Rudy Hirschheim

• PhD
• Professor at Louisiana State University

The decision to source services from cloud computing vendors is becoming increasingly complex. Over time, more IT products, processes, data, information, and security have been offered ‘as a service.’ The present study replicates one by Schwarz et al. (2009) examining the first instance of cloud computing, the Application Service Provider (or ASP),...

The AIS InPractice merged with Science2Practice in 2020. The new institution now translates articles published in AIS journals into Insights to publicize academic findings. Similarly, MISQ and ISR have a joint initiative with Sloan Management Review to translate academic papers into articles published in SMR. Despite these significant efforts in th...

Big data and algorithmic decision-making have been touted as game-changing developments in management research, but they have their limitations. Qualitative approaches should not be cast aside in the age of digitalisation, since they facilitate understanding of quantitative data and the questioning of assumptions and conclusions that may otherwise...

Information security (InfoSec)–related behaviors have been defined in many different ways in the security literature. Indeed, the coexistence of varying terms describing IS security behaviors could be seen as a conceptual inconsistency. However, we believe that it could also be construed as the sign of a vivid and living field embracing dispersed o...

Purpose The research study intends to gain a better understanding of members' behaviors in the context of crowdsourcing contests. The authors examined the key factors that can motivate or discourage contributing to a team and within the community. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted 21 semi-structured interviews with Kaggle.com membe...

Purpose The authors’ contribution to the literature involves using expectation disconfirmation theory (EDT) to examine the impact of expectations on outsourcing success. This study hypothesizes that perceptions of outsourcing success are contingent on disconfirmation between clients’ expectations and the perceived performance of fundamental issues...

In this chapter, I attempt to document the early days of Information Technology Outsourcing, starting with the initial EDS facilities management contracts, which then led to the notion of IT outsourcing and its proliferation. I will present the history of the mega-deals, and some of the ideas, lessons, and rationale, which drove early outsourcing....

While the IS field has devoted significant effort to improving written communication to disseminate academic research findings, little attention has been given to the issue of soliciting feedback from practitioners about these communications. This paper explores the question of how to engage practitioners with written communication that aims to dis...

Over the last two decades, agile software development (ASD) has garnered much attention in both research and practice. Several ASD methods and techniques have been developed and studied. In particular, researchers have provided several theoretical perspectives on ASD and contributed rich insights to the ASD practice. Still, despite calls for a more...

With the advances in internet technologies and the emergence of crowdsourcing, organisations are now increasingly looking outside their boundaries for solving problems. Yet, the success of crowdsourcing depends on high-quality participation of crowdsourcing individuals and teams. In recent studies, examining the effect of simultaneous collaboration...

This paper proposes an extension of Fletcher and Huff’s (1990) argument mapping technique, which focuses on an examination of individual arguments, to depict the broader argumentative terrain of a theoretical discourse. To illustrate the utility of argument mapping as a literature review technique, we demonstrate an application of this approach to...

The trend towards digital transformation has brought about a number of emerging challenges for information systems outsourcing. Organizations have to understand how to digitally innovate through IS outsourcing, how to govern outsourced digitalization projects, how to cope with complex multi vendor and micro-services arrangements, how to manage data...

Expectations have been found to exert a significant impact on client satisfaction in outsourcing projects and have been utilized to understand how individuals accumulate experiences and develop beliefs. In this study, we examine the impact of expectations on IT outsourcing success. Although extant studies identify multiple potential expectations, t...

Abstract. This special issue on Scandinavian Researcher Career Retrospectives (RCR) includes five articles from within the Nordic information systems (IS) research community. Two of the papers are from Finland (Iivari and Nurminen), two from Sweden (Flensburg and Lundeberg), and one from Denmark (Bjørn-Andersen with Clemmensen). Each of these artic...

We explore the use of an agile methodology for improving the recovery of complex systems under catastrophic scenarios. Our adaptation of Kanban presents a novel, agile approach to overcoming the unique challenges that organizations face during disaster recovery. An action research study approach is employed to test the implementation of Kanban duri...

Building highly available information technology (IT) infrastructures has become critical to many corporations’ survival. However, the disaster recovery (DR) industry lacks a common enterprise framework to capitalize on the value that DR provides corporations due in part to inadequate conceptual frameworks for DR that can facilitate the alignment o...

