GHS Global Hospitality/Service Industry

Information systems (IS) are an inseparable part of hospitality/service industry. The global and evolving nature of IS issues in hospitality and service industry make it a relevant and timely track to be addressed in Global Information Technology Management Conference 2010. Information systems in hotels, restaurants, airlines, recreational tour operators, and other facets of service industry are no longer viewed as a cost center, rather a strategic tool. New business models and developments in hospitality/service industries such as global online travel agencies, tourism operations, merchant model, and distribution models created a huge demand for research in this IS field. Consequently, there has been a huge supply of research in this field. This track will serve as a scholastic platform in the fields of global hospitality/service industry information technology. Some of the topics this track will attract will include but not limited to, global Issues in Hospitality/Service Industry, cross-cultural differences in Technology Leverage and Use, e-procurement in global hospitality/service and tourism supply chain management, privacy and security issues in Hospitality/Service Industry such as security and privacy of transactions and customer data and biometric applications in addition to payment card industry compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley Act Compliance and specific technologies. High quality submissions in this track may be considered for publication in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology (JHTT).

SAM IT in South America

IT plays a central role in the developing countries, like in improving production efficiency and supporting more transparent political processes.In South America, IT has been also considered a means to boosting local economies through the transaction of IT products and services, as well as a shortcut for promoting the emergence of individual talents.

But not all South American nations seem to be already prepared for joining this new social realm. Indeed, only countries like Brazil, Chile and Argentina currently have some stake in the international IT community - both in academia and industry. It is of need that we foster solid IT initiatives in the region in order to mobilize people and social structures to make this new world order profitable for their local interests.One way to achieve this is to promote the open discussion of issues that result from such an intent.

On the other side, remarkable IT experiences in South America have been consistently reported over the years. Low salaries in the region have attracted companies to implement facilities for application development and support, or to sub-contract the activities to locals.The opportunity of personal growth aligned with innate or educated skills have also pushed young South American professionals to pursue successful IT careers overseas.

In such a context, we suggest the research community to submit quality papers (completed or in-progress research) dealing with any from an assorted list of topics on South American experiences, including (but not limited to):

• ERP implementation
• SCM implementation
• CRM implementation
• IT industry facts and regulation
• Internet and e-commerce facts
• Idiosyncrasies in IT contracts
• IT curriculum cases
• IT teaching and teaching cases
• Cultural issues pervading IT adoption and use
• Cultural issues on virtual-community experiences
• Customer roles in IT implementation
• IT impact on industry efficiency
• IT impact on political transparency
• IT impact on job development
• IT impact on unemployment
• IT impact on education and the information divide
  

CPS Global Compliance, Privacy, Security

ITH IT in Healthcare

Delivering affordable but quality healthcare to its citizens is of prime concern to most nations. IT-enabled enhancement or transformation of various structures and processes in the healthcare delivery system can not only help reduce the cost of healthcare delivery, but also enhance the quality of care provided. The goal of this track is to explore current research and practice in the use of IT in general, and Internet technologies specifically, to improve the healthcare delivery system. Key players in the healthcare system include patients, physicians, healthcare organizations, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, the government, and policy makers, and this track is particularly interested in elucidating the nature and extent of IT use in these stakeholder segments. This track also aims to foster discussions on opportunities for further use of IT in healthcare, and also threats and concerns involved in the use of IT.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

• Remote delivery of healthcare using IT
• Online diagnosis and treatment systems
• Online health maintenance systems
• Enhancing traditional clinical decision making through IT
• IT enabled distributed clinical decision making
• IT and the practice of evidence based medicine
• IT-induced power shifts among healthcare stakeholders
• Web based systems for medical information for patients
• Web based systems for medical information for physicians
• Establishment of IT infrastructure standards in the healthcare system
• Online medical communities
• The use of IT to prevent, control, and eradicate epidemic and pandemic outbreaks
• Electronic patient records management systems
• Facilitating continuing medical education of healthcare professionals using IT
• Country specific healthcare IT needs
• Technical, managerial, and behavioral issues involved in the implementation of IT in healthcare

