• Five key dimensions enable inclusion in Collaborative Metaverse environments: immersion, belonging, authenticity, emotions, self-efficacy. • Avatar design, room layout, and technology shape team members' sense of belonging in Collaborative Metaverse spaces. • Three Collaborative Metaverse design tensions yield nine actionable implications for avatar, room, and technology configurations. • Inclusive Collaborative Metaverse design increases engagement, team cohesion, and competitive advantage. Organizations face socio-technical challenges in developing an inclusive collaborative metaverse. Virtual rooms and avatar representations can unintentionally exclude users by reinforcing stereotypes, increasing cognitive load, or constraining participation, thereby undermining interaction quality, belonging, and authenticity as core components of perceived inclusion. Through qualitative analyses of 24 participants from eight VR teams, we identify five dimensions for inclusion: immersion, belonging, authenticity, emotions, and self-efficacy, and link them to three design perspectives: avatar representation, room design, and collaboration technology. This uncovers three socio-technical tension patterns: anonymity vs. authenticity, clarity vs. immersion, accessibility vs. functionality. Building on these tensions, we derive implications for design that are grounded in theories of social presence and belonging and translate into actionable design heuristics for Collaborative Metaverse systems. Our tension-based framework drives research on inclusion in the Collaborative Metaverse. Strategically, it offers organizations concrete guidance on how to configure the Collaborative Metaverse to support inclusive participation and avoid design decisions that inadvertently exclude parts of the workforce.

Information systems (IS) strategizing is particularly challenging for established organizations because of their historical conditions. The question of how established organizations can effectively manage their historical conditions in IS strategizing remains under-explored. To address this question, we conducted a case study tracing the history (1960–2020) of an established organization in the building and construction industry. Through the analysis, we found four systems: accounting management system, business communication system, knowledge management system, and community collaboration system, as the historical conditions that formed an IS imprint, which was later managed and reproduced during IS strategizing. Using the imprinting lens, we developed an understanding of: (1) the formation of the IS imprint at the organizational foundation; and (2) the reproduction of the IS imprint, considering imprint-as-resource and imprint-as-constraint during IS strategizing. We contribute to the literature by providing an understanding of how historical conditions inform IS strategizing in the long term and by applying the imprinting lens to uncover the process through which an IS imprint is strategically managed and reproduced beyond the founding phase. The insights developed from this study are transferable to similar organizational contexts for managing historical conditions in IS strategizing.