This paper addresses how technology-mediated mass collaboration offers a dramatically innovative alternative for producing IS research. We refer to this emerging genre as the crowdsourced research genre and develop a framework to structure discourse on how it may affect the production of IS research. After systematically traversing the alternative...

The concept of what constitutes design is in flux, and constantly expanding (Stewart, 2011: 515). The industrial revolution is argued to have given rise to design-based disciplines, such as engineering and architecture, and during the 19th and 20th centuries, design emerged as being concerned with the conceptualization and actualization of material...

This article analyses the scholarly output of Information Systems Journal (ISJ) in relation to its seven peer journals in the Association for Information Systems Senior Scholars' Basket of Eight journals (SSB8) since ISJ's inception in 1991. To do so, cluster analyses are generated using metadata (i.e. titles, keywords and abstracts) from the artic...

Outsourcing refers to the transferring of internal work to an external provider. In this article, we explore the transferring of IT services externally. In doing so, we consider the motivation for outsourcing, as well as its history, definitions, key concepts, and possible future trends. Keywords: outsourcing; offshoring; microsourcing; rural sou...

This article surveys business school deans and IS academics regarding their level of agreement with concerns attributed to the Information Systems discipline as summarized in Ives and Adams (2012). The responses of the two constituent groups are evaluated independently, then the responses are juxtaposed for between-group analysis. Additional concer...

This article surveys business school deans and IS academics regarding their level of agreement with concerns attributed to the Information Systems discipline as summarized in Ives and Adams (2012). The responses of the two constituent groups are evaluated independently, then the responses are juxtaposed for between-group analysis. Additional concer...

In this paper, we review the premises and practice of the historical method in order to understand how it can be applied to studying information systems (IS) related phenomena. We first examine the philosophical and methodological foundations of the method. For this purpose, we introduce a four-tiered research framework, which consists of (1) the p...

Social capital provides a lens that allows us to focus on a wide range of aspects in Information Technology (IT) outsourcing vendor-client relationships. At the same time, social capital enables us to view client-vendor relationships and IT outsourcing arrangements at a greater depth. We briefly describe how social capital has become increasingly p...

This book attempts to synthesize research that contributes to a better understanding of how to reach sustainable business value through information systems (IS) outsourcing. Important topics in this realm are how IS outsourcing can contribute to innovation, how it can be dynamically governed, how to cope with its increasing complexity through multi...

IT outsourcing is common business practice and in recent years has moved to the use of offshore IT service companies. In 2008 we described the outsourcing approach of a large Australian company (Alpha Corporation) over a 10 year period (1997–2006) beginning with the initial decision to outsource in 1997. There are few studies which have documented...

Purpose – This paper proposes a new research agenda for information technology (IT) outsourcing,motivated by the belief that the social capital concept enables IT outsourcing researchers to capture more of the nuances of the client–vendor relationship in IT outsourcing arrangements. Design/methodology/approach – The paper builds a comprehensive fr...

Research into the acceptance of technology is in need of an alternative approach. Despite repeated calls for research to guide our colleagues-in-practice in the deployment of systems that are accepted, there has yet to be systematic research into the relationship between the decisions made by individuals and the bottom-line impact that is derived f...

This book attempts to synthesize research that contributes to a better understanding of how to reach sustainable business value through information systems (IS) outsourcing. Important topics in this realm are how IS outsourcing can contribute to innovation, how it can be dynamically governed, how to cope with its increasing complexity through multi...

This paper develops a process model of how and why complementarity and substitution form over time between contractual and relational governance in the context of IS outsourcing. Our analysis identifies four distinct process patterns that explain this formation as the outcome of interaction processes between key elements of both contractual and rel...

Companies have increasing opportunities to tap into a virtual, on-demand workforce. But the organizational challenges of this latest wave of outsourcing require new management models and skills.

In this paper, we empirically investigate what motivates firms to engage in the new outsourcing practice known as online microsourcing. Five antecedent factors involved in making online microsourcing decisions, mainly representing economic and strategic considerations, were identified based on prior research. Our research model was tested with data...

IntroductionThe tasks of university professors include teaching, research, and university self-administration. Therefore, various skills and qualifications are necessary. Young researchers need to know which qualifications are important to get a chance to become professor. In this context, publications in high-ranking journals, which are rated acco...