ITA IT in Africa

Worldwide IT has influenced the way business should be conducted, and although technically it should not be that different in Africa from other countries, certain issues have been shown to be pervasive.  These issues include the development and efficiency of services, accessibility of telecommunication services/technologies for the public, e-business opportunities, current vulnerability case studies in Africa need to be addressed, as well as private sector and semi government organizations initiatives in transferring knowledge to Africa from the developed world. Hence gap analysis and treats should be identified. In addition, readiness of the public and governments of Africa at large in utilizing technology for socio, political and economic development must be addresses. Hence, ICT education and the use of IT in education also need to be reviewed. Software crisis is the other perspective that makes users frustrated from implementing IT solutions. This is highly seen in mega projects of e-government, the financial and service sectors like health information systems and so on. Therefore, another area of interest is Service Oriented Enterprise Architecture. These are some of the domains of IT management experience Africa lacks that should be justified by research findings and suggest the appropriate measures to tackle.

DSO Decision Support & Knowledge Management in IT Outsourcing

In IT offshore outsourcing, the management of knowledge within and beyond the boundaries of a sourcing organization is a pertinent issue in today's business globalization. Offshore projects involve many issues related to knowledge fragmentation and loss, and the appropriate strategies by which the constantly accumulating organizational knowledge is maximized, maintained and subsequently retained in a company offer capabilities that greatly extend decision-making processes inherent in ordinary, single-location, onsite projects. With offshore outsourcing and distributed management in perspective, the present track emphasizes the organizational aspects of knowledge management, the allocation of project resources in order to maximize knowledge and the resulting decision-support capabilities that assist concerned managers to make critical business decisions. In addition, the track also concerns aspects of global knowledge sharing, embedded nature of knowledge in distributed project management, and the problems of decision-making in multicultural settings and environments.

ITC IT and Change Management

In an increasingly global business environment, there is a growing need to utilize technology (IT) to achieve efficiencies, coordination, and communication in the business relationships. However, the concept of inter and intra-organizational changes, related to the introduction of the latest technologies, is still a phenomenon that needs further investigation in Management Information System (MIS). This track focuses on organizational issues and their impact on the diffusion, acceptance, and use of information technologies, in particular on the Change Management process that should ensure that standardized methods and procedures are used for efficient and
prompt handling of all changes. Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Implementation issues and concerns
• IT Governance
• Business IT/alignment through BPR
• BPM and change management
• IT and Project Management
• Refining tools to measure the adoption, diffusion, and/or use of ITs within companies
• Technological and Organizational Issues in IT implementation
• Organizational and social challenges in integrating ERP (or other Enterprise systems)
• Strategic challenges in extending the ERP systems beyond the organizational boundaries
• Case Studies

DKM Decision Support and Knowlege Management Systems

The huge amount of available data collected through network transactions, the geographic dispersion of information, the necessity of interfacing and coordinating different systems belonging to different organizations, create new management problems usually not solvable through traditional management approaches and tools. Furthermore, and probably even more important, information is not only quantitatively rich but also its content becomes more and more complex; thus, in many cases, it's the semantic aspect of information that has to be managed, as it happens with language-based information and interaction on the world wide web. Information management becomes more and more difficult because it involves the management of both syntactic and semantic aspects and it requires an approach more oriented to Knowledge management (KM) and Decision Support Systems (DSS) than to traditional Information Systems one. Finally, web 2.0 technologies and IT-enabled collaboration make possible new distributed approach to the design, implementation and use of KM and DSS in open, collective environment.
By keeping into account the remarkable progresses obtained in the field of computation, Artificial Intelligence and Collaborative Intelligence in the recent years, one may asks if the development of new technologies based on the integration of ICT, computational techniques and new web technologies can provide interesting and promising solutions for the management of organizational networks and virtual teams in a global environment.
The focus of this track is to collect contributions about the development and the design of innovative KM and DSS for the resolution of problems related to the coordination, knowledge and information management in complex networked organizations.
Topics in this track include, but are not limited to: Design and implementation of DSS for global management; Application of intelligent computation techniques to KM and DSS (e.g. fuzzy systems, neural networks, genetic algorithms, agent-based technologies, etc.); Intelligent systems for e-business and e-commerce; Qualitative methodologies for KM; DSS and collaboration tools for virtual team and extended enterprise management; KM platforms; Organizational models for KM; Organizational impact of ICT-based DSS and KM tools.

