PhD research

Lily Haffner is a PhD student in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management (ISOM). Her supervisors are Professor Julia Kotlarsky (ISOM) and Professor Ilan Oshri (ISOM).

Working title: Digital Technology and Data Use in Sports

Summary: Digital technology and data use have seen a significant increase across a variety of sports and have led to the transformation of many sporting competitions, impacting both organisations and individual stakeholders in the domain. The complex and high-stakes nature of the sports context, illustrated by the involvement of divergent stakeholder groups with differing interests and influence, presents a unique and under-researched environment for studying digitalisation. This PhD research consequently seeks to investigate how digitalisation of the sports domain affects and is perceived by its various stakeholder groups.

River An is a PhD student in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management (ISOM). Her supervisors are Professor Ilan Oshri (ISOM) and Dr. Randy Wong (ISOM).

Working Title: The development of the relationship between users and AI-powered grief bots.

Summary: AI-powered “grief bots,” conversational systems built to simulate a specific deceased loved one, have emerged as a distinctive class of technology that mediates an already-existing relationship rather than creating a new one. River’s research examines how bereaved individuals develop, sustain, and eventually disengage from relationships with these systems over time. Sitting at the intersection of Information Systems, human-computer Interaction, and bereavement psychology, the research draws on Continuing Bonds theory to understand how technology shapes ongoing connections with the deceased, while contributing to Information Systems research through design and governance implications for this rapidly growing and ethically sensitive category of AI application.

Yi Zhang is a PhD student in the Department of Marketing at the University of Auckland. Her supervisors are Dr Sylvia Gao (Marketing), Dr Edmund Lou (Accounting and Finance) and Professor John Hillas (Economics).

Working title: Generative AI and Platform Revenue Sharing

Summary: Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is transforming creative work by enabling machines to produce novel outputs, such as visual designs and product prototypes, that were once considered uniquely human. By lowering the cost of content creation, GenAI allows creators to substantially expand their content supply, intensifying competition for limited consumer attention. This PhD study seeks to explore how this shift affects creators’ production incentives and shapes digital platforms’ optimal revenue-sharing decisions.

Pacharee Phiayura is a PhD student in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management (ISOM). Her supervisors are Dr Farkhondeh Hassandoust (ISOM) and Professor Allen C. Johnston (University of Alabama).

Working title: Protecting Migrant Workers in Precarious Employment: A Multi-Level Intervention Framework for Digital Safety

Summary: Migrant workers in precarious employment face heightened digital safety risks due to factors such as limited organisational support, unequal workplace power, and varying levels of digital knowledge and resources. Pacharee’s research investigates how individual, interpersonal, organisational, and broader environmental conditions shape migrant workers’ vulnerability to digital risks in the workplace. Drawing on the socio-ecological model, the research examines how factors across multiple levels interact to amplify or mitigate digital safety vulnerability. Ultimately, the study aims to develop a multi-level intervention framework to inform more inclusive and effective organisational practices that strengthen digital safety for migrant workers.

Zhiwu Liu is a PhD student in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management (ISOM). His supervisors are Professor Julia Kotlarsky (ISOM) and Dr Ying Zhang (ISOM).

Working title: Investigating the Effect of Signalling GenAI Expertise on the Online Labour Market

Summary: Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) emulates aspects of human capabilities by generating novel, complex, and useful content and solutions across domains traditionally considered exclusive to humans. Given the widespread adoption of GenAI, an increasing number of workers have started to signal GenAI expertise in their profile descriptions on online labour market (OLM) platforms, aiming to shape employers’ evaluations and enhance their employability. The evolving capabilities of GenAI across diverse tasks have introduced a complex and dynamic context within OLM, offering a unique and underexplored setting for examining its implications from the employer perspective. This PhD research empirically investigates how the signalling of GenAI expertise affects employers’ evaluations of workers and explores the heterogeneity of these effects.

Daeun Song is a PhD student in the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management (ISOM). Her supervisors are Professor Ilan Oshri (ISOM), Professor Julia Kotlarsky (ISOM), and Dr Jade Brooks (ISOM).

Working title: Digital Inclusion of Neurodiverse: Understanding the Impact of Digital Technologies on the Neurodiverse Workforce’s Experience

Summary: The recent proliferation of digital technologies, such as Generative AI, has brought unprecedented changes to how people participate in various aspects of the information society, particularly in workplaces. At the same time, modern workplaces are experiencing another, more social, shift, marked by increasing diversity in working and communication styles, alongside a growing organisational interest in and need to accommodate them. The intersection of these technological and social changes is especially relevant for neurodivergent individuals, who have psychological or neurocognitive conditions such as autism, ADHD, and dyslexia. As tools like Generative AI increasingly mediate how work is performed and workplace relationships are developed, this PhD research examines its role in shaping the social and digital inclusion of neurodivergent individuals at work.