EinleitungDie Aufgaben einer Hochschullehrerin bzw. eines Hochschullehrers liegen in den Bereichen Lehre, Forschung und universitäre Selbstverwaltung. Hierzu benötigen sie verschiedene Fähigkeiten und Qualifikationen. Für Nachwuchswissenschaftler stellt sich die Frage, welche Qualifikationen für die Chancen auf eine Professur besonders wichtig sind...

Adoption of innovative technologies has been investigated using different theoretical perspectives for many years. In the research field of Management, Abrahamson has suggested four perspectives to explain the adoption / rejection behavior. Similarly, in our field, Fichman has provided us with different adoption perspectives. A review and compariso...

Resistance is normally characterized as a set of behaviours located in and belonging to change recipients. Such behaviours are seen to thwart the legitimate aims of both change strategists and the change agents who implement systems and the associated organisational change on the strategists' behalf. However, results from our case study research in...

This paper arose from concerns regarding the current conceptualizations of ‘design’ in the emerging literature on design science (DS) in information systems (IS). In this paper, we argue that current conceptualizations of design in IS are overly narrow, which necessarily limits what is viewed as acceptable DS research. In response we advance a more...

This paper explores how and why contractual and relational governance evolve over time in information systems (IS) outsourcing projects. Governance is broken down into its foundation and action dimension resulting in four governance parameters: trust /norms and informal control representing relational governance; contract and formal control reflect...

In this paper, the more than 40-year history of the information systems discipline is discussed by dividing history into four somewhat overlapping eras. For each era, important events that occurred are highlighted. The events are categorized as "management/governance of the IS function", "technology", "research themes", "research methodology", "edu...

This paper examines management fashion discourse based on the premise that management fashions are not neutral, but problematic. It grounds this premise on Abrahamson and Fairchild's (1999) observation that attributes the upswings of management fashion discourse to “emotionally charged, enthusiastic and unreasoned discourse”. Adopting this critical...

Information Systems Design Science (ISDS) as a research community is limited by a small number of research frameworks with considerable influence. The small triad of influential ISDS research, consisting of Walls, et al (1992), March and Smith (1995), and Hevner et al (2004) have primarily limited ISDS research to the positivist paradigm and the IT...

This study investigates the role of information technologies (IT) in the governance of IT outsourcing relationships. Managers rely on contractual and relational governance to manage IT outsourcing projects. In addition, they use dedicated IT solutions to make the governance more efficient. While the role of IT in supporting the two governance appro...

Information technology (IT) outsourcing is one of the key contexts in management in which inter-organizational relationships are studied. Since in an IT outsourcing situation, the client and vendor organizations come together with the stated purpose of creating something new within the dynamics of a business relationship, a social capital perspecti...

While some have touted service-oriented architecture as "the next big thing," many SOA efforts have failed to achieve organizational objectives. A proposed new SOA maturity model addresses this gap by accounting for the different motivations for SOA adoption by IT administrators, business managers, and enterprise leaders.

The research study described in this paper utilises the theoretical lens of background conversations to examine the phenomenon of resistance to change in a longitudinal case study of an enterprise system (ES) implementation. In order to reveal the complex nature of resistance, the research study adopts a social constructionist perspective, leading...

In this paper we empirically examine a new global phenomenon - online sourcing - with a quantitative research method. The rise of online sourcing not only boosts the emergence of several new business models in current digitalized economy, but also will fundamentally change the way work is done. Thus, gaining a deep understanding of the adoption of...

This article attempts to look at factors and events that led to the birth of the information system (IS) field, and traces how the field has changed over time and evolved. It also explains why at various times different names such as MIS, IT, IS, information management, information science, etc., have been proposed to label the IS field. Each frame...

We believe that the information system (IS) discipline has a major and urgent problem to contend with: the general public appears to believe that there are ‘no jobs in IS’ because of offshoring. They see the offshoring of IS jobs as an inevitable consequence of economic and competitive pressures to drive down labor costs, which leads them to conclu...

Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is espoused as the next structural innovation within the IT marketplace. Our findings, based on interviews with fifteen key individuals responsible for SOA deployment at ten organizations, suggest that there is a 'disconnect' between the in-print prescriptions regarding SOA and what is actually happening. For exa...

The advice found in practical guides like PMBOK regarding designing and managing communication in IT projects, is worryingly superficial and gives little guidance or insights of substance to IS academics and practitioners. Thus, the objective of this paper is to help academics and practitioners better appreciate the complexity involved in IT projec...