ONE Online Education & Training

Emerging technologies, globalization and economic changes are transforming education and training in academia and corporate environments/ organizations.  There is an increasing demand for training and retraining employees and Universities and corporations are using different technologies to offer online education and training programs. This track will focus on research related to online learning/ training and will serve as a forum to discuss latest research, applications, issues , strategies  and the use of innovative technologies. Papers submitted to this track may include, but are not limited to: the design, development, assessment of online learning/ training, emerging technologies, cross-cultural education, collaboration, online learning effectiveness and outcomes, content management systems, global trends in online learning and corporate training. Submissions are welcomed from academics, practitioners, researchers and vendors.

SNE Social Networking

Hatala (2006) defines a social network as “a set of people or groups of people…with some pattern of interaction or “ties” between them.” Interest in social networks has a long and distinguished history. Early thinkers such as Karl Marx (1857: 1956, p. 96) suggested that society is not simply a collection of individuals, but “the sum of the relations in which these individuals stand to one another,” while Leopold von Weise (1931) suggested that if we could actually visualize society it would appear as “an impenetrable network of lines between men” (1941: p. 30).  Burt (1976) envisioned that,

“With the growth of technology and its concomitant division of labor, the determination of actors in society as a function of their relations with other actors is likely to increase rather than decrease. The problem for the social scientist then becomes one of conceptualizing the patterns of relations between an actor and the social system in which he exists in a manner optimally suited to explanation,” (p. 93).
Information and communication technologies have indeed provided the impetus toward the formation of technologically-enabled social network structures.  Via information and communication technologies, disparate individuals interact and connect for the purposes of communicating, gaining access to and sharing information and knowledge.  Technologically-enabled social networks have attracted billions of active users, a number that is increasing exponentially. Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter provide the vehicle for valuable social information on contacts and their relationships. Wireless devices such as the Blackberry and iPhone provide a mobile social networking platform for creating, storing, processing, forwarding and sharing content and facilitate the formation of ambiguous, informal, ad hoc social networks.

The goal of this track is to synthesize research discussions that are of relevance to this novel computing paradigm. We solicit papers covering various topics of interest that include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Implications of social networking on network architecture
• System design for social networks
• New social science of networks
• Mobile and pervasive social networks
• Real world applications of social network analysis and theory
• New social-inspired content creation and distribution networks
• New aspects of trust, privacy, information credibility and security in social networking
• Analysis of social networking patterns and trends
• Business value of social networks
• Strategic impact of social networks
• Knowledge management through social networks
• Enterprise 2.0 business models
• Management of social networking channels
• Mobile social networking
• Research methodologies to study social networking
• User adoption and diffusion of social networks
• Social, economic and political impact of social networks

LIT Leadership and IT

This track encourages paper that explore the intersection of leadership and information technology.  Papers approporiate for this track include, but are not limited to, those that explore how IT is changing the ability to lead employees across the globe (Global leadership), how IT has changed the way the leader self manages (how information is stored, organized, accessed, etc), how enables and augments more recent leadership theories such as self leadership and sustainable leadership.  

ASA IT in Asia 

RTC Research topics for Competitiveness

The main objective of this track is to gather, review and analyze research topics related on how to increase the competitiveness of nations, industries, regions, companies and particular groups through the use of different dimensions of IT. We are interested on analyzing different perspectives of competitiveness that have a direct or indirect impact not only on technology but also on society, culture and economy.

