**Dorothy Leidner: Profiles in Knowledge**

Originally published June 1, 2026

This is the 128th article in the Profiles in Knowledge series featuring thought leaders in knowledge management. Dorothy Leidner is the Leslie H. Goldberg Jefferson Scholars Foundation Eminent Professor of Business & AI Ethics and a Professor of Commerce at the University of Virginia. She is a Fellow and President of the Association for Information Systems (AIS). A renowned expert in knowledge management and information systems, her research focuses on AI ethics, virtual work, and the strategic, cultural, and ethical impacts of technology.

Dorothy has written on KM systems’ issues, challenges, and benefits. Her work explores the integration of knowledge management with AI and the interplay between organizational culture, information management, and knowledge sharing. She has investigated the responsible use of technology to protect individuals, addressing topics like employee data dignity and AI-driven workplace issues. Dorothy’s areas of expertise include AI ethics, personal digitalization, virtual and hybrid work forms, knowledge management, workforce digitalization, and theory development.

Dorothy formerly served as the Randall and Sandra Ferguson Professor of Information Systems at Baylor University, where she established a Ph.D. program in Information Systems in 2008. She has previously been on the faculty at INSEAD (Fontainebleau, France) and TCU (Fort Worth, TX), as well as a Visiting Faculty at ETH-Zurich (Switzerland), SMU (Dallas, TX), ITSEM (Mexico), Lund University (Sweden), the University of Caen (France), the University of Augsburg (Germany), the University of Mannheim (Germany), and Deakin University (Australia). She is currently a Visiting Scholar with Göteborg University (Sweden), a Professor Emeritus of Baylor University, and an Academic Research Fellow with the Center for Information Systems Research at MIT.

She has over 60 refereed journal publications in such journals as MIS Quarterly; Information Systems Research; Organization Science; Journal of Management Information Systems; Decision Sciences Journal; Journal of Strategic Information Systems; and MIS Quarterly Executive, among others, for which she has received 11 best paper awards and over 50,000 citations. She has held numerous important editorial roles: editor-in-chief of MIS Quarterly Executive, co-editor-in-chief of Data Base for Advances in IS, senior editor for MIS Quarterly, senior editor for Information Systems Research, senior editor for Journal of the Association for Information Systems, and senior editor for Journal of Strategic Information Systems, as well as associate editor for MIS Quarterly and Decision Sciences Journal.

Dorothy is co-chair of the Organizational Systems and Technology Track of the Hawaii Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), the longest-running international academic conference in the information systems discipline. She was the co-chair of the 2015 International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), program co-chair for the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) in 2018, and program co-chair for the Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) in 2010. She has held various other important conference roles, including track co-chair (ICIS 2019; ECIS 2011; ICIS 2010), panel chair (ECIS 2001, AMCIS 2009), doctoral consortium co-chair (AMCIS 2004), MIS camp co-chair (AMCIS 2002), junior faculty workshop chair (ICIS 2008 and 1998), and doctoral consortium faculty mentor (ICIS 2017, ECIS 1998, AMCIS 2005, ICIS 2007).

In 2018, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Lund University, Sweden. In 2019, she was named a Distinguished Alumna of Highland Park High School in Dallas, TX, and in 2021, she received the LEO lifetime achievement award from the Association for Information Systems.

Background

Education

• The University of Texas at Austin

1. Doctor of Philosophy, Information Systems, 1992 — Dissertation: Executive Information Systems: Their Impact on Executive Decision Making
2. Master of Business Administration, 1988 — Strategy Paper: The Competitive Use of Information Technology in the Healthcare Industry
3. Bachelor of Arts with High Honors (Magna Cum Laude) in Plan II, 1986 — Thesis: A Comparative Analysis of the Puritan Movements in England and the American Colonies

Experience

• University of Virginia — Leslie H. Goldberg Jefferson Scholars Foundation Distinguished Professor of AI Ethics, 2023 — Present
• Baylor University — Ferguson Professor of Information Systems, 1992–2022
• INSEAD — Associate Professor, 1997–1999

Profiles

• LinkedIn
• University of Virginia
• Baylor University — CV
• Facebook
• Cutter Consortium
• ScholarGPS

Content

• Google Scholar
• ResearchGate
• Academia
• Semantic Scholar
• Research.com
• ScienceDirect
• AIS Electronic Library (AISeL)
• JMIS — Journal of Management Information Systems
• ACM
• SSRN

