Newsletter Feb 2020

Dear Members of SIG Advances in Sourcing,

We hope that everyone of you had a good start into 2020. In this newsletter, we would like to take the opportunity to look back at two major events organized by SIG Sourcing members that took place in December 2019. We would also like to give an update on the latest community activities related to our SIG.

  1. Looking Back: Annual event of the SIG Sourcing at ICIS 2019

During ICIS 2019 we had our annual event bringing together IS scholars, teachers, and practitioners who share interests in sourcing-related topics. Peter Schumacher (President, CEO, and Founder - Value Leadership Group) gave an overview about recent technology trends and how these trends have affected sourcing practice around the globe.

 

 

This was followed by an editorial panel where highly experienced IS scholars (Professors Rajiv Sabherval, Anand Gopal and Ilan Oshri) shared their experience in managing sourcing-related papers and their personal takes on the future of sourcing-related papers in our fields’ top journals. All were in agreement that sourcing will remain a relevant topic area in IS. It was also noted that while classic topics related to outsourcing and offshoring remain important, sourcing researchers have already years ago started to branch out into exciting new topics. For example, sourcing researchers were among the first to investigate crowdsourcing, the sourcing to more or less intelligent robots, and how to manage highly-skilled outside IT professionals (an everyday managerial challenge for incumbent companies undergoing digital transformations).

 

 

Finally, Oliver Krancher gave an in-depth reconstruction of the publication journey of his recent JMIS paper “An Information Processing View on Joint Vendor Performance in Multi-Sourcing: The Role of the guardian Vendor”. He showed the major issues identified by the reviewers and how they were able to successfully address and respond to them.

Please find a brief description of and some photos from the launch event here.

1. Looking Back: The Global Sourcing Workshop

Many members of the SIG Sourcing went straight on from ICIS in Munich to the 14th Global Sourcing Workshop in Obergurgl, Austria. Three days ensued with a mix of serious work, developing publishable papers, listening and debating, but also socializing and skiing.

Hosted by Julia Kotlarsky, Leslie Willcocks, and Ilan Oshri, more than 20 members and friends of the SIG sourcing presented research papers and teaching cases on diverse topics, including sourcing models, governance, innovation, and knowledge issues. Friendly and critical discussions helped the authors to move their projects and papers forward.

Three former and current editors-in-chief of journals in the IS senior scholars’ basket held an intriguing panel discussion about publishing sourcing papers. Sirkka Jarvenpaa, Michael Myers, and Leslie Willcocks discussed current and future research topics, obligations of sourcing scholars, and avenues for the SIG sourcing. They unanimously emphasized that sourcing refers not only to a bounded stream of literature but also to a community of interrelated scholars of all ages. Many of the traditional conversations in the sourcing literature carry on in other areas, e.g. in literature streams on ecosystems and open innovation, although the panel found that some of the discussions have not sufficiently been picked up. The panelists emphasized that researchers who want to become successful need to network and establish social exchange relationships with colleagues in their field. The SIG sourcing provides a platform for such endeavors. Lastly, the panelists predicted that future developments will lead IS sourcing scholars to include increasingly more technical elements in their work as we enter discussions about data sourcing and automation through robots or artificial intelligence.

Overall, great discussions and ample opportunity for socializing on and off the skiing slopes made the 2019 Global Sourcing Workshop a memorable few days and a great, but productive, break from the rigors of the participants’ workplace.


3. Upcoming Sourcing Industry Events

Intelligent Automation, New York, 24-26 February 2020: https://www.aiia.net/events-intelligentautomationbfsi/?mac=SSON_Events_Title_Listing

SSON European Week, Estoril, Portugal, 11-14 May 2020: https://www.ssonetwork.com/events-ssoweek/?mac=SSON_Events_Title_Listing

SSON Australian Week. Melbourne, Australia, 15-18 June 2020: https://www.ssonetwork.com/events-sharedservicesweek-au/?mac=SSON_Events_Title_Listing

RPA Asia, Singapore, 15-18 June 2020: https://www.aiia.net/events-rpaasia/?mac=SSON_Events_Title_Listing

 

Best regards,

Your SIG Advances in Sourcing Team.