GEC Global Electronic Commerce

In today's ever-evolving world, everything imaginable is available on the web. The Internet is growing as more and more people and businesses connect to it on a daily basis.  With Internet usage on the rise, firms are beginning to realize the importance of adopting E-commerce.  This track intends to collect contributions on this issue.  
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• E -Consumer Behavior
• E-Commerce Adoption
• E -Commerce Strategic Management
• E -Commerce Management and Leadership
• E -Commerce and Organizational Behavior
• E-Commerce and Organizational Development
• E -Commerce and Organizational Learning
• E -Commerce Technologies and the Workplace
• E -Commerce and Employee Ethical issues
• E -Commerce Stress and Strain Impacts
• E-Commerce and Human Resource Management
• E -Commerce and Cultural Issues
• E -Commerce and Customer Relationships
• E -Commerce and Political Issues
• B2B Markets and Exchanges

STR Strategic Applications of Global Economy

Strategic and competitive considerations have long been separated from the technological innovation activities of the firm due to the complexities involved in integrating technology and innovation issues into the firm's overall strategic planning.  In learning from the past & charting the future of the discipline, the key question is what will it take to be a/sustain success in the business environment of tomorrow?  Three forces account for most of the convergence of business strategy with organizational structure and information systems. They are rapid innovation of new information technologies, widespread creation of new ideas and concepts about information itself, and extensive development of new information-intensive organizational forms and business strategies.  As more countries join the ranks of the industrialized nations, the sophistication of the global market and number of global competitors have eliminated any advantage to a simple presence in international markets. Companies tied to the information economy are typically global from their inception - the Internet does not permit them to compete in only national markets. Today the nternational/global/multinational/transnational organization must employ strategic thinking to compete successfully.The focus of this mini-track will be on understanding the fundamental conditions of the industry and the firm in order to generate and sustain a competitive strategy.

Suggested topics:

The Strategic Applications of Global Information Systems Track encourages the submission of quality papers and panel and workshop proposals dealing with (but not limited to) the following topics:

Impact of strategic IT and governance on transnational/multinational enterprises (MNEs)

• Best and Next  practices in strategic global IS management and global competition
• Cultural difference between/within global companies
• Managing intellectual capital  in MNEs/Impacts of Social, Cultural, Political, and Economic Issues
• Building strategic NII infrastructures and their governance
• Global IT Strategy in MNEs
• Knowledge Management / Multinational IT Resource Management
• Speed of change  & Sustainability
• Shareholder demands and Impact of regulation/deregulation
• Case studies of strategic applications in global IS and their governance
• Comprehensive reviews of previous studies on collaborative technologies in organizations.
• Analyses of different research methods and their impact on the study of strategic IT and governance in organizations.
• Design, implementation, and assessment of strategic IT and governance solutions.
• Strategic IT and governance of these technologies’ impact on knowledge management and organizational learning.
• Strategic IT to support innovation and creativity and the related governance issues
  

ICT ICT in Emerging Technologies/Digital Divide

There has been a concern that uneven adoption and diffusion of information and communication technology (ICT) would create a "digital divide" between developed and developing countries.  Companies and countries that lag behind in ICT adoption and innovations will risk being bypassed by the competitive edge of those using the new technologies.  In a worse scenario, existing socio-economic divisions would be reinforced by the "digital divide".  This track invites any research paper presenting the experience and/or lesson of ICT innovation, adoption and diffusion in emerging economies and contributing to the on-going discussion on how to eliminate the "digital divide" at country, firm or individual level.

EMR/EHR EMR/EHR: Managerial, Technical and Social Issues

An Electronic Medical Record (EMR) is a computerized medical record containing various forms of patient data routed through a health care system. It is generally owned by the healthcare organization that created it. Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), the healthcare industry’s membership organization, defines Electronic Health Record (EHR) as “a longitudinal electronic record of patient health information generated by one or more encounters in any care delivery setting. Included in this information are patient demographics, progress notes, problems, medications, vital signs, past medical history, immunizations, laboratory data and radiology reports”. EHR’s purpose is to automate and streamline workflow in healthcare setting. While the objective of EMRs and EHRs are to improve quality of care, it does present several managerial, technical and social challenges. The purpose of this track is to solicit papers that examine issues pertaining to EMR and EHR use or adoption. Suggested Topics pertaining to EMRs and EHRs include, but not limited to:

• Behavioral issues
• Cost-benefit analysis
• Implementation or Adoption Case Studies
• Design issues
• Standards and Regulatory impacts (such as HIPAA or other technical standards)
• Impact on Quality of Healthcare
• Accessibility and use