[AISWorld] AMCIS 2015 Puerto Rico: Strategic and Competitive Use of Information Technology (SUIT) Track

[Arslan, Faruk]

AMCIS 2015 Puerto Rico: Strategic and Competitive Use of Information Technology (SUIT) Track

Track Chairs:

M. Adam Mahmood (mmahmood at utep.edu), University of Texas at El Paso
Jack Becker (becker at unt.edu), University of North Texas

Track Description

With increasing success in the use of Strategic and Competitive Information Systems (SCIS) for generating business value and gaining competitive advantage, businesses are more and more interested in successful design, development, deployment, and use of these systems.  We solicit research manuscripts for any of the Mini-Tracks listed below under the Strategic and Competitive Uses of Information Technology (SUIT) track. The SUIT track will provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to present their research on SCIS.  This track has been one of the most successful tracks in the past 5 years in AMCIS.  We look forward to participating in the AMCIS 2015 Conference in Puerto Rico.

Mini-Tracks:

                Strategic Information Systems Evaluation
                Timo K. Käkölä, University of Jyväskylä, Finland, timokk at jyu.fi
                Lorie Obal, Southern California Edison, lobal55 at gmail.com

                Information Systems Strategy and Implementation
                D. Lance Revenaugh, Montana Tech University, LRevenaugh at mtech.edu

Impact of IT on Strategic Innovation & Competitive Advantage
Abhishek Kathuria, The University of Hong Kong, kathuria at hku.edu
Terence Saldanha, Washington University, terence.saldanha at wsu.edu
Jiban Khuntia, University of Colorado Denver,iban.khuntia at ucdenver.edu

                Strategic and Competitive Applications of Cloud Computing
                Aurelia Donald, The University of Texas at El Paso, andonald at utep.edu;
Fernando Parra, University of Texas at El Paso, parra at utep.edu<mailto:parra at utep.edu>;
Faruk Arslan, The University of Texas at El Paso, farslan at utep.edu

                IT Governance and Enterprise Architectures
                Edimara M. Luciano, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, eluciano at pucrs.br
                Matthias Goeken, University of Applied Sciences of Deutsche Bundesbank, matthias.goeken at bundesbank.de
                Carsten Felden, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, carsten.felden at bwl.tu-freiberg.de

Mini-Track: Strategic Information Systems Evaluation
Mini-Track Co-Chairs: Timo K. Käkölä, University of Jyväskylä, Finland,
Lorie Obal, Southern California Edison, USA

Mini-Track Description

Problems with information systems (IS) include overly lengthy development times, high implementation and maintenance costs and disappointing returns on investments. Evaluation of information systems is increasingly important due to high stakes in information systems (IS) dependence, cost and return on investment (ROI). IS evaluation is challenging due to factors of IS complexity and difficulties in defining meaningful measures that account for socio-technical issues and unpredictable IS benefits. Moreover, IS evaluation research often focuses on the organizations and end users deploying information systems. Yet, information systems are increasingly designed and used in complex ecosystems where all stakeholders, including vendor organizations and their employees, are expected to create value for themselves, their clients, and the ecosystems while minimizing waste. IS evaluation methods and their relevant combinations that enable all relevant stakeholders to measure and create value as well as  minimize waste together in the ecosystems are especially important for tackling the root causes of problems such as budget and schedule overruns and lower than expected ROI. For example, functional size measurement is a well-known methodology that both vendors and clients can use for pricing IS development and maintenance projects in $/function point, evaluating the earned value in the projects by the number of function points delivered to clients, and assessing the quality of information systems and making investment decisions to improve quality (e.g., the number of defects per function point). Other methodologies are also of interest.

Call for Papers
This mini-track will focus on Information Systems Evaluation with a goal of identifying factors to help measure, justify, and steer IS development and deployment initiatives, including investment decisions. The objective of this track is to publish research on concepts, methods, frameworks and case studies in IS evaluation.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

·         IS evaluation methods for facilitating the co-creation of value and the elimination of waste by all relevant stakeholders (e.g., strategic product line roadmapping, requirements prioritization, and release management)

·         Methods for pre and post IS deployment appraisal

·         Qualitative and Quantitative Evaluation Methods

·         Capital Budgeting and Financial Appraisal of IS Investments

·         Socio-technical aspects of appraisal methods

·         Organizational, Political, Cultural, Legal, Regulatory, and other barriers to IS evaluation

