[AISWorld] AMCIS 2015 Mini-Track Call for Papers - IT Consulting as a Change Agent

[Andreas Drechsler]

---    2015 Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS)    ---
--- Puerto Rico, August 13-15, 2015 - http://amcis2015.aisnet.org ---

Conference Theme: Blue Ocean Research
Track: End-User Information Systems, Innovation, and Organizational 
Change (SIG-OSRA)
Minitrack: IT Consulting as a Change Agent

Over the past few decades, the influence of the IT consulting industry 
on the use and the management of IT in enterprises has increased 
dramatically. Many enterprises rely on IT consulting services, and IT 
consultants often act as change agents for their clients. They are 
assigned to analyze, propose, and implement IT innovations, they serve 
as an HR outsourcing partner for the IT department, and with many of 
their projects they aim to change the client’s socio-technical 
configuration. IT consultants can also serve as facilitators to transfer 
IS research outcomes to actual organizational and IT changes in practice 
and can thus contribute to the relevance of IS research.

But despite the prevalence of IT consulting projects in practice, IS 
research has not covered IT consulting very intensively. Therefore, IT 
consulting research can be regarded as a “blue ocean research” endeavor 
in the sense of the conference theme. Several challenges are specific to 
the IT consulting industry: Existing methods used in different IS fields 
(such as process management, enterprise architecture analysis, etc.) 
have to be adopted to fit the efficiency constraints in consulting 
projects, methods may need to be tailored to fit existing consulting 
products; and consulting companies are one of the drivers for fashion 
waves in the IT industry.

This mini-track aims to provide a forum for IT consulting research in 
the IS discipline. Topics relevant to this mini-track may include but 
are not limited to:
- IT consulting from a consulting research perspective
- IT consulting from a service science perspective
- IT consulting from a management perspective
- Theoretical foundations of IT consulting research
- IT consultants as change agents
- HR-related issues in IT consulting
- The relationship between IT consulting and strategy consulting
- Methods, method developing and method adoption in IT consulting
- IT consulting as HR outsourcing for the IT department
- Virtual IT consulting / telepresence in IT consulting
- Micro-tasking in IT consulting
- Knowledge management in IT consulting firms
- Education and training of IT consultants (skills & competencies,
   job profiles, education topics, and teaching experiences)
- The use of IT in IT consulting companies
- The organization of internal consulting departments
- IT consultants as enterprise engineers
   (e.g. enterprise architecture from a consultant’s perspective)
- Business processes of IT consulting companies
- The potentials and limitations of research transfer in cooperation
   with IT consulting companies.

We welcome conceptual, empirical, and design-oriented contributions for 
this mini-track. Papers must be submitted through the conference 
website: http://amcis2015.aisnet.org/

The website will be updated later with further rules for paper 
submission and the mandatory paper template.


Important dates:
- January 5, 2015: Manuscript submissions for AMCIS 2015 begin
- February 25, 2015: Deadline for AMCIS manuscript submissions
- Tuesday, April 21, 2015: Authors notified about the disposition of
   their papers
- Tuesday, April 28, 2015:  Deadline for camera-ready revisions
- May 5, 2015: Final decisions on AMCIS 2015 program are made


Minitrack Co-chairs:
- Andreas Drechsler, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
- Paul Drews, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany
- Volker Nissen, University of Technology Ilmenau, Germany


-- 
Dr. Andreas Drechsler
Information Systems and Strategic IT Management
University of Duisburg-Essen
Universitätsstraße 9
45141 Essen
Germany
Web: www.sitm.wiwi.uni-due.de