Steve Elliot

Transdisciplinary perspectives on environmental sustainability: a resource base and framework for IT-enabled business transformation

The quality and future of human existence are directly related to the condition of our natural environment, but we are damaging the environment. Scientific evidence has mounted a compelling case that human behavior is responsible for deterioration in the Earths natural environment, with the rate of deterioration predicted to increase in the future. Acknowledging this evidence, the governments of 192 countries have formally agreed to take action to resolve problems with the climate system, one of the most highly stressed parts of the natural environment. While the intention is clear, the question of how best to proceed is not. The research reported here undertook a three-phase approach of selecting, analyzing, and synthesizing relevant literature to develop a holistic, transdisciplinary, integrative framework for IT-enabled business transformation. The focus on business transformation is because business is recognized as being a critical contributor in realizing the challenges of environmental sustainability due to its potential capacity for innovation and change-locally, nationally, and globally. This article also serves as a resource base for researchers to begin to undertake significant information systems and multidisciplinary work toward the goal of environmental sustainability. Through selection and analysis of illustrative examples of current work from 12 academic disciplines across 6 core categories, the framework addresses the key issues of uncertainty: (1) What is meant by environmental sustainability? (2) What are its major challenges? (3) What is being done about these challenges? (4) What needs to be done?

The Past and Future of Information Systems: 1976–2006 and Beyond

IFIP TC8 Information Systems.- Information Systems as an Academic Discipline.- Methodologies for Developing Information Systems: A Historical Perspective.- Stakeholders Selection for Interorganizational Systems: A Systematic Approach.- Data Quality Management and Evolution of Information Systems.- Panel: OASIS in the Mirror: Reflections on the Impacts and Research of IFIP WG 8.2.- Design of the Organization of Information Services in Large Public Organizations.- Business Process Reengineering Role in Electronic Government.- The Evolution of IS: Treasury Decision Support & Management Past, Present & Future.- Panel: The Identity and Dynamics of MIS.- Enterprise Applications: Taking the Open Source Option Seriously.- Understanding the Future of Global Software Production.- Work Distribution, Methodology and Technology for ISD and Maintenance.- An Analysis of IFIP TC 8 WG 8.6.- Promoting Learning Practices: Moving Towards Innovation.- 1.5 Million Years of Information Systems:.- Fulfilling the Needs of a Metadata Creator and Analyst.- LUPA: A Workflow Engine.- Data Modeling Dealing With Uncertainty in Fuzzy Logic.- Reinventing the Future: A Study of the Organizational Mind.- Semiotic Engineering - A New Paradigm for Designing Interactive Systems.- The Benefit of Enterprise Ontology in Identifying Business Components.

Understanding the Mobile Experience Economy: A key to richer more effective M-Business Technologies, Models and Strategies

A major challenge for firms these days is how to differentiate themselves in a global market and build competitive advantage. Many firms have been able to move up the value chain from a services base to an experience base as a means to attaining high levels of customer satisfaction and profitability. Consequently a better understanding of the experience economy will assist business managers and designers to develop effective strategies by focusing on the m-business experience and how this experience can build sustainable technology innovation, business models and strategies, and help design products for mobile delivery to meet the markets needs. In this paper we describe several experience economy models, identify their weaknesses, and introduce a new cognitive based experience model that can be used to develop more effective m-business infrastructure and applications. It offers a new understanding of experiences which emphasizes cognition as a whole which includes background knowledge, desires and intentions, rather than the sensory and perceptual aspects alone which are the focus of most traditional models. As a result the new model offers new predictive and explanatory power in understanding the m-business experience economy.

Seeking Success in E-Business

Infonnation systems research is challenging enough, but infonnation systems research in the e-business domain presents even greater difficulties, because its characteristics are in direct conflict with the implicit assumptions underlying most academic research. Approaches are suggested whereby relevant research into e-business can be undertaken. The delivery of real-world value while achieving sufficient rigour to satisfy the guardians of academic standards will, however, remain problematical.

E-business perceptions versus reality: a longitudinal analysis of corporate websites

Commonly held perceptions (including the ones reflected in the Call for Papers for this EC-Web 2005 Conference) are 1) that the Internet is changing the way companies and organizations are working, 2) that the amount of innovation and change seems to accelerate, and 3) that further development is constrained by numerous technical issues that still need to be resolved. Preliminary analysis of developments in the websites of 120 companies from 8 industry sectors across two countries over a period of five years from 2000 – 2004 challenges these perceptions. The websites were analysed by means of a framework with 30 evaluation criteria developed from theory and leading examples of web-applications across a broad range of web-sites in Asia-Pacific, Europe and North-America. This major international study suggests that: the impact of e-business on companies and organizations differs between sectors; the rate of innovation and change does not reflect constant improvement but in some cases exhibits degraded web-capabilities over time; and that the major challenges constraining further development may be more managerial than technical.

