[AISWorld] PhD scholarship available in IS school at Queensland University of Technology

[Jan Recker]

Dear colleagues,

Please feel free to forward to your interested students and colleagues.

Many thanks,
Jan

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PhD scholarship available at QUT's Information Systems School

Applications are invited from suitable qualified graduates for a PhD scholarship at the School of Information Systems at Queensland University of Technology as part of the ARC project "Designing Process Models for Decision-Making". The term of the scholarship is three years. The scholarships provide financial support towards study and living costs.

Project Background
When seeking to re-design business processes - a perennial top priority of chief information executives - organisations use graphical documentations of their business processes, so called process models. These models act as blueprints of organizational processes, and are a key tool for making re-design decisions, i.e., decisions about where, how and why changes to the processes should be enacted to warrant increased revenues, business growth, improved operational efficiency, cost reductions or increased compliance.

A process model that documents a business process in an incomplete, incorrect, cumbersome to decipher, or otherwise deficient manner will not convey the information about the business domain to the decision maker such that a good decision can be facilitated. Any re-design of the processes, in consequence, will then fail to deliver the expected benefits. When creating process models, therefore, business analysts require principles that guide them in conceiving graphical representations of business processes that are useful, intuitive and accurate to the decision-makers (process owners, process managers, business analysts, systems designers and the like) working with these models.

This project aims to develop a theory, and theory-driven guidelines, for developing understandable process models. Specifically, it will deliver:
*          A fundamental theory about factors and consequences of process modelling for decision-making tasks; and
*          on the basis of the new and validated theory, practical guidelines based on rigorous empirical insights to guide the creation of useful, intuitive and accurate process models for decision-making.


Project Governance
The research project is led by Associate Professor Jan Recker, PhD. Jan is Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow and Associate Professor for Information Systems at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia, where he is co-leader of the Business Process Management research group. His main areas of research include business process design in organizational practice, organizational innovation and IT-enabled business transformations. His research is published in the MIS Quarterly, the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, the European Journal of Information Systems, Information & Management, the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems, and other key journals.
Jan is currently the highest ranked researcher in Information Systems in Europe and Australia, based on publications in the top six journals over the last three years. He is an Associate Editor for the Communications of the AIS, a Senior Editor for the Journal of IT Theory and Application, a member of the editorial board of several international journals and serves on the program committee of various conferences.
More information is available from www.janrecker.com/<http://www.janrecker.com/>.


The Research Environment

QUT's Information Systems School is currently the highest ranked IS research department in Australia based on research quality. The school is also among the highest ranked IS departments in Australia or Europe in terms of publications in the top IS journals worldwide.

QUT's Information Systems School has a global reputation for its work on BPM maturity management, process improvement, process modelling, and workflow technology. The school has had substantial impact on the global body of BPM knowledge and its uptake in industry and academia. Research from the BPM group has appeared in premier outlets journals such as the MIS Quarterly, the Journal of the AIS, the European Journal of IS, Decision Support Systems, Information Systems, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, and others.

To find out more, please visit http://www.qut.edu.au/science-engineering/about/about-the-faculty/school-of-information-systems.



Application Criteria
The successful applicant

-          has a Master's degree in information systems, business administration, or a comparable field. He or she completed the Master's degree with a GPA of 6 or higher (or equivalent).
-          has the ambition and capabilities to complete a high-quality PhD project within 3 years.
-          has a strong research mindset, and evidence of skills in theoretical and empirical research.
-          possesses strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.
-          speaks and writes fluently in English.
-          likes to work in an international setting.

Application Procedure
Applicants are required to submit a letter of application for the scholarship to Associate Professor Jan Recker (j.recker at qut.edu.au<mailto:j.recker at qut.edu.au>) by 31 March 2012, briefly describing qualifications, relevant skills and areas of research interest.
Applicants will be screened and, if suitable, invited for further assessment and interviews.

The following supporting documents are required:

-          CV including a comprehensive list and details of all publications if any.
-          Certified copies of academic transcripts.
-          Copies of most important research papers or theses
-          A letter stating how the above criteria are met by the applicant
-          2 letters of reference from academics who have taught/supervised the applicant at university.
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