Dear Members of SIG Advances in Sourcing,
The SIG Annual Meeting 2023 took place as a Pre-ICIS event on December 4th, 2023.
The Annual Meeting 2023
(1) New Leadership Roles
The elections of the new leadership team for 2024/2025 resulted in the following:
· President: Thomas Huber
· Secretary: Julia Kotlarsky
· Communications Director: Kai Spohrer
· Content and Web Management Director: Oliver Krancher
· Treasurer & Region Representative Asia-Pacific: Ilan Oshri
· Region Representative: Rajiv Sabherwal
As part of our endeavor to broaden our SIG beyond traditional sourcing topics and explore new areas like digital platforms, we are happy to announce new members to our leadership team:
· Early-Career Representative: Andreas Hein
· Region Representative: Maximilian Schreieck
We appreciate the trust of the community. Special thanks go to Ilan Oshri for his tireless commitment, dedication, and achievements during his presidency in the past years.
(2) AIS SIG Sourcing Awards
The SIG Sourcing Awards 2023 went to:
· Outstanding Leadership Award: Suzanne Rivard
Professor Suzanne Rivard has demonstrated leadership in the last 30 years both in terms of excellent academic publications and contributions to the academic community and practice of IS sourcing. Her early work on outsourcing (1993, 1995) is among the very first publications on outsourcing in IS and she has been among the first to introduce an outsourcing track to IS conferences (e.g., at HICSS in 1998). Since then, Suzanne Rivard has been studying this phenomenon and regularly publishing work on outsourcing in top IS outlets (latest publication in MISQ 2023). Professor Rivard has developed theories about outsourcing information systems services, including her seminal work on risks in IT outsourcing, and on TCE in the context of outsourcing.
· Best Paper Award: Bardhan, Indranil R., Chenzhang Bao, and Sezgin Ayabakan. "Value implications of sourcing electronic health records: the role of physician practice integration." Information Systems Research 34.3 (2023): 1169-1190.
The paper makes important contributions to sourcing research and practice. It uses rigorous methods to demonstrate that the alignment of hospitals’ sourcing strategies (single- vs. multisourcing) with organizational structure (medical practice integration) enhances information sharing and performance. A particularly interesting aspect of the paper is the focus on the performance variable of healthcare value, which includes not only costs but also patient outcomes such as mortality rates. Hence, the paper shows that a well-designed sourcing strategy may save lives.
· Early- and Mid-Career Award: Thomas Huber
Thomas Huber received the early- and mid-career award for his inspiring and influential research on sourcing relationships. His work connects classic sourcing topics, such as contractual and relational governance, with important contemporary research areas, especially platform ecosystems. Published in elite journals of the discipline, his work stands out for its rigorous and carefully crafted qualitative analyses and theory building. Thomas’ papers have served as a template for many qualitative research projects and inspired both platform and sourcing researchers to ask new research questions.
(3) Keynote by Thomas Fischer: "The IS Sourcing Journey of a Swiss Bank - An Insider's Perspective"
The keynote session featured Thomas Fischer, PhD, who gave a deep dive into "The IS Sourcing Journey of a Swiss Bank - An Insider's Perspective." As a former CIO of the bank, Thomas offered invaluable insights from his unique perspective, providing us with a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a major banking institution. His presentation detailed the complex journey of outsourcing the bank's core banking system, a process he described as "the heart of the Bank’s operations." Thomas's sharing of the key decision junctures, the challenges encountered, and the ultimate move to backsource, provided us with a rich, real-world understanding of the intricacies involved in such major sourcing initiatives.
(4) Paper Development Workshop
The workshop featured a strong lineup of four papers covering research conducted in novel sourcing contexts such as crowdsourcing, as well as the role of digital platforms in various industries. We appreciate the insightful presentations and the lively discussions in the workshop. We believe that the authors as well as the attendees benefitted strongly from the workshop.
SIG Sourcing: Registration in your AIS Profile
If you have not yet registered your SIG Sourcing affiliation with AIS for 2023/2024, please do so to stay up to date with information from your SIG Sourcing. Go to https://aisnet.org/store/ListProducts.aspx?catid=172957&ftr=sigsourcing or https://communities.aisnet.org/sigsourcing/join to complete the registration. It remains free of charge.
SIG Sourcing at Conferences: Upcoming Conferences
The SIG Sourcing continues to have a strong presence at the major IS conferences with tracks chaired by SIG members and SIG members acting in leading editorial roles. You might want to consider submitting your papers to:
PACIS 2024 - SIGSOURCING: IS Sourcing in the Digital Age
· Track chairs: Ilan Oshri, Rong Du, Derek Venyu Du, Fang Su
· Submission deadline: March 1st, 2024
We look forward to seeing you at the paper sessions of the SIG Sourcing tracks at upcoming and ongoing conferences:
ICIS 2023 - Track "IS Design, Development, and Project Management"
· Track chairs: Alanah Mitchell, Barney Tan, Xiao Xiao
ECIS 2024 - Track "IS Strategy, Governance and Sourcing in the Digital Age"
· Track chairs: Thomas Huber, Oliver Krancher, Ilan Oshri
We wish you a good end of the year and happy holidays,
Your SIG Advances in Sourcing Team