Needed for Transformations to a Good Anthropocene. npj Urban Sustainability, 1(5), .   

Many of the earliest time technologies were used to mark sacred time -- time set apart for the divine. But with the Industrial Revolution, efficient time use became its own sacred value. We now live in the age of capitalist time, where time is money and must be spent as productively as possible. As we struggle with a global pandemic, it's time to rethink what we hold sacred.GuestsAhmed Ragab, Richard T. Watson Associate Professor of Science and Religion, and affiliate associate professor of the history of science at Harvard University.Mary Gray, associate professor of informatics at the University of Indiana at Bloomington, fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society and a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research.

How did pious medieval Muslims experience health and disease? Rooted in the prophet’s experiences with medicine and healing, Muslim pietistic literature developed cosmologies in which physical suffering and medical interventions interacted with religious obligations and spiritual health. Ahmed Ragab discusses his recent publication, Piety and Patienthood in Medieval Islam. Ragab is Richard T. Watson Associate Professor of Science and Religion at Harvard Divinity School. Respondents: Mark Jordan, Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School Nancy Khalek, William A. Dyer Jr. Assistant Professor of the Humanities, Brown University Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at http://hds.harvard.edu/.

Ahmed Ragab, Richard T. Watson Assistant Professor of Science and Religion at HDS, discusses his recent publication with three respondents. The three respondents will be: Shigehisa Kuriyama, Reischauer Institute Professor of Cultural History, Professor and Chair of the Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Professor in the Dept. of History of Science at Harvard University; Roy Mottahadeh, Gurney Professor of Islamic History at Harvard University; and Charles Stang, Professor of Early Christian Thought at HDS. Learn more about Harvard Divinity School and its mission to illuminate, engage, and serve at www.hds.harvard.edu.

Morning Prayers service with speaker Ahmed Ragab, Richard T. Watson Assistant Professor of Science and Religion at Harvard Divinity School, on Friday, September 25, 2015.