My career as a teacher of information technology now spans twenty years, and my research interests have varied over that time. My research as falls into three subareas of the MIS field: Decision Support Systems (DSS), Economics of Information Systems, and Management of Information Systems. For specific citations of publications mentioned below, please see my vita.
Much of my research has been in the DSS area, specifically in the model management subarea. My best research, such as my 1994 Management Science paper with Waleed Muhanna, several papers in HICSS Proceedings, and, more recently, a paper in Decision Support Systems, has been in model management concerned with using computers to support models towards the goal of improved decision-making.
I am also interested in document-based DSS, especially when this technology is used to support knowledge management initiatives. I have two papers in that area, published in AMCIS proceedings and in an edited book.
The second area of DSS research is the problem of integration. My Management Science paper gave an approach to solving the problem of model integration. My interest today is in generalizing that work to include database integration and the integration of processes within an organization. This work is just beginning, and I think it will be several years before I have any noteworthy output.
I have also studied the economics of computers, with papers appearing in Communications of the ACM and Journal of MIS as well as other outlets. I have studied such issues as economies of scale in computer hardware, rate of technological change in computer hardware, and transfer pricing for computer services.
My third area of research interest is leadership and management of information systems. There are two series of papers. The first series is with Arthur Gilbert and Sidne Ward on IS issues. These papers were inspired both by a series of articles on IS issues that appeared in MIS Quarterly and other outlets, and by my teaching of a course entitled "Management of Information Systems." The range of possible topics in that course is huge, and I use some of the results of these studies to justify to the students why I have chosen some of the particular topics we look into. Our methodology uses a sample survey/questionnaire rather than the highly labor-intensive Delphi method used by the MIS Quarterly articles. In these papers, we look at how CEOs and CIOs think about major information systems issues at their firms. We tie their ratings of importance of these issues with characteristics of their firms and characteristics of the respondents.
The second series is with Gary Klein and James Jiang and is concerned with IS personnel/projects. An article in this area appeared in Information and Management.
I have also written about how IT leadership relates to centralization and decentralization of the Information Systems functional area as well as corresponding levels of standardization across the enterprise.
Last updated on 24 May 2017.