How many articles in highly rated journals do Information Systems research faculty publish to earn tenure? Which journals are highly rated outlets? Tenure candidates, promotion and tenure committees, and those who are asked to write external letters are frequently called upon to answer such questions. When Dennis et al. (2006) examined all IS Ph.D. graduates entering academic careers, few faculty had published enough articles in 20 "elite" journals in six years to meet tenure research expectations at research-intensive schools. Our study builds on the dialog started by Dennis et al. In our study, we counted the number of journal articles at the point of tenure for faculty who earned tenure within five to seven years after their Ph.D. graduation date. We also examined the effect of acknowledging different sets of journals as highly rated on the publication rates of faculty who earned tenure. Specifically, we examined the effects of expanding on Dennis et al. by including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of the AIS, Information Systems Journal, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Information Technology, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems in the journal basket. We also looked at the effect of acknowledging highly rated non-IS business journals and highly rated computer science and engineering journals. Finally, we present journal publication benchmarks based on these findings for different types of research institutions.
Of the techniques available for idea generation with group support systems (GSS), little research attention has been given to techniques that challenge problem assumptions or that use unrelated stimuli to promote creativity. When implementing such techniques with GSS, choices must be made regarding how to configure the GSS to deploy the initial creative stimuli and to present the pool of emerging ideas that act as additional stimuli. This paper reports the results of an experiment that compares Electronic Brainstorming (few unnamed rotating dialogues) with Assumption Reversals (many related stimuli, many named dialogues, free movement among dialogues) and Analogies (many unrelated stimuli, many named dialogues, free movement among dialogues). Analogies produced creative, but fewer, ideas, due to the use of unrelated stimuli. Assumption Reversals produced the most, but less creative, ideas, possibly due to fragmentation of the group memory and cognitive inertia caused by lack of forced movement among dialogues.
The paper presents results of ongoing research to support effective user involvement during systems development projects. The Collaborative Software Engineering Methodology is presented as a framework that contains mechanisms to support three layers of user involvement: selected user representatives, user groups, and the broader user community. Productivity and user participation of traditional group meetings have been limited by chauffeured facilitation and by support of single-user tools designed for analysts rather than users. The paper introduces electronic meeting systems (EMS) modeling tools designed to allow users to work in parallel to contribute directly during meetings. These tools are easy to use while containing support features traditionally associated with CASE tools. The methodology includes a sequence of requirements abstractions that users engage directly including activity models, data models, scenarios, system use eases, and prototypes. This methodology is designed to help organizations respond to today's rapidly changing information processing needs.
During business analysis, business activities are modeled and analyzed. Redefined models become the blueprints for improved business activities. The cost to produce models of the organization is high and model accuracy is important. Involvement from knowledgeable participants and stakeholders is desirable during business modeling and analysis. Traditional modeling approaches limit direct participation to a small handful of participants. This paper discusses the development and evaluation of an electronic meeting system (EMS) based activity modeling tool. Modeling efforts supported by this new approach are compared with modeling efforts supported by analysts with a single-user tool. The results of this comparison reveal that the EMS-based modeling tool allows a greater number of individuals to participate efficiently in model development. Models are developed between 175 percent and 251 percent faster with the new approach than with the traditional approach. Specific features are discussed that help relatively novice modelers work with analysts to develop models of reasonable quality. Measures are set forth that can be used to assess modeling efficiency and quality.