Introduction Outsourcing as a means of meeting organizational information technology (IT) needs is a commonly accepted and growing practice; one that is continually evolving to include a much wider set of business functions: logistics, accounting, human resources, legal, and risk assessment. ³ Today firms of all sizes are rushing overseas to have t...

The sourcing of application development is becoming increasingly complex. While much prior work has investigated sourcing in a homogeneous marketplace, sourcing choices have increased in complexity, with a myriad of choices ranging from insourcing to domestic outsourcing to engaging Application Service Providers (ASP) to offshoring. In this study,...

Purpose Companies are increasingly changing their IT sourcing arrangements. Such changes often involve significant costs. The purpose of this paper is to explore and explain IT sourcing as a dynamic organizational phenomenon and to gain a deeper understanding of the drivers and outcomes of IT sourcing changes at organizational level. Design/method...

In many developing countries, lack of IT skills and human capital impede the potential of IT investments in organizations in developing countries [Lee, J. (2001). Education for technology readiness: Prospects for developing countries. Journal of Human ...

According to the International Data Corporation, the worldwide outsourcing market size is estimated to rise from 100 billion in 1998 to100 billion in 1998 to 152 billion by 2005, with an annual growth rate of 12.2% (Dibbern, Goles, Hirschheim, & Jayatilaka, 2004). Despite a new wave of billion dollars contracts, hardly anyone can attest a successfu...

The notion of outsourcing — making arrangements with an external entity for the provision of goods or services to supplement or replace internal efforts — has been around for centuries. Kakabadse and Kakabadse (2002) track one of the earliest occurrences of outsourcing to the ancient Roman Empire, where tax collection was outsourced. In the early y...

Commenting on the continuing growth of IT outsourcing, King (2004) argues that & #x201C;The sourcing issue is among the top five agenda items for IT executives, as the amount of such outsourcing grows, its impact on the economies of companies and nations increases and political controversy over the consequent jobs lost to offshore outsourcing heigh...

The notion of outsourcing - making arrangements with an external entity for the provision of goods or services to supplement or replace internal efforts - has been around for centuries. The outsourcing of information systems (IS) is however a much newer concept but one which has been growing dramatically. This book attempts to synthesize what is kn...

As the external services market has evolved, academics have systematically studied a number of important aspects of these IT outsourcing decisions. These studies can be categorized as descriptive case studies and surveys of the current outsourcing practices; surveys of practitioners’ perceptions of risks and benefits of outsourcing, studies of dete...

Drawing from the firsthand experiences of senior executives and Information Technology (IT) managers in North American and British companies, this chapter summarizes the expectations they had for outsourcing and explains what went wrong — and why — when expectations were not met. Successful outsourcing experiences are then used to outline a prescri...

This chapter is based on one of the first articles we published for practitioners (Lacity and Hirschheim, 1993). At that time, very little research had been conducted on what actually happens in client organizations when they outsourced IT. Based on 14 case studies in US organizations, the article examined three myths about outsourcing and proposed...

The motivation of this paper is to advance the recent discussion about the identity of the Information Systems field with a social analysis of its community structures. It seeks to shed new light on the reasons why the field continues to debate its identity and to voice concerns about its recognition by other disciplines. For that purpose the paper...

In sum, reviewers can play a key role in helping to mold the authors' ideas into a coherent and effective message. Submitted papers improve through the review process. And, while it doesn't always work to the authors' liking (e.g., rejected papers, endless rounds of revisions), and it does have its drawbacks (length of the review process, can't dis...

Information systems (IS) sourcing refers to the entire set of processes ranging from initiating and preparing the decision to provide an organization's IS functions. IS sourcing is closely related to the steady change and provides a collection of research studies that have either addressed one or more of the research gaps in traditional IS outsourc...

Outsourcing continues to capture the attention of researchers as more companies move to outsourcing models as part of their business practice. Two areas frequently researched and reported in the literature are the reasons why a company decides to outsource, and outsourcing success factors. This paper describes an in-depth, longitudinal case study t...

Trust has been considered a central aspect of successful IT outsourcing. Although a great deal of interest in trust has been described, there are very few theoretical models in the IT outsourcing literature to explain mutual trust, its role, and its impact in IT outsourcing. This study proposes a trust-based relationship research model to assess th...