·         Macro-economic, Industry-wide, or Ecosystem-specific Assessment of IS

·         IS ROI measures

·         Cost/Benefit and Risk Analyses and Management of integrated enterprise systems or applications

·         Empirical studies are also solicited, which evaluate specific types of IS such as:

o   Collaborative Systems

o   Customer Relationship Management Systems

o   Decision Support Systems

o   eLearning systems

o   Enterprise Systems

o   Healthcare Information Systems

o   Knowledge Management Systems

o   Project (Portfolio) Management Systems

o   Product Lifecycle Management Systems

Mini-Track:  Information Systems Strategy and Implementation
Mini-Track Chair: D. Lance Revenaugh, Montana Tech University

Mini-Track Description

Unquestionably, information systems (IS), along with its supporting information technology (IT), continue to increase in importance in nearly all organizations.  As organizations scramble to develop and apply IT in new ways, the need to identify and implement an IS strategic plan becomes increasingly critical.
To date, however, implementations of IS strategies have not had high success rates.  Though this has been true for years, much continues to be published on how to develop an IS strategy.  Comparatively little research focuses on implementation.  It is the purpose of this mini-track to focus on ways in which organizations effectively implement IS/IT strategies in their organizations.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

*        Implementation issues considered during strategy development

*        Integration of IT planning and strategy with business strategy

*        Enablers of and/or inhibitors to IS Strategy success

*        Implementation of any organizational strategy that is significantly impacted by IS/IT

*        Research, case studies, empirical studies of IS/IT Strategy implementation

Mini-Track: Impact of IT on Strategic Innovation & Competitive Advantage

Mini-Track Co-Chairs: Abhishek Kathuria, University of Hong Kong, kathuria at hku.edu
Terence Saldanha, Washington State University, terence.saldanha at wsu.edu
Jiban Kuntia, University of Colorado Denver, jiban.khuntia at ucdenver.edu

Mini-Track Description

IT is emerging as a vital element in enabling innovations in strategy, business models and management practice. Several examples affirm the importance of exploring the impact of IT on strategic innovation. For example, IT has enabled new business models for firms such as Amazon, Netflix, Uber and Airbnb. IT has facilitated service-oriented innovations in communication services, such as providing audio, video, interactive and social modes of communication through mobile Apps and other tools such as WeChat and WhatsApp. IT has enabled the emergence and sustained success of new business models based around the sharing economy and crowdsourcing (e.g., Agarwal et al. 2010; Rai and Sambamurthy 2006). IT has facilitated new innovations in digitized access and delivery of services and goods. Furthermore, IT has enabled information access and exchange in several sectors, including health care, education and travel. Likewise, IT can also facilitate new product and service development via its capabilities to enhance knowledge creation (e.g., Kleis et al. 2012). These business model innovations, IT-enabled service-oriented innovations, digitized product and process innovations and associated information capabilities are the result of strategic innovation at the firm level. Thus, IT enabled strategies have emerged as a business imperative to foster innovation and competitive strategy in recent times.

Call for Papers
Despite the developments in practice around the role of IT in enabling several forms of innovation and innovative strategies, literature examining the role of information systems in this process is sparse. This mini-track solicits studies that examine the nuances associated with leveraging information technology for strategic innovation. Although the focus is on studies at the firm level, studies at the individual, team, group, or industry levels are also welcome. The main focus of the studies would be to explore how IT enables any or several innovative strategies for firm performance. This mini-track serves as a venue for a wide range of research methodologies, including empirical, case study, conceptual and simulation research.
Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

*        How IT-enabled strategies lead to firm performance.

*        How IT strategy and firm strategy interact to result in value creation for firms.

*        Different facets of IT-enabled innovative strategies: IT-enabled service innovation, IT-enabled business innovation, IT-enabled business model innovation, and IT-enabled co-innovation.

*        Role of IT to manage, augment, or shape innovation.

*        Role of IT in new product development and process innovation.


Mini-Track: Strategic and Competitive Application of Cloud Computing
Mini-Track Chairs: Aurelia Donald, The University of Texas at El Paso, andonald at utep.edu;
Fernando Parra, The University of Texas at El Paso, parra at utep.edu<mailto:parra at utep.edu>;
Faruk Arslan, The University of Texas at El Paso, farslan at utep.edu

Mini-Track Description

Cloud computing provides the opportunity for strategic and competitive advantages by providing benefits such as high and rapid scalability, fault-tolerant services, and low-cost computing to the consumers and low maintenance cost to the providers.  Despite the benefits, cloud computing users are concerned about security and privacy issues such as data leakage, and cloud computing infrastructure tampering.

