The guest editors of the special issue "Metaverse beyond the hype" hosted by Technological Forecasting and Social Change are organising an online event for authors to present their work and receive constructive feedback. The event will take place on the 19th of May online. More information about the format of the event will be announced in due course.
To register for this the event please email Prof Savvas Papagiannidis ()by the 28th of April. If you would like to present your work include in the email a 200 word abstract of your paper.
It has been 15 years since Second Life and other ubiquitous and pervasive online spaces sparked a great deal of interest in metaverses (Papagiannidis et al., 2007). Millions of users interact with one another in a virtual world, either using their existing identities in the physical world or more often than not, through new virtual identities which might not even be remotely linked to the identities of the players in the physical world. This has led to speculation that we are on the verge of a new development that is going to be as significant as the Internet itself (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2009). This early cyberspace lost its momentum as early attempts did not live up to the expectations of the hype generated.
Guest editors:
Special issue information:
It has been 15 years since Second Life and other ubiquitous and pervasive online spaces sparked a great deal of interest in metaverses (Papagiannidis et al., 2007). Millions of users interact with one another in a virtual world, either using their existing identities in the physical world or more often than not, through new virtual identities which might not even be remotely linked to the identities of the players in the physical world. This has led to speculation that we are on the verge of a new development that is going to be as significant as the Internet itself (Kaplan and Haenlein, 2009). This early cyberspace lost its momentum as early attempts did not live up to the expectations of the hype generated.
Much has changed since then, with the emergence of breakthrough technologies, increasing computing power, Internet broadband capacity, and the emergence and dominance of social platforms in governing exchanges between individuals. Both the technological landscape and social environment are now better prepared for the development of metaverses. Deep learning can provide powerful algorithms for the governance of virtual institutions, cloud computing and superfast broadband, allowing the massive computational data necessary for virtual exchanges. Blockchain technologies (e.g., Non-Fungible Tokens and virtual currencies) can replace real-world currencies, and the dominance of social platforms means that individuals are familiar with, and ready to accept, virtual worlds. The maturity of technologies, including extended-reality, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, blockchains, computer vision, edge and cloud computing and mobile networks, is currently driving the developments and the wider use of metaverses (Lee et al., 2021). Enhanced accessibility, the wider use of mobile technologies, social distancing due to the pandemic and the need for alternative ways of investing are some of the drivers of recent interest in the metaverse beyond the maturity of related technologies and infrastructure.
With recent predictions that the market will be worth up to 5 trillion USD and tech giants' announcements of investment plans, there can be little debate that the metaverses have the potential for significant developments in the near future. Indeed, Facebook announced that it was renaming itself to Meta, highlighting its intention to enhance its online social experiences into three dimensions and enabling users to complete activities that they cannot do in the physical world. At the same time, Microsoft announced the release of Mesh for Teams, aiming to elevate meeting experiences by offering mixed reality capabilities. These initiatives have renewed interest in the opportunities afforded by virtual spaces and the value they can generate for their users including the ability to communicate with one another, build avatars and feel 'present' in the new space as they explore virtual worlds where they can participate in activities ranging from games and entertainment to commerce, work, and education. It is not surprising that some scholars argue that the emergence of MetaSocieties as parallel societies is an inexorable phenomenon, such that every user (i.e. individual and organization) will have its virtual counterpart (Wang, Qin, Wang, & Hu, 2022).
Some innovative firms have already joined metaverse-like environments. For example, Nike has introduced its metaverse store which has been visited by approximately 7 million users worldwide (The Drum, 2022). Nike is not the only retailer that joined the hype; beauty (e.g. Estee Lauder) and fashion brands (e.g. Dolce & Gabbana), automotive (e.g. BMW), and consumer goods firms (e.g. Coca-Cola) all showed their excitement to join a new virtual environment where they can not only provide consumers with immersive experience but also sell virtual goods or tokens. At the same time, safety, privacy, and data security issues are of concern, and thus individual users and organizations alike are polarized in their prediction whether metaverse will indeed revolutionise the way users interact virtually.
Considering the above, we are, once more, faced with the question as to whether a three-dimensional immersive environment is the way forward when it comes to our online interactions. While new exciting metaverse implementations are expected in the near future, the use of metaverses is expected to disrupt the way we interact in the virtual world and bring notable implications for businesses and society (Dwivedi et al., 2022; Polyviou & Pappas, 2022). Multiverses are likely to transform entire business sectors, but as with the rise of social media in the previous decade, it will also come with great challenges, ranging from social issues relating to trust, privacy, bias, disinformation, the application of law as well as psychological aspects linked to addiction and the impact on vulnerable people (Dwivedi et al., 2022), to economic issues involving potential massive frauds (Smaili & de Rancourt-Raymond, 2022). Reflecting on our progress and evaluating our current position can make it possible to assess the challenges and the opportunities ahead, which is a timely and necessary task given the imminent emergence of metaverse platforms at scale.
