Information Systems Research Program

Information Systems Research Program

 
Founded in 1978, the Information Systems Research Program (ISRP) promotes research that advances information systems practices around the world. It supports the ongoing IS research of UCLA Anderson's faculty and students, and further serves as a hub for scholarly communication and collaboration among IS doctoral graduates and program friends worldwide. It provides close ties to the IS professional community represented by members of Innovate@UCLA, formerly the UCLA IS Associates, which has supported the ISRP over many years.

The ISRP today supports a variety of research and professional activities. It funds ongoing faculty research projects. It provides for research assistantships and needed equipment, and supports organized workshops such as WISRD and travel to scholarly conferences. It also supports the Visiting Fellows Program. It maintains relationships with business firms that cooperate in  and serve as sites for research. A few participate in cooperative research as IS Research Associates.

Following a recently held WISRD that identified the need to bring researchers from multiple scholarly backgrounds together to address how IS might make the world a better place, the ISRP has also established connections to others doing related research at UCLA and other UC campuses in the interest of promoting productive exchanges and collaborations across multiple schools and locations.

As the ISRP has a long history of importance in conjunction with the former IS area at UCLA Anderson, it also maintains IS History pages and documents, which include archives pertaining to IS curricula, colloquium series and working papers. These pages also include a list of IS Doctoral Grads.

Professor Burt Swanson is director of the ISRP.

For further information, please contact:

E. Burton Swanson
Director, ISRP

UCLA Anderson School of Management
110 Westwood Plaza, Cornell Hall D502
Box 951481
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1481
USA

Email: burt.swanson@anderson.ucla.edu

News

Professor Burt Swanson is the author of a new book, How Information Systems Came to Rule the World: And Other Essays (Routledge). In this short collection, Burt establishes the importance of the IS field as it has developed over decades, grounding it firmly in its history. Taking issue with those who believe the field has now moved “beyond information systems” to something more exotic, he offers a short and compelling manifesto on behalf of the field and its future. For further information, see here.

IS doctoral grad Cynthia Beath, professor emerita at the University of Texas, Austin, who was recently honored with the Association for Information Systems’ (AIS) LEO Award for exceptional lifetime achievement, spoke at the Senior Scholars meeting associated with the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), which was held December 12-15, 2021, in Austin, Texas. She is co-author with Jeanne Ross and Martin Mocker of the book Designed for Digital: How to Architect Your Business for Sustained Success (MIT Press, 2019), which draws from five years of field research and case studies. For more information, see here.

IS doctoral grad Ping Wang, associate professor at the University of Maryland, authored a paper, “Connecting the Parts with the Whole: An Information Ecology Theory of Digital Innovation Ecosystems,” which was published in a special issue of the MIS Quarterly, on next-generation information systems theories. In this important work, Ping addresses two questions: In a digital innovation ecosystem, how are the efforts of autonomous parties integrated into a coherent whole, and what role do digital technologies play in this integration? To access the publication, see here. See also Ping’s homepage.

Innovate@UCLA (formerly the UCLA IS Associates) held its annual Executive Leadership Awards dinner virtually on November 18, 2021, featuring 16 speakers, presenters and honorees. Andy Schlei, Sr., VP, IT at Sony Pictures Entertainment, chaired the awards committee. Under UCLA’s Office of Advanced Research Computing, led by Jim Davis, vice provost, IT, the organization’s mission is to inspire business innovation and research partnerships with emerging technologies. Membership provides a connection to SoCal’s technology ecosystem and access to collaborative programs aligned with UCLA’s focus on education, research and service. Jim Rinaldi serves as executive director.

Professor Burt Swanson is the author of several conference papers presented this past year, including “When Data Becomes Infrastructure and Our Lives Depend on It,” which was presented at the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS), held June 14-16, 2021, online. The paper won the Ciborra Award for most innovative conference paper. To access it, see here. Burt also presented the paper “Two Paths to London,” at the European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS) meeting, held July 8-10, 2021, online, as well as the paper “Practice Shift and Digital Innovation in the Time of Covid,” at the ICIS. To access it, see here.