Call for Papers

Special Issue of ZfB/ Journal of Business Economics:

the impact of Information Systems and Technology
in the E-Business Age

 

While Information Systems (IS) are an indispensable part of the value creation in firms, understanding and governing the impact of IS or a firm’s IT capability on eventual organizational goals remains a challenge for researchers and practitioners [Bharadwaj  2000; Santhanam and Hartono 2003]. IT business value is very important to the IS field as it links IT to firm value, which is at the core of strategic management [Peppard and Ward 2004]. A maturing literature on IT business value creation suggests that organization level impacts should be understood through intermediate constructs such as business process performance [Melville et al. 2004], IT flexibility [Byrd and Turner 2000] or usage [Chan 2000; DeLone and McLean 1992]. Still our knowledge of what are adequate intermediate success variables, how they are related with IT and tangible output, and what technologies and governance mechanisms should be used to achieve desirable outputs is still much too narrow.

 

Similarly, research shows that IT is essential in important intermediate processes that produce highly relevant output like innovation and knowledge [Kleis et al. 2012]. However, our knowledge on how and why IT and innovation are related is limited. The recent emergence of widespread information and knowledge networks propelled through easy to use technologies like Wikis and similar social network platforms signifies opportunities for success and innovation creation. But at the same time, uncertainties if they require new theories and approaches or if they are just “traditional” phenomena under stronger network effects exhibit our lack of sound theoretical knowledge of how such networks and relevant success measures are related, and should be designed and governed.

 

We want to stimulate novel perspectives on the evaluation and creation of success in IT-related contexts. Following the call of Kohli and Grover [2008] that “evaluation research should have a centrality in our field, as it is germane to the existential debate on the field’s core” we look for theoretical, empirical, and design oriented research on the evaluation, creation and governance of success in Information Systems and networks. We welcome a variety of lenses of inquiry, including economic, technical, behavioral, strategic, and organizational. Also, research that establishes rigorous grounds for understanding new phenomena and to foster sophisticated future research by clarifying theoretical foundations, managerial challenges and key variables by, for instance, rich narratives that help make new phenomena tangible, are sought.

Topics of interest include:

·        Understanding and governing the relation between social media and firm goals

·        Do we need other theories to understand the adoption, diffusion, usage and value contribution of Web 2.0 technologies, maybe a new IS success 2.0 model, or are those just another application domain?

·        How can IT help improve a firm’s innovativeness? How do Knowledge Management Systems yield business benefits?

·        How is IT business value creation different in private commercial enterprises compared to public enterprises and NGOs? To what extent should E-Government research hence use theories, methods and success measures that are different from other research domains?

·        Economic, technical, and social aspects of IT business value creation

·        The societal impact of IS

·        How does outsourcing and globalization/internationalization impact IT reliant processes and their performance?

·        Standards, enterprise architecture and success

·        What are success factors in FLOSS networks (free/libre open source software)?

·        How do “green IT” initiatives have measurable direct and indirect effects on firm goals, and how can IT help achieve “green” goals beyond lower energy costs?

·        Domain specific IS success models, for example in Health Care, Automotive (E-Cars), security, knowledge management, outsourcing, E-Government (theoretical and/or empirically validated), cloud computing

References

Bharadwaj, A.S. (2000): A Resource-Based Perspective on Information Technology Capability and Firm Performance: An Empirical Investigation. MIS Quarterly, 24, 1 (2000), 169-196.

Byrd, T.A., and Turner, D.E. (2000): Measuring the Flexibility of Information Technology Infrastructure: Exploratory Analysis of a Construct. Journal of Management Information Systems, 17, 1 (2000), 167-208.

Chan, Y.E. (2000): IT Value: The Great Divide Between Qualitative and Quantitative and Individual and Organizational Measures. Journal of Management Information Systems, 16, 4 (2000), 225-261.

DeLone, W.H., and McLean, E.R. (1992): Information Systems Success: The Quest for the Dependent Variable. Information Systems Research, 3, 1 (1992), 60-95.

Kohli, R., and Grover, V. (2008): Business Value of IT: An Essay on Expanding Research Directions to Keep up with the Times. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 9, 1 (2008), 23-39.

Landon Kleis, Paul Chwelos, Ronald V. Ramirez, and Iain Cockburn (2012): Information Technology and Intangible Output: The Impact of IT Investment on Innovation Productivity. Information Systems Research, March 2012.

Peppard, J., and Ward, J. (2004): Beyond strategic information systems: towards an IS capability. Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 13, 2 (2004), 167-194.

Santhanam, R., and Hartono, E. (2003): Issues in Linking Information Technology Capability to Firm Performance. MIS Quarterly, 27, 1 (2003), 125-153.

 

Schedule

First call for papers:                                                      August 1, 2013

Second call for papers:                                                 September 1, 2013

Submission of papers:                                                   September 30, 2013

Author notification:                                                      November 15, 2013                       

Submission of first revision:                                         February 15, 2014

Author notification:                                                      March 31, 2014

Submission of a second revision:                                June 31, 2014

Author notification:                                                      August 31, 2014

Submission of final revisions:                                      October 31, 2014

Submission of camera-ready papers:                        November 30, 2014

Planned publication date:                                            January 2015

 

 

The Editors

Prof. Dr. Tim Weitzel University of Bamberg tim.weitzel@uni-bamberg.de

Prof. Dr. Armin Heinzl University of Mannheim heinzl@uni-mannheim.de

 

Submission of articles

All papers will be reviewed in an anonymous, double-blind process by distinguished referees with regard to relevance, originality, and research quality in order to guarantee the highest possible quality. Contributions should be handed in English as of September 15^th, 2013. Manuscripts can be submitted at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/zfb.

 

Please consider the author guidelines at http://www.zfb-online.de/index.php?do=ah.

 

Journal of Business Economics

The Journal of Business Economics (JBE) was founded in 1924 by renowned business economics professors under the name “Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft (ZfB)” and has since then been counted among the leading professional journals in the business economics sector. Today, it is edited by eleven university professors who serve as Department Editors. Information Systems is one of the departments of JBE. The editorial board members are from Europe, Japan and the USA. Further information is available at http://www.zfb-online.de.

 

As of January 1st, 2013, the JBE will only be published in English, but will still carry the German subtitle „Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft“. It creates an international publication platform, allowing the published results to become globally recognized. This will make it more appealing for authors and in particular for young scientists to publish their articles in the JBE, while they can still benefit from the established reputation of the "Zeit­schrift für Betriebs­wirtschaft”. This benefit becomes even greater given that the journal will be incorporated into SpringerLink’s international collection „Business and Economics“ and will become widespread throughout the world.

 

 

Contact Information:

               For further inquiries, please contact Tim Weitzel (tim.weitzel@uni-bamberg.de)

 

All best

 

Tim Weitzel, Armin Heinzl

 

 

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Prof. Dr. Tim Weitzel

Full Professor, Chair of Information Systems and Services

 

   Dean of the Information Systems and Informatics Faculty at the University of Bamberg
   Director of CHRIS - Centre of Human Resource Information Systems
   Senior Editor of the Journal of the Association of Information Systems

 

University of Bamberg

http://www.uni-bamberg.de/isdl

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