Our special issue aims to go beyond the current hype and calls for more empirical works that offer valuable theoretical and practical insights into business and social opportunities and challenges. Recognising that theory and theoretical developments are essential for understanding how research progresses, knowledge accumulates and how research fields evolve (Rabetino et al, 2021), this call aims to encourage the synthesis and extension of an explosive accumulation of research that will trigger new research questions concerning novel opportunities and challenges the new virtual worlds can present. Although this can contain some review of the literature, submissions should go beyond systematic and other reviews and utilise fresh conceptual and methodological avenues for further development of the field. While theory building is the first step before theory testing (Thomas and Snow, 1994), testing theories can also set new research directions. Indeed, empirical research can provide a significant theoretical contribution by being robust in theory building (Colquitt and Zapata-Phelan, 2007). To that end, research methods such as interviews and observations of the metaverse users as well as experimental research can prove to be a useful starting point for theorising and proposing new avenues for research (Boer et al., 2015; Thomas and Snow, 1994). Both theoretical and early empirical research should offer practical value (Ketchen and Hult, 2011).
Topics of submission include, but are not limited to:
The above-mentioned research areas can be contextualised in any industry or sector (e.g. entertainment, office work, manufacturing, retailing, health, education, tourism etc).
Manuscript submission information: Kindly submit your paper to the Special Issue category through the online submission system of Technological Forecasting & Social Change. All the submissions should follow the general author guidelines of Technological Forecasting & Social Change available at: https://www.elsevier.com/journals/technological-forecasting-and-social-change/0040-1625/guide-for-authors
Schedule
References:
Boer H., Holweg M., Kilduff M., Pagell M., Schmenner R., Voss C., (2015) Making a meaningful contribution to theory. International Journal of Operations and Product Management. 35(9), 1231-1252
Colquitt J.A and Zapata-Phelan C.P. (2007) Trends in theory building and theory testing: a five-decade of the Academy of Management Journal. Academy of Management Review 50(6), 1281-1303
Dwivedi, Y. K., Hughes, L., Baabdullah, A. M., Ribeiro-Navarrete, S., Giannakis, M., Al-Debei, M. M., Dennehy, D., Metri, B., Buhalis, D., Cheung, C.M.K., Conboy, K., Doyle, R., Dubey, R., Dutot, V., Felix, R., Goyal, D.P., Gustafsson, A., Hinsch, C., Jebabli, I., Janssen, M., Kim, Y., Kim, J., Koos, S., Kreps, D., Kshetri, N., Kumar, V., Ooi, K., Papagiannidis, S., Pappas, I., Polyviou, A., Park, S., Pandey, N., Queiroz, M.M., Raman, R., Rauschnabel, P.A., Shirish, A., Sigala, M., Spanaki, K., Wei-Han Tan, G., Tiwari, M.K., Viglia, G., & Wamba, S. F. (2022). Metaverse beyond the hype: Multidisciplinary perspectives on emerging challenges, opportunities, and agenda for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management, 66, 102542.
Kaplan, A. M., & Haenlein, M. (2009). The fairyland of Second Life: Virtual social worlds and how to use them. Business horizons, 52(6), 563-572.
Ketchen D.J. and Hult G.T.M., (2011) Building theory about supply chain management: some tools form the organizational science. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 47(2), 12-18
Lee, L-H., Braud, T., Zhou, P., Wang, L., Xu, D., Lin, Z., Kumar, A., Bermejo, C., Hui, P. (2021). "All One Needs to Know about Metaverse: A Complete Survey on Technological Singularity, Virtual Ecosystem, and Research Agenda". Working Paper. 10.13140/RG.2.2.11200.05124/8.
Papagiannidis, S., Bourlakis, M. A., & Li, F. (2008). Making Real Money in Virtual Worlds: MMORPGs and Emerging Business Opportunities, Challenges and Ethical Implications in Metaverses. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 75, 610-622.
Polyviou, A., Pappas, I.O. (2022). "Metaverses and Business Transformation". IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology (IFIP AICT) proceedings.
Rabetino R., Kohtamaki M., Kowalkowski C., Baines T.S., Souse R. (2021) Servitization 2.0: evaluating and advancing servitization-related research through novel conceptual and methodological perspectives. International Journal of Operations & Production Management. 41(5), 437-464
Smaili, N., & de Rancourt-Raymond, A. (2022). Metaverse: welcome to the new fraud marketplace. Journal of Financial Crime(ahead-of-print).
Thomas J.B., and Snow C.C. (1994) Field research methods in strategic management: contributions to theory building and testing. Journal of Management Studies. 31(4), 457-480
Wang, F.-Y., Qin, R., Wang, X., & Hu, B. (2022). Metasocieties in metaverse: Metaeconomics and metamanagement for metaenterprises and metacities. IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems, 9(1), 2-7.
The Drum (2022) https://www.thedrum.com/news/2022/03/22/nearly-7-million-people-have-visited-nike-s-metaverse-store