European Conference on Information Systems 

About: European Conference on Information Systems is an academic conference. The conference publishes majorly in the area(s): Information system & Computer science. Over the lifetime, 5647 publications have been published by the conference receiving 58660 citations.

Reconstructing the Giant: On the Importance of Rigour in Documenting the Literature Search Process

Abstract: Science is a cumulative endeavour as new knowledge is often created in the process of interpreting and combining existing knowledge. This is why literature reviews have long played a decisive role in scholarship. The quality of literature reviews is particularly determined by the literature search process. As Sir Isaac Newton eminently put it: If I can see further, it is because I am standing on the shoulders of giants. Drawing on this metaphor, the goal of writing a literature review is to reconstruct the giant of accumulated knowledge in a specific domain. And in doing so, a literature search represents the fundamental first step that makes up the giant's skeleton and largely determines its reconstruction in the subsequent literature analysis. In this paper, we argue that the process of searching the literature must be comprehensibly described. Only then can readers assess the exhaustiveness of the review and other scholars in the field can more confidently (re)use the results in their own research. We set out to explore the methodological rigour of literature review articles published in ten major information systems (IS) journals and show that many of these reviews do not thoroughly document the process of literature search. The results drawn from our analysis lead us to call for more rigour in documenting the literature search process and to present guidelines for crafting a literature review and search in the IS domain.

Sustainable supply management: An empirical study

Abstract: Sustainable business development has received much attention over the past decade owing to the significant attention given by governments and both profit and not-for-profit organizations to environmental, social and corporate responsibility. The emergence of a changing economic order has also made companies around the world seriously think about manufacturing and service sustainability. Global markets and operations have prompted companies to revisit their corporate, business and functional strategies in addition to focusing on outsourcing, virtual enterprise and supply chain management. Sustainability research on supply management has received limited attention. Nevertheless, considering the physically disbursed enterprise environment, supply management is critical for organizational competitiveness. Realizing the importance of sustainability in supply management, an attempt has been made to develop a theoretical framework and then to study the framework by means of an empirical study using perceptions and practices of selected French companies. Finally, a summary of findings and conclusions are reported.

Towards a Business Process Management Maturity Model

Abstract: Business Process Management (BPM) has been identified as the number one business priority by a recent Gartner study (Gartner, 2005). However, BPM has a plethora of facets as its origins are in Business Process Reengineering, Process Innovation, Process Modelling, and Workflow Management to name a few. Organisations increasingly recognize the requirement for an increased process orientation and require appropriate comprehensive frameworks, which help to scope and evaluate their BPM initiative. This research project aims toward the development of a holistic and widely accepted BPM maturity model, which facilitates the assessment of BPM capabilities. This paper provides an overview about the current model with a focus on the actual model development utilizing a series of Delphi studies. The development process includes separate studies that focus on further defining and expanding the six core factors within the model, i.e. strategic alignment, governance, method, Information Technology, people and culture.

Strategies for Design Science Research Evaluation

Abstract: Seminal works in the application of design science research (DSR) in IS emphasize the importance of evaluation. However, discussion of evaluation activities and methods is limited and typically assumes an ex post perspective, in which evaluation occurs after the construction of an IS artifact. Such perspectives can assume that the evaluation is an empirical process and its methods can be selected in the same way as empirical research methods. In this paper, we analyze a broader range of evaluation strategies, which includes ex ante (prior to artifact construction) evaluation. This broader view is developed as a strategic DSR evaluation framework, which expands evaluation choices for IS DSR researchers, and also adds emphasis to strategies for evaluating design processes in addition to design products, using well-known quality criteria as an important asset. The framework encompasses both ex ante and ex post orientations as well as naturalistic settings (e.g., case studies) and artificial settings (e.g., lab experiments) for DSR evaluation. The framework proposed offers a strategic view of DSR evaluation that is useful in analyzing published studies, and also in surfacing the evaluation opportunities that present themselves to IS DSR researchers.