Call for Papers

This mini-track invites researchers who explore the strategic and competitive application of cloud computing to submit empirical, theoretical, conceptual, and case-based research studies.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:


*        Strategic Applications of Cloud Computing

*        Mobile Cloud Computing

*        Data Management in Cloud Computing

*        Factors Facilitating the Adoption of Cloud Computing.

*        Economics of Cloud Computing

*        Marketing Strategies for Cloud Computing services

*        Security and Privacy for Cloud Computing services

*        Cloud Computing Services Assessment Methodologies

*        New Business Models for Cloud Computing.

*        Legal Framework for Cloud Computing Services.

*        Cloud Computing as a Form of "Green Computing".

*        Using Cloud computing as a part of an organization's competitive strategy


Mini-Track: IT Governance and Enterprise Architectures

Mini-Track Chairs: Edimara M. Luciano, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul,               eluciano at pucrs.br
Matthias Goeken, University of Applied Sciences of Deutsche Bundesbank, matthias.goeken at bundesbank.de
Carsten Felden, TU Bergakademie Freiberg, carsten.felden at bwl.tu-freiberg.de

Mini-Track Description
In a context of a stronger relationship between IT and business, IT governance is a way to establish transparent control mechanisms that can drive and monitor the alignment of business and IT, company and IT performance as well the desirable behavior related to IT use. The literature and the organizations' day-by-day show various concepts or statements on IT Governance. Regardless of that, the IT governance approach involves some aspects, e.g.: a) the way that the company board manages IT; b) the decision making related to investments and the concern about their return; c) the effective use of IT resources; d) the decision rights specification and the definition of roles and responsibilities; e) the focus on comprehension and meeting the organizational necessities; f) the study of what organizational arrangement is more adequate to better support the organizational goals related to IT; g) the alignment between IT governance and corporate governance objectives.

There is a common point among the various viewpoints or approaches on IT Governance, namely the IT decision making. Provided that IT has an important role, IT decisions have an impact in the whole organizational environment. Therefore, having decision-making systematized processes is important to increase the effectiveness of the process. It involves IT infrastructure and architecture on the premise that IT is expensive and fast changing. It is essential that the enterprise architecture be a long term one and provide a background to the business for a long time. It also involves the development, adoption, and use of IT, which should reflect the strategic positioning of the company.

The frameworks of IT governance have no unique prescription. It is a set of processes to each organization because of the business context and intrinsic factors such as culture, leadership style, values and goals. Therefore, IT governance must be from the organization and to the organization, without a restrictive view that it refers exclusively to IT.

Call for Papers
In this context, this minitrack has the intention to discuss the relationships among these issues by gathering conceptual, empirical or research in progress to show how and why the phenomenon occurs on a day-to-day basis in terms of structure, processes, strategies, relational mechanisms,  and people involved, such as the subjects cited below:

*        IT governance models, including the results of adoption of different models in organizations;

*        Enterprise architectures aiming a long term IT;

*        Investments decision making and return on investments;

*        Definition of roles and responsibilities, including the results of their adoption;

*        Relationship among IT governance and architecture, strategic alignment, Corporate Governance and the comprehension of the organizational necessities;

*        Relationship with risk management, outsourcing and Information Security;

*        Cultural aspects and their relationships with IT governance practices or mechanisms;

*        IT Governance practices effectiveness;

*        IT strategy and impact on IT governance and architecture;

*        The role of stakeholders, shareholders and CIOs in the process of IT governance practices adoption and architecture;

*        Best practice and frameworks like COBIT, ITIL, ISO 38.000, TOGAF;

*        Case studies which help to understand current practices in companies governing their IT;

*        New methods, practices, models and approaches in the realm of IT governance and enterprise architecture.

The mini-track will discuss the state of the art of methodological support, current practices, and related IT governance topics with a holistic focus and will debate new approaches to support IT governance. In addition, it is intended to analyze new challenges and empirical findings concerning the mentioned topics.
























Jiban Khuntia



Faruk Arslan
Department of Accounting and Information Systems | College of Business | The University of Texas at El Paso
http://business.utep.edu/faculty/profiles/arslan/ | www.linkedin.com/pub/faruk-arslan/6/1a1/913<http://www.linkedin.com/pub/faruk-arslan/6/1a1/913>

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