[AISWorld] CfP: IT Consulting as a Change Agent (AMCIS 2016)

[Andreas Drechsler]

---   22nd Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS)   ---
--- San Diego, August 11-13, 2016 - http://amcis2016.aisnet.org ---

Conference Theme: Surfing the IT Innovation Wave
Track: End-User Information Systems, Innovation, and Organizational 
Change (SIG-OSRA)
Mini-track: 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, 
research has not covered IT consulting very intensively. Simultaneously, 
IT consulting plays a big role in "surfing the IT innovation wave" 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.


Papers must be submitted through the conference website: 
http://amcis2016.aisnet.org/ and are subject to double-blind peer review.

Papers can be submitted as full papers (max. 10 pages, about 5,000 
words) or Emergent Research Forum (ERF) papers (max. 5 pages, about 
2,500 words). The former are to be presented in traditional sessions, 
while the latter will be presented in an innovative format that includes 
a slam presentation session during the program as well as a poster. Each 
ERF slam presentation is limited to 3 minutes.


Important dates:
- January 4, 2016: Manuscript submissions for AMCIS 2016 begin
- March 2, 2016 10am PST: Deadline for AMCIS manuscript submissions


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