[AISWorld] CFP “IT Sourcing and Development: New Drivers, Models and Impacts”

[Brian Nicholson]

Call for Papers – International Workshop
“IT Sourcing and Development: New Drivers, Models and Impacts”
20-21 October 2014
Socially-Responsible Outsourcing Unit, Centre for Development Informatics
University of Manchester, UK

This is a call for papers on IT sourcing and socio-economic development, with an initial deadline for abstracts of 11 July 2014.

Since the first software contracts were outsourced to India in the late 1970s, the relationship between IT sourcing and development has expanded in various ways.  It has expanded geographically to encompass many other countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America/Caribbean; and also marginalised areas in the global North.  It has expanded in scope to encompass a wide variety of IT-enabled services including call centres, digitisation, and business, knowledge and legal process outsourcing.

These expansions of geography and scope – enabled by an expansion of digital infrastructure and skills – have in recent years led the relation between IT sourcing and development to be revisited.  IT sourcing was originally seen only in light of neo-liberal and human capital paradigms; adding national export earnings, GDP and skills.  But IT sourcing is increasingly related to inclusive and sustainable development paradigms, and to corporate social responsibility (Babin & Nicholson 2012; Heeks 2013, Malik, Morgan & Nicholson 2013).

The workshop seeks to reflect on this changing context for IT sourcing: analysing these new forces driving and shaping IT sourcing; characterising the new models of IT sourcing these forces have created; and reassessing the impacts of IT sourcing in light of these new criteria.

We welcome papers that help to conceptualise, analyse and critique topics including:
•             The new or extended development paradigms and worldviews that are being brought to bear on IT sourcing.
•             The relation between these new paradigms and client demand, including orientation to profit and/or CSR, and the selling and marketing of IT sourcing’s development connection.
•             The new IT sourcing models that are emerging: “impact sourcing”, “rural sourcing”, “socially-responsible sourcing”, “ethical sourcing” and others.
•             Assessments of readiness for, and enablers/barriers to, these new models.
•             Intermediaries, relationships and contracts in developmentally-sensitised IT sourcing.
•             Regulations, standards, and codes of practice used to guide the practice of IT sourcing.
•             Supply-related practice in developing capacities and infrastructure for new forms of IT sourcing.
•             Metrics and models of use in assessing the socio-economic development impact of IT sourcing.
•             The role of the state in facilitating IT sourcing via creation of an enabling environment, capacity-building, procurement, enforcement of minimum standards, etc.
•             Implications of new technology-enabled models for IT sourcing and development: cloud-sourcing, micro-sourcing, crowd-sourcing, etc.

The following timeline will be observed:

- 11 July 2014 - prospective presenters to submit an abstract of 200-400 words outlining their proposed paper to: sourcing4dev at manchester.ac.uk

- 31 July 2014 - authors to be notified of response to abstract

- 30 September 2014 - draft papers due (7,000 words maximum), and workshop discussants appointed

- 20-21 October 2014 – international workshop in Manchester for presentation and discussion of papers

Some bursaries are available to support presenter attendance at the workshop; please contact the organisers for details.

We are currently in discussions with an information systems journal to produce a special issue from the workshop papers.

If you have any queries prior to abstract submission, do please ask.

Richard Heeks, Sharon Morgan & Brian Nicholson (Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester, UK); email: sourcing4dev at manchester.ac.uk

The workshop is an activity of the University of Manchester’s Socially-Responsible Outsourcing Unit, Centre for Development Informatics with financial support from the University of Manchester Research Institute.  The workshop venue is Chancellor’s Hotel and Conference centre.

Call document online at: http://www.cdi.manchester.ac.uk/newsandevents/documents/ITSourcingDevelCFP.pdf

References
•             Babin, R. & Nicholson, B. (2012) Sustainable Global Outsourcing: Achieving Social and Environmental Responsibility in Global IT and Business Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, UK
•             Heeks. R.  (2013) Information technology impact sourcing, Communications of the ACM, 56(12), 22-25
•             Malik, F., Nicholson, B. & Morgan, S. (2013) Assessing the social development potential of impact sourcing, Proceedings of 6th Annual SIG GlobDev Workshop on ICT in Global Development, Milan, Italy, 14 Dec http://www.globdev.org/files/proceedings2013/paper_20.pdf



Brian Nicholson
Centre for Development Informatics
Manchester Business School

http://briannicholson.net

+44 161 275 4024

Skype : nicholson_brian

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