PhD topics in Information Systems and Management

The health of the Australian economy, and indeed of Australia itself, is dependent on the health and prosperity of Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs).  SMEs are a major source of employment, and thus contribute to the very fabric of society.  However, SMEs must now, in many cases, compete in increasingly global marketplaces, and thus are constantly challenged to be innovative, entrepreneurial, efficient and effective in their chosen line of business.  Making appropriate investments in modern Information & Communications Technology (ICT) will be one way of remaining competitive and sustainable in increasingly competitive marketplaces.

Enterprise Systems (ES) are now widely and successfully adopted in large organisations as effective ways of meeting an organisation’s basic computing requirements, and have largely overcome the problems of disparate, unintegrated data and systems.  ES are, however, extremely expensive and daunting in their size and impact, even in large, technically savvy and sophisticated organisations. 

Almost no SMEs in Australia employ senior, dedicated ICT managers, and thus decisions about ICT investments often fall to financial managers, accountants, and general managers who often are ill-equipped to make sound decisions.  Furthermore, ES are often beyond the financial capabilities of many SMEs.  ES vendors are becoming aware of the need to shift their attention to the SME market, and an increasing number of ES designed especially for SMEs are now on the market.  However, issues associated with the total cost of ownership and the value derived from these systems, coupled with a lack of ICT skills within SMEs, often still impede on their rate of adoption.

We are seeking a PhD student who is interested in investigating these issues from both the client (SME) perspective, and also from the vendor perspective.  Our interest and objectives are in establishing what the current costs of ownership for ES in SMEs are, what benefits and business value are seen by SMEs to be derived from making investments in ES, to understand the on-going service and support requirements for SMEs who invest in ES, and to gain a better understanding of the types of implementation strategies and approaches which aid in the successful adoption of such technologies in SMEs.

A Benefits Management Methodology to Support the Realisation of Business Value of Enterprise Systems in Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)

As more and more Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) adopt Enterprise Systems (ES) to support and enhance their core business processes, concerned are voiced about both the cost of these systems (to acquire, implement and operate over time), and about whether or not they deliver value to the organisation.  Some Benefits Management approaches have been developed to help alleviate these sorts of concerns which appear to be effective in large organisations.  However, these approaches are often themselves expensive, proprietary to a particular third party organisation, and often very involved in their application. This project is aimed to articulate an effective Benefits Management Approach that is suited to the SME environment, particularly when implementing ES.

Outsourcing (used here to include a variety of outsourcing, offshoring, business process outsourcing, and ASP type models) of aspects of an organisation’s required IT services and capabilities is a very common phenomena in many organisations.  Much of the research into the outsourcing phenomena has focused on single contracts with a single vendor, and considered a range of factors contributing to either a successful or unsuccessful venture.  However, the reality confronting many CIOs today is that they are increasingly finding themselves in a 1:many situation with respect to outsourcing:  They now need to manage multiple vendors delivering many different aspects of their IT functionality, often in geographical locations remote from their own organisation.  Such contracts may be of both a short term and long term nature.  Furthermore, we are seeing the merger of some outsourcing providers, and the emergence of more ‘total’ service providers.  Wee also seeing the emergence of outsourcing brokers, who assist in the management and governance of these contracts.  The cost of managing such a variety of outsourcing arrangements is rising, as is the complexity of managing these arrangements and relationships.  At the same time, the pressure to deliver required and increasing IT services effectively and efficiently at an appropriate cost such that the organisation is not exposed to undesired risk and that business value is clearly derived form these IT services means that CIOs are operating under extreme pressure as Boards scrutinise their performance. This project is interested in researching the challenges involved in both the management and governance of simultaneous, multiple, complex outsourcing arrangements so that business value is delivered from the IT resource.

Significant research has been conducted in the use of mobile and other information technology for young people and employees of organizations. A group of people that have shown a huge interest in information technology has been pensioners. This project will attempt to understand the use of technology by pensioners. The project will track a number of users for a period of time to understand their usage of the technology.  Specifically looking at why they use the technology and what theirs needs in terms of technology are.

