Information Systems, Sourcing, And Strategic Agility

CALL FOR PAPERS INFORMATION SYSTEMS, SOURCING AND STRATEGIC AGILITY	20.01.2005

Part of the Annual Conference of the European Academy of Management (EURAM2005) 4 - 7 May 2005, Munich (Germany) Technische Universitaet Muenchen http://www.euram2005.de Paper submission deadline: February 15th, 2005 Abstract -------- Today's enterprises leverage IT infrastructures for achieving operational excellence, reconfiguring value networks, or facilitating global communication and coordination of knowledge workers. As information systems (IS) are now tightly integrated with business processes there is a growing awareness that IT infrastructures are essential in shaping the strategic agility of an enterprise External providers play a key role in providing such IT infrastructures in large and medium-sized enterprises. While research on sourcing decisions suggests that cost-cutting is the dominant driver for outsourcing IS there seems to be little awareness for improving strategic agility through external providers. Current technological advances (e.g. web services, grid computing) promise to enhance the flexibility of IT and, particularly, the scope for sourcing selected services from external providers. Furthermore, IT services seem to migrate to new, global delivery models that leverage international comparative cost advantages and resource flexibility. These developments could put IT service providers in the position to offer their customers more flexible services (e.g. on-demand-services) that increase the agility for evolving and adapting their IT infrastructure to match changing business needs. How well firms achieve greater agility with IS and can leverage external services for this purpose critically depends on their approaches to IT decision making, e.g. in budgeting for acquiring and operating IS. The need for strategic agility thus needs to be reflected in methods for IT infrastructure assessment and decision making. Topics of Interest ------------------ We invite conceptual and empirical papers that investigate how enterprises increase their strategic agility through IT infrastructures and discuss IT decision making and the role of external services in this context. Possible contributions may include, but are not limited to the following: - Drivers for agility in electronic value systems, value chains, and value webs - IT Governance and strategic agility - Sourcing and investing in agile IT infrastructures - Managing IT infrastructure for agility - Managing IT projects and agility - Designing and managing IT services for agility - Designing and managing service delivery architectures for agility - Managing multi-shore delivery models for agility - Economics of strategic agility and flexibility - Evaluating the agility of IT infrastructures Important Dates --------------- Submissions of papers: 15 February 2005 Notification of authors: 15 March 2005 Conference Date: 4-7 May 2005 Submissions ----------- Submissions to the track: Please follow the information on how to format and submit your paper as published on the EURAM 2005 conference web site (www.euram2005.de). Track Chairs ------------ Edward Bernroider Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (Austria) Niels Bjorn-Andersen Copenhagen Business School (Denmark) Tilo Bohmann Technische Universität München (Germany) Helmut Krcmar Technische Universität München (Germany) Volker Stix Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (Austria) Leslie Willcocks Warwick Business School (UK) Contact ------- Tilo Bohmann TUM - Technische Universitaet Muenchen Phone +49 (0)89 289-19528 Fax +49 (0)89 289-19533 boehmann@in.tum.de


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