An evaluation of intelligent agent based innovation in the wholesale financial services industry

It is now widely accepted that success in providing wholesale financial services will depend on the industrys ability to develop flexible ebusiness models and strategies, as well as its ability to develop innovative systems for knowledge management and customer relationship management that can communicate effectively with legacy systems. In this paper we describe the problems and challenges facing Australian corporations in the Wholesale Financial Services sector and describe a research model which seeks to assess the impact of emerging Intelligent Agent enabled e-business initiatives, particularly in the area of system architecture and mass customisation. The purpose is to assist these firms achieve a level of international competitiveness in this area through (a) the investigation and longitudinal monitoring of the current status of and further developments in intelligent agent technologies, and (b) the investigation of emergent applications and successful approaches for the adoption and implementation of these key technologies in the provision of improved value-added customer services. We argue that a multi-disciplinary integration of e-business strategy, finance, intelligent agent architectures and knowledge technologies offer a previously unexplored solution to the documented challenges confronting Australias Wholesale Financial Services industry. Agent architectures transcend traditional information system designs for applications that require complex, highly customized transactions in an open exception rich environment where responsiveness is imperative. We show that agent architectures naturally support e-business innovation by providing a framework for genuine dynamic information system development, which in turn leads to the kind of system agility that is crucial in the current highly competitive global financial environment. Agents can evolve over time iteratively and independently, without impacting other agents. A key difference between agent architectures and more traditional architectures is that instead of building relationships between software components at design time, agent architectures allow relationships to be formed on the fly at run-time. This results in highly responsive systems that are sensitive to the dynamic financial services context and that may be opportunistic in any competitive complex business environment. The ability to be opportunistic is particularly important in the current highly competitive global wholesale financial services industry.

Erratum to: Seeking Success in E-Business

Erratum to: K.V. Andersen et al. (Eds.) Seeking Success in E-Business DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-35692-1

Editorial: Special issue on empirical research on information systems addressing the challenges of environmental sustainability: an imperative for urgent action

Scientific evidence accepted by leading experts in the environmental domain attributes observable degradation of the natural environment on a global scale to human behaviour (IPCC, 2007; IPCC, 2014). Acknowledging the deteriorating state of the environment as one of the most critical challenges confronting the world, the governments of more than 190 countries have accepted the scientific evidence of this degradation and, by ratifying the United Nations Paris Climate Agreement of 2015, more than 130 countries to date have committed to take action (UNFCCC, 2016a). Business, government and society need to collaborate to achieve fundamental changes in current behaviours and prevailing practices in order to address the challenges of environmental sustainability (IPCC, 2007; Porter & Reinhardt, 2007; Stern, 2007; NIC, 2008; IPCC, 2014; UNFCCC, 2015). Although achievements are being made in specific areas, the gap between current emissions levels and the rate of improvement is widening. This gap will lead to ‘significantly greater climate risks, higher mitigation and adaptation costs and negative impacts on human health and sustainable development’ (UNCCS, 2015, p. 2). Greater effort is urgently required to address these challenges (UNFCCC, 2015; UNCCS, 2015). The information systems (IS) community has a critical contributory role in these global responses. Applications of technology, including information and communications technologies and systems, have been acknowledged as a key source of solutions to address the necessity for fundamental change to behaviours and practices (MEA, 2005; IPCC, 2007; Stern, 2007; NIC, 2008; UNFCCC, 2016b). As a discipline, IS is well placed to make significant contributions to this domain as IS ‘examines more than just the technological system, or just the social system, or even the two side by side; in addition, it investigates the phenomena that emerge when the two interact’ (Lee, 2001, p. iii). Therefore, interaction between technological and social systems to address one of the world’s most critical challenges is located at the core of the IS discipline. Consequently, this special issue aims to contribute to the development of relevant and rigorous research in this domain that demonstrates the applicability of IS as a source of empirical solutions to a range of environmental challenges. It seeks to promote the development of a diversity of environmentally sustainable practices; the application, testing and development of relevant theory; and the development of generalizable theory in use (Lee, 2010) informed by doi: 10.1111/isj.12150

The Evolution of IS: Treasury Decision Support & Management Past, Present & Future

This paper contributes to the discipline of Information Systems (IS) by illustrating the continuing evolution of IS applications to a single, core business function. Historical developments in IS and the major global treasury activity, foreign exchange trading, have been examined to establish the context. Findings from a seven year research project into the impact of ICT on financial services and the development of a next generation agentbased treasury management system prototype have been applied. Possible future developments in IS applications are explored in terns of the capabilities of emerging technologies to address current treasury challenges. The implications for practitioners in an increasingly complex, global market are discussed and sustainable research issues, particularly for IS research, identified.

Strategic Management of Technology-Enabled Disruptive Innovation: Next Generation Web Technologies

Technology-enabled business innovation presents the potential to structurally transform enterprise and industry practice, but uncertainty remains as to how such transformations might be managed. The search for higher returns from technology-enabled business innovation will inevitably lead to the adoption and exploitation of powerful, but disruptive technologies that bring with them higher levels of risk. Disruptive innovation is placed into context through the literature and through examples of past IT innovations with disruptive impact. This paper examines how organizations could obtain improved management of the adoption of potentially disruptive future generation Web technologies. The business innovation technology adoption model (BITAM) is applied to emerging Web technologies to help identify the nature and extent of their potentially disruptive impact on business practice and management strategies so as to better enable mitigation of business risk