The Existential Doctorate: Liminality in Industry-Academic Doctoral Partnerships

Formalised industry-academic doctoral partnerships are increasingly sought as a way to bring academia and industry closer together. However, existing approaches appear to either reinforce the divide between the two “worlds” or acknowledge their independence. By focusing on both the doctoral candidate and their supervisor, we problematise existing doctoral partnership models in order to foreground our own “liminal” and “existential” doctoral experience. We provide self-reflections to discuss how the worlds of industry and academia can be transcended through the “liminal self”, as matters of being and belonging are brought into question as the embedded doctoral researcher navigates the two worlds. As a sensemaking process, our paper showcases an innovative and promising approach towards doctoral research; one where the candidate’s philosophical contemplation of their identity comes to play an irrevocable role in the exploration of an empirical phenomenon

The Beergame in Business-to-Business eCommerce Courses – A Teaching Report

In this teaching report I demonstrate the use of the so-called beer distribution game in teaching business-to-business eCommerce courses. The beergame is a role-play supply chain simulation game that lets students experience typical coordination problems of (traditional) supply chains without information sharing and collaboration. With this paper I want to show how the beergame can be used to provide students with a more profound understanding of the reasons why eCommerce technologies are used in contemporary supply chains; I also want to share my experiences and beergame materials with other information systems scholars in the field. To this end, I will introduce the beergame, demonstrate its use in a classroom setting, and show how I embed the game in a typical B2B eCommerce syllabus

The Role Of Social Capital In Managing Relationships With eCommerce Suppliers

Contemporary E-Commerce solutions are often developed and delivered in inter-firm setups that involve various business partners. Being characterised by innovative, ill-structured tasks and using new technologies to develop new business models and services, E-Commerce projects and the subsequently resulting relationships with business partners are demanding and challenging to manage. Surprisingly, project and partner management issues in E-Commerce remain largely unaddressed. This paper takes an inter-firm perspective and addresses the social dimension of E-Commerce relationships. Social capital theory, referring to the value of social relationships and networks, is used to guide this research. Based on findings from case study research, different types and episodes of E-Commerce supplier relationships are distinguished, each calling for a different role of social capital as the basis for effective inter-firm collaboration. By applying social capital theory the study enhances the understanding of E-Commerce as a network-based business as well as the general understanding of the social aspects in relationship management, which to date is largely dominated by concepts like trust and culture. The paper presents a comprehensive framework of social capital in E-Commerce relationships and points out some management implications.

Enterprise social networking in knowledge-intensive work practices : a case study in a professional service firm

Social media technologies are making fast inroads into organisations. In the context of knowledge-intensive work the propositions of improved communication, information sharing and user involvement seem particularly promising. We study the phenomenon of Enterprise Social Networking (ESN) in the context of Professional Service Firms (PSF). Our case study investigates emerging knowledge work practices on the ESN platform Yammer within Deloitte Australia. We perform a genre analysis of communication data and uncover a set of emerging practices. We reflect on our results in the context of the knowledge-intensive nature of professional service work. We find that Yammer in the case company has become 1) an information-sharing channel, 2) a space for crowdsourcing ideas, 3) a place for finding expertise and solving problems and 4) a conversation medium for context and relationship building. We conclude by positioning ESN in the well-known 3-C model for classifying collaborative ICT.<br /

CONTEXTUALIZING IS IN BUSINESS: $ R US FINANCIAL PLANNING – A MODULAR TEACHING CASE FOR INTRODUCTORY 1ST YEAR GENERAL BUSINESS MIS COURSES

This Teaching Case has been developed to assist students in introductory first year MIS courses to develop an understanding of business context, while building practical expertise in IS modeling techniques and problem solving. The case has been formulated around a small financial planning practice, in order to work in a learning environment where students may not have had any (or limited) exposure to organizational business operations. In focusing on a small organization students are able to very gradually build their knowledge of organizations in an easily understood and controlled fashion. The case is composed of self-contained vignettes/modules. While the case takes students on a journey with the establishment of the business and its growth, it is also flexible and possible to alter the selection and sequence of modules to fit a particular course outline. The case covers the breadth of entry-level MIS courses and works with typical MIS introductory textbooks

The User-Centered Nature of Awareness Creation in Computer-mediated Communication

In face-to-face contexts, information about the activities, context or emotions of others is typically available and often taken for granted. In computer-mediated communication (CMC) contexts, this awareness information is not readily available and thus needs to be actively signaled by users or technology or otherwise conveyed as byproduct of the ongoing interaction. We present a theory of the dynamic creation of awareness via computer-mediated communication illustrated by a metaphor of pools fed from streams of interaction. Pools of awareness are held within users and gradually fill via signals from others. Users need different pools to be fed and draw from the streams of interaction to feed their pools and reciprocally place information in the streams to feed the pools of others. In addition, pools drain and must be replenished when a new CMC encounter begins. Awareness is thus created actively or as byproduct of social communicative practice, but is not an instant product of technology. We formulate theoretical propositions and discuss implications of our proposed theory for CMC researchers and practitioners

DESIGNING THE ROLL-OUT OF ORGANIZATION-WIDE ICT INFRASTRUCTURES - THE FINTOP CASE

Implementing organization-wide ICT infrastructures is a challenging endeavor, even more so when the technology in question is both a network technology and raises privacy concerns among employees. This teaching case introduces students to the German insurance provider FINTOP in the final stages of planning its organization-wide roll-out of the Real Time Communication and Collaboration (RTC) technology IBM Lotus Sametime. FINTOP\u27s IT management is faced with the challenge of how to design the roll-out process in the face of a strong management vision, various stakeholder concerns and a culture of employee participation in decision making. The case is targeted at postgraduate or advanced undergraduate Information Systems students. Its aim is to provide instructors with a multi-faceted case that exposes students to the political nature of IT decision making, as well as the particular nature and characteristics of communication infrastructures. As network technologies, such infrastructures are quite different from more traditional enterprise systems due to their openness to accommodate a wide range of use cases. At the same time communication infrastructures, such as instant messaging and social media are making strong inroads into organizations currently