Advances in educational technology have had little impact on the lecturing process, a process on which university-level information systems education depends. This paper argues for the use of ‘playlets’, in the form of scripted dialogues that present the material in a more interesting and easily interpreted fashion. An example of a playlet is given...

The purpose of this paper is to show that a number of basic issues have not been adequately addressed in existing office information systems research. Prominent among these are the nature and role of offices, the goals of office information systems development, and the nature of its organizational and managerial consequences. It is proposed that of...

It is increasingly acknowledged that generating value from IT requires strategic and operational IT business alignment. But it remains difficult to give concrete suggestions on what drives alignment in day-to-day business. Thorough process documentation might enable cross-departmental transparency and thereby serve as antecedent of operational alig...

IT business alignment is widely acknowledged as an important driver for effectively applying information systems in a business context and for increasing the performance of the supported business process. But how does this structural integration of enterprise systems and business processes change when firms outsource the provision of their IT? We e...

This paper suggests that the interpretation and development of IT occupations as knowledge work might provide a more realistic avenue to proceed towards more professional practice in the IT field rather than the ambition of trying to es¬tablish them as true professions. The idea of knowledge work leads us to focus on the body of knowledge possessed...

Enid Mumford devoted her career to promoting the ethical use of computers. She founded her work on ethics, socio-technical and general systems theory, and action research. These foundations translated into four principles underlying all her work: (1) Information systems should be designed to improve the quality of life for all. (2) Individuals shou...

This paper focuses on the process of implementing strategic information systems (SIS) by studying the radical changes it may bring to an organization's deep structure. It argues that a full understanding of the process of implementation of such systems should include not only technical aspects but also the social dynamics of an organization; specif...

IS Research Perspectives aims to introduce and provoke discussion about critical issues in the IS field, from an academic perspective. The articles published in this section are expected to create excitement about how the IS field needs to change (or maintain its status quo) in order to thrive as an intellectual enterprise. As such, we welcome inno...

This paper focuses on IS integration decisions made during mergers and acquisitions from a strategic-alignment lens. The objectives of this study are to: (1) examine business-IS alignment as reflected in IS integration decisions in a merger context and (2) identify factors that shape IS integration decisions in a merger context. We study these issu...

The shrinking student numbers in IS programs in developed countries has created a crisis for the IS profession. In this paper we explore how offshoring is affecting the IS discipline both directly and indirectly and show some of the major causes behind the re-location of IS work. Our primary message is that while offshoring has impacted the locatio...

With North-America facing a situation of evolving from too few IS jobs to too few IS students [Ives05], this paper discusses the causes and consequences of decreasing IS enrolments in North-American universities. It specifically examines the offshoring trend and illustrates how offshoring changes companies' requirements regarding young professional...

This paper is a history of Texaco’s Corporate IT Function (IT) from its inception until Chevron acquired Texaco in 2001. The four decades of Texaco IT are best characterized by a contrast between the function’s performance and its resources. According to third party measures, Texaco IT was a top performer amongst oil-industry IT functions and third...

Despite a variety of management tools, valuable management prescriptions, and the desire of information technology (IT) managers and business managers alike to build a better relationship, the current state of the IT-business relationship is far from ideal. Although many believe the difficulty in managing this relationship is rooted in differences...

The notion of outsourcing making arrangements with an external entity for the provision of goods or services to supplement or replace internal efforts has been around for centuries. Kakabadse and Kakabadse (2002) track one of the earliest occurrences of outsourcing to the ancient Roman Empire, where tax collection was outsourced. In the early years...

The notion of outsourcing a' making arrangements with an external entity for the provision of goods or services to supplement or replace internal efforts a? has been around for centuries. The outsourcing of information systems (IS) is, however, a much newer concept, but one which has been growing dramatically. This book attempts to synthesize what...

Information Systems (IS) sourcing continues to be a topic of great concern to IS professionals. While a number of articles and books discuss the pros and cons of outsourcing, little has been written about companies that evaluate outsourcing but choose insourcing. Do companies actually achieve the cost savings proposed in the insourcing bid? This qu...

The benefits of online education include convenience and fexibility, greater motivation to work, more and better learning, higher quality of education and immediate and extensive feedback. The diaadvantages of online education include high frustation levels, lower levels of satisfaction and interest, technical and logistical problems, lack of instr...