Articles

• Communication and Trust in Global Virtual Teams
• Leadership Effectiveness in Global Virtual Teams
• Review and Theory Symbiosis: An Introspective Retrospective
• Knowledge management systems: issues, challenges, and benefits
• An Empirical Examination of the Influence of Organizational Culture on Knowledge Management Practices
• Studying Knowledge Management in Information Systems Research: Discourses and Theoretical Assumptions
• Knowledge management systems: Emerging views and practices from the field
• Bridging communities of practice with information technology in pursuit of global knowledge sharing
• Knowledge management perspective of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI)
• Examining the strategic alignment and implementation success of a KMS: A subculture-based multilevel analysis
• Understanding information culture: Integrating knowledge management systems into organizations
• Knowledge management systems: emerging views and practices from the field
• Knowledge management in IS research
• Knowledge Sharing Under Coopetition: The Role of Symbolic and Substantive Actions
• Differential innovativeness outcomes of user and employee participation in an online user innovation community
• Social capital and knowledge contribution in online user communities: one-way or two-way relationship?
• Examining interdependence between product users and employees in online user communities: The role of employee-generated content
• User-Generated Content and Employee Creativity: Evidence from Salesforce IdeaExchange Community
• The interplay between social capital and knowledge contribution in online user communities
• Digital Resilience: A Conceptual Framework for IS Research
• The Deployment of AI to Infer Employee Skills: Insights from Johnson & Johnson’s Digital‐First Workforce Initiative
• Harnessing Employee Innovation in Idea Management Platforms: Lessons from Allianz UK

Understanding the influence of digital ecosystems on digital transformation: The OCO (orientation, cooperation, orchestration) theory

Review: Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues

The Role of Culture in Knowledge Management: A Case Study of Two Global Firms

Articles by Others

• Dorothy Leidner Explores the Ethical Quandaries of Artificial Intelligence
• Teachers are using AI to grade essays. Students are using AI to write them
• AI and Business Ethics: Finding the Human Through Line in the Maze of New Tech
• Putting Dignity at the Core of Employee Data Use

Podcasts

• Critically Speaking: AI Romance — Boyfriends, Girlfriends
• Protecting Behavioral Dignity in the Digital Age
• What’s been done, what’s been found, and what it means
• Make Dignity Core to Employee Data Use | MIT CISR

Videos

• Theorizing from Literature Reviews

[embed]

• 2019 Distinguished Alumni Awardee

[embed]

• AIS Research Exchange: Advancement at JAIS

[embed]

• Bridging Academic and Industry at HICSS

[embed]

• Exposing-Sharing-Responding: A Morality Theory of Online Public Shaming

[embed]BIT Research Seminar Series Guest Speaker, Dr. Dorothy Leidner Zoom Recording ID: 83933815866 UUID: pgczLZsIR/WIQMYfIvrjmQ== Meeting Time: 2024-03-15 03:27:38pmGMTvideo.vt.edu

Books

• Strategic Information Management: Theory and Practice (5th Edition)

1. Chapter 12: How CIOs Manage It During Economic Decline: Surviving and Thriving Amid Uncertainty
2. Chapter 13: CIO Leadership Profiles: Implications of Matching CIO Authority and Leadership Capability on IT Impact
3. Chapter 17: An Affordance Perspective of Enterprise Social Media and Organizational Socialization

• Strategic Information Management: Challenges and Strategies in Managing Information Systems (4th Edition) — PDF — Chapter 13: Strategies for Managing in Difficult Environments — How CIOs Manage IT During Economic Decline: Surviving and Thriving Amid Uncertainty
• Strategic Information Management: Challenges and Strategies in Managing Information Systems (3rd Edition) — PDF — Chapter 17: The Information Technology–Organizational Culture Relationship — Understanding information culture: integrating knowledge management systems into organizations
• Strategic Information Systems: Challenges and Strategies in Managing Information Systems (2nd Edition) — Chapter 18: Understanding Information Culture: Integrating Knowledge Management Systems into Organizations
• Information Technology for Management: Transforming Organizations in the Digital Economy (6th Edition)

• Global Information Systems: The Implications of Culture for IS Management

• Knowledge Management: An Evolutionary View (2nd Edition) with Irma Becerra-Fernandez

1. Chapter 1: On knowledge, knowledge management, and knowledge management systems: an introduction
2. Chapter 3: Knowledge Management and Organizational Culture

Book Chapters

• Digitalization Across Organizational Levels: New Frontiers for Information Systems Research — Chapter 3: A Theory of Organizational Information Culture

• Information Technology Governance in Public Organizations — Chapter 10: IT Organizational Structure Relationship with IT Governance Performance: Case of a Public Organization

• Encyclopedia of Information Systems — Volume 4, Pages 561–572: Virtual Learning Systems

• Handbook on Knowledge Management edited by Clyde Holsapple — Chapter 12: Organizational Culture as a Knowledge Resource

• Context-Sensitive Decision Support Systems — Chapter 6: Contextual Design of Management Support Systems

• Implementing Systems for Supporting Management Decisions — Chapter 7: Individual and Organizational Effectiveness: Perspectives on the impact of ESS in multinational organizations

• The Routledge Companion to Management Information Systems — Chapter 8: Digital Resilience: A Roadmap for IS Research and Practice