Molde University College - Conferences

Keynote Speakers for IRIS 32 Molde:

There will be three keynote speakers.
Keynote I: Dr. Tero Päivärinta
Keynote II: Dr. Mary Sumner
Keynote III: Dr. Ola Henfridsson

Keynote I: Dr. Tero Päivärinta
Title:(Designing for Inclusive) Genres + Metacommunication => Autopoietic systems?

In the era of global collaboration and social computing, systems in the context of their use become ever
more autopoietic, if contrasted to the traditional view on rigid, generic task- and role-based systems,
where system usage needed to be pre-determined to a great extent. I discuss the concepts of genre and
metacommunication as targets of design in information systems. I will argue that having a design focus
on genres of communication and metacommunication promotes inclusive, still targeted and legitimate,
designs of systems, without a need for everyone to be included in everything. Ultimately a joint focus on
communication genres and metacommunication as the targets of design may pave a way towards more
autopoietic information systems, where systems are developed and evolve along with their everyday use,
without isolating the development process from actual use. The arguments will be illustrated with
examples of relevant autopoietic systems, such as distributed corporate e-collaboration,
e-democracy, and wiki-based encyclopedia.

Tero Päivärinta is Professor of Information Systems at University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. His
research has focused on enterprise content management, e-collaboration, e-democracy, benefits
realization from information technology, and systems development practices, in close collaboration with
industry. His production includes more than 30 articles published in information systems conferences,
books, and such journals as Information Systems Journal, Information and Organization, European
Journal of Information Systems, Communications of the AIS, and Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems.
In 2008-09, he is spending a sabbatical year as an Advisor at Aker Solutions ASA, Aker Business Services AS,
Kristiansand. His responsibilities include studying corporate challenges of global
e-collaboration and educating practitioners on e-collaboration, enterprise content management, and
social computing.

Tero Päivärinta
PhD (Econ.)
Advisor, Consulting Services
Aker Business Services, Aker Solutions ASA
Mail: tero.paivarinta@akersolutions.com

Keynote II: Dr. Mary Sumner
Title: Global IT Teams and Project Success
Today, global IT development teams are designing and implementing information systems.
In many cases, part of the team is responsible for one phase of the project, and another
part of the team is responsible for another phase of the project. For example, the requirements definition
of the project may be handled by the U.S. , and the implementation may be handled by Indian developers.
Global teams draw upon individuals with cultural differences. Hofstede depicts cross-cultural norms in
terms of four measures, including Power Distance Index (PDI), Individualism Index (IDV), Masculinity
(MAS) Index, and Uncertainty Avoidance (UAI) Index. Global teams can consist of various combinations of
countries (e.g. US + India , Sweden + Brazil ), with different cultural characteristics, as defined by Hofstede’s
measures. Each cross-cultural team can be classified and depicted as an “effective team” vs an “ineffective team,”
using these cultural ratings. The presentation will describe cross-cultural teams and the
critical success factors contributing to IT project success. The results of case study research
dealing with cross-cultural teams will provide insights into a number of questions, including:
(1) What are the key issues which global IT teams encounter?
(2) What cross-cultural “mix” contributes to IT project success?
(3) What strategies are critical to IT project success using cross-cultural teams?
(4) How can academic professionals better prepare graduates for work on global IT teams?

About the Speaker
Mary Sumner is Professor of Computer Management and Information Systems and Associate Dean,
School of Business , Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. In this role, she organizes
business/university partnerships and executive education programs. She has written seven textbooks,
including college texts in Management Information Systems and Enterprise Resource Planning,
and has published over forty research papers on enterprise resource planning, IT workforce issues, and computer-
mediated communications. Her research has appeared in Database, the Journal of Systems
Management, Information and Management, the Journal of Computer Information Systems, Information
Resource Management Journal, and the Proceedings of the ACM SIG MIS Computer Personnel Research
(CPR). She serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Information Technology Management. She
has served as Conference Chair, ACM SIGCPR, 1993 ( Washington , D.C. ) and Conference Co-Chair,
ACM SIGMIS CPR, 2007 ( St. Louis , MO ) and will serve as Conference Co-Chair, ICIS 2010 ( St. Louis , MO ).
She oversees the Technology and Commerce Roundtable, a CIO forum.

Dr. Mary Sumner
Associate Dean, School of Business
Professor of Computer Management and Information Systems

Keynote III: Dr. Ola Henfridsson
Title: "Action Design Research"
Doing scholarly IT research with industry partners can be challenging.
Seeking to satisfy research and practical expectations simultaneously, the
risk of ending up with little action and much research, or much action and
little research, is obvious. My talk will highlight a number of challenges
with this dual mission. In particular, I intend to stress the need of
research methodology support that helps accommodating both research and
practical interests in the same project. In addition, I will briefly
introduce a proposal for such methodological support in IS research, and
present a number of examples of its application.

About the speaker:
Ola Henfridsson is managing the Automotive research group at the Viktoria
Institute in Göteborg. He is also a professor II at the informatics
department at University of Oslo where he works in the Global Infrastructure
group. His research interests include digital innovation, innovation
management, organizational adaptation of IT, as well as process and
design-oriented research methodologies. The outcome of this research has
been published in Information and Organization, Information Systems Journal,
IT and People, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, MIS Quarterly, and
other journals in the information systems discipline. He is a senior editor
of the MIS Quarterly and serves on the editorial boards of Information
Technology and People and Journal of the AIS.

Theme and Keynotes