Dr. Nazmun Nahar, Phd (ISE), Phd (IS) (Primary Contact Person)

Track Chairs:

Dr. Nazmun Nahar, PhD (ISE), PhD (IS) (primary contact person) Computer Science and Information Systems University of Jyvaskyla, P.O. Box 35, FIN-40014 Jyvaskyla, FINLAND E-mail: [email protected]; Tel: +358-14-260 3247; Fax: +358-14-260-3011

Donald R. Chand Professor Information and Process Management Bentley University Waltham, MA 02452, USA E-mail: [email protected]; Tel: +1 781-891-2925

D.P. Goyal Professor Information Management Chairperson Computer Centre E-mail: [email protected] Tel: 0124-4560311

Najmul Huda Senior Researcher Information Processing Tallinn Technical University Tallinn, ESTONIA

IT for Global Welfare & Sustainability

Although it is well accepted that IT is a crucial component in today’s business organizations to execute their strategy and in government and NGOs to carry out their mission, its effectiveness in fostering global welfare and sustainability is not well understood. For example, both the academic literature and documented organizational experience show that the usage of enterprise resource planning (ERP), a standard practice in large organizations, offer important organizational payoffs that span from quality information to better decision making to improved business impacts, but there is dearth of research on the usage of ERP systems in welfare facilitating organizations. By welfare facilitating organizations we mean non-profit organizations, social enterprises, government and public sector organizations in developing countries, emerging countries and developed countries in the fields of healthcare, child and old care, human rights, education, training, employment, food and water, green technologies, to name of few. Because proprietary ERP systems (called P-ERP here) are expensive in terms of license fees, implementation costs and professional IT expertise and welfare facilitating

1 organizations have limited IT resources and budget, one reason for the slow diffusion of ERP systems in welfare facilitating organizations is the high cost of these systems.

In the ERP arena, Open Source ERP (OS-ERP), Cloud Open Source ERP (Cloud OS- ERP) and Cloud Proprietary ERP (Cloud P-ERP) and other cloud software are overcoming the barriers of high costs involved in proprietary IT tools. Besides the cost advantage, open source products proffer faster implementation, easier maintenance and upgrading, improved flexibility and scalability. Further, it is easier for the user community to add mobility to open source products, thereby enhancing the value of open source systems in a distributed work place, a central attribute of welfare facilitating organizations. Cloud Analytics, Cloud Business Intelligence, Cloud ERP and Green ITs offer great opportunities to improve sustainability in view of environmental quality, social equity and economic viability of small, medium and large organizations.

The objective of this track is to facilitate a focused research dialogue on the issues, challenges and best practices on the implementation and usage of various ITs for Global Welfare and Sustainability. It seeks both traditional academic research papers and experience-based case studies and is open to research-in-progress summaries. All types of research, namely conceptual, theoretical, empirical, analytical, case study-based, action research, design science-oriented, and surveys are encouraged. Each submitted paper will go through a double-blind review process.

Although designed for researchers, scholars and doctoral students in academe, practitioners and developers are encouraged to present their experience of implementation and usage of various ITs for Global Welfare and Sustainability.

Suggested Topics:

Sample topics include, but are not limited to, the following:  Acquisitions policies, strategies and governance as well as innovative usages of open source IT and cloud computing including OS-ERP, Cloud OS-ERP and Cloud P-ERP in small, medium and large welfare facilitating organizations.  Strategic, organizational, governance, technical, social and cultural challenges encountered in the acquisitions and innovative usages of open source IT and cloud computing including OS-ERP, Cloud OS-ERP and Cloud P-ERP as well as their remedies.  Acceptance and diffusion of IT systems in welfare facilitating organizations from motivational, productivity, performance, costs, cultural and social viewpoints.  Infrastructure and interoperability issues of IT systems in welfare facilitating organizations.  Knowledge engineering, learning and training issues of IT systems in welfare facilitating organizations.  Measurements, metrics and evaluation of IT systems in welfare facilitating organizations.  Success and failure cases of IT systems in welfare facilitating organizations.  Current directions and future trends of IT systems in welfare facilitating organizations.

2  IT for environmental risks management.  IT for sustainability including ITs for sustainability reporting, ITs for sustainable global supply chain management and Green IT.  Effective usage of sustainability analytics in global enterprises.  Innovative green ways of working, conducting meetings, forming teams and organizations on a global scale using cloud computing, mobile technologies and other IT tools.

A list of Associate Editors:

Alina Chircu, Bentley University, USA Dag Håkon Olsen, University of Agder, NORWAY Eli Hustad, University of Agder, NORWAY Kalinga Jagoda, Mount Royal University, CANADA Marlon Dumas, Tartu University, ESTONIA Nitya Karmakar, Curtin University, AUSTRALIA Pasi Tyrvainen, University of Jyvaskyla, FINLAND Rahul De, Indian Institute of Management Bangalore, INDIA Sarika Sharma, JSPM's Eniac Institute of Computer Applications, INDIA Sergey Muravyov, Tomsk Polytechnic University, RUSSIA Slinger Jansen, Utrecht University, THE NETHERLANDS Sridhar Raghavan, Motorola, USA Tarun Kabiraj, Indian Statistical Institute, INDIA Vipin Tyagi, Jaypee University of Engineering & Technology, INDIA Wing Lam, U21Global, SINGAPORE