The revolution that has been promised by mobile technology for organizations has been slow in realization. Recently the use of SMS messaging for small entrepreneurs such as hair dressers, beauty salons and even mechanics have seen an increase. This project will attempt to understand the use of mobile technology by SME’s. A number of case studies will be conducted to evaluate the advantages, return on investment and barriers to the use of mobile technology.

Executives of the company often need to make key decisions on uncertain circumstances based on a number of key indicators. These key indicators often visually represented in the form of an executive dashboard. Understanding what key indicators need to be presented and included in the executive dashboard is not an easy task. The requirements for such indicators will depend on each executive, the situations he/she is facing, as well as the availability of relevant information and data. Using a contingency approach to management, this research seeks to investigate the complexity surrounding the design and use of executive dashboard.

Many organisations have a large number of legacy systems, typically designed to support specific functions. These systems are often not easily replaceable while playing significant roles in the end-to-end business processes. In the context of Business Process Management (BPM), the use of a common framework called the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) could be used to build and manage end-to-end business processes across organisational functional groups and their legacy systems.  As part of the BPM cycle, there is an expectation that the outcome will provide ‘value’ and ‘benefits’ to the organisation that would outweigh the cost of investment. It is argued that in order to achieve this, a coherent, comprehensive, and concentrated efforts to ensure the achievement of desired benefits need to be imbued in all facets of BPM. Hence, the aim of this research is to explore the roles of benefits realisation approaches as an integral part of BPM (particularly in the context of SOA adoption and implementation).

The issue of “IT Governance” and “Corporate Governance” have been considered as two of the significant issues emerging and discussed in the past few years. Despite numerous claims of the importance of IT Governance in Corporate Governance context, there remains a very poor relationship of “IT Governance” and corporate governance. In the proliferation of the use of the term “IT Governance”, as well as the conceptualisation and implementation of IT Governance, there seem to be a narrow view, if not a one sided “IT-centric view”, of the term. We contend that there are underlying fallacies in this. We would argue that in approaching the issue of ‘governing’ organisational IS/IT, a more corporate governance centric views need to be adopted. The research attempts to revisit and review the current organisational “IT Governance” approaches using corporate governance perspectives.

Much of the literature around the successful implementation and use of IT Applications has been conducted in the developed world, and focused on the business environment and practices of the developed world.  There is much less evidence about the ways in which IT can successfully and beneficially be introduced into organisations and communities in the developing world.  This research project will seek to reveal how best IT can be introduced into such environments, what impacts it has in improving the local situation, what value is derived, and where (by whom) that value accrues.  An outcome of this research would be expected to be the articulation of approaches and methods that suit contexts in the developing world.

The ability of the younger generation to use IT tends to be dependent on their interest in the subject area, the level of IT ability within their family circle and their own enthusiasm for learning computing skills. The lack of informed understanding of ICT skill levels amongst young people impacts on how schools can most effectively target their IT spend and also raises concerns regarding appropriate use of computers and specifically the Internet and mobile technologies. This has an ongoing effect as this new generation moves into the workforce or further education where high levels of digital literacy are increasingly necessary. This research is aimed at identifying and examining the issues regarding the uses and abuses of IT  amongst school age students.

Considerable research has been carried out on electronic marketplaces in the last decade.  A great deal of this research has looked at auction mechanisms, technical systems and organizational issues at the micro level.  Despite the resulting body of literature there remains many questions left unanswered. One area that requires substantially more investigation relate to that of organizational theory. What are the strategic implications of e-marketplace participation for an organization? How does participation impact on local suppliers and the local community? Are there implications for knowledge management, social capital and benefit management? This research project aims to extend current knowledge of electronic marketplace participation by examining issues relating to adoption and implementation at the organizational level.