WHO: M. Lynne Markus is the John W. Poduska, Sr., Professor of Information and Process Management, Bentley College
WHAT: “Collective IT Governance—Trends and Issues in Organizational Information Technology Use”
WHEN: Friday, April 11, 2008, 1:00 p.m.
WHERE: Cybertorium, 113 IST Building
M. Lynne Markus’ appearance is part of the IST Distinguished Lecture Series
ABOUT DR. MARKUS: Prof. Markus also serves as senior editor of the Theory and Review Department of MIS Quarterly, the leading journal in the information systems field. Her research interests include enterprise and inter-enterprise systems, IT and organizational change, and knowledge management. She is the author or editor of five books and numerous articles in journals such as MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Organization Science, Communications of the ACM, Sloan Management Review, and Management Science. She was named a Fellow of the Association for Information Systems in 2004. Her 2006 paper on industry-specific IT standardization was named Paper of the Year by MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Publication of the Year by the Association for Information Systems.
LECTURE ABSTRACT: Several trends in the provision and management of IT services are now quite familiar: IT services and business process outsourcing, providers offering software as a service, and the open source mode of software development. Less widely discussed is a parallel trend toward “user” organizations providing and governing IT collectively; examples include joint IT purchasing agreements, shared IT services arrangements, industry-specific initiatives to develop electronic interconnection standards, and collectively-managed electronic interconnection infrastructures. In this presentation, Dr. Markus will discuss the research challenges and early findings in a series of studies that examine collective IT governance in a variety of contexts, including the U.S. home mortgage industry, public safety, health care, and the automotive industry. Among the questions to be discussed are: Does IT matter in the conceptualization of collective IT governance and, if so, how? How do collective IT governance structures emerge and evolve? And how, if at all, do variations in collective IT governance influence the diffusion and consequences of collective IT services provision?
