09.00-11.00: PhD Students' Presentations and Coaching Roundtable with the Faculty
11.00-11.15: Coffee break
11.15-12.45: Workshop “Introduction to Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)"

WELCOME ADDRESS

Prof. Raoul C.D. Nacamulli, University of Milano-Bicocca
Prof. Carlo Batini, University of Milano-Bicocca
Prof. Cecilia Rossignoli, University of Verona - President of ITAIS

KEYNOTE: "Research: Why not do something different instead?"
Speaker: David Avison, Distinguished Professor, ESSEC Business School, Paris

As part of their training program, I ask my research students to study all the papers in the ‘AIS Basket of eight’ journals (AIS, Living) for the past one or two years. This gives them a good overview of information systems research in terms of what we publish: topics, methods, structure, writing style, and so on, and we also discuss these papers with a view to addressing key questions such as which journals(s) might be suitable to target their own articles and how best to frame these articles. Although consistently impressed by the rigor of published research, I have to admit being somewhat disappointed in terms of the originality and impact of some published research and to even being bored at times. In this (somewhat arrogant) presentation I discuss my recent research in order to encourage researchers to embark on research themselves that is particularly challenging, interesting and/or original rather than do research which is in the mainstream and/or fashionable, that is, encourage you to: ‘do something different instead’.

David Avison was the president of the Association of Information Systems (AIS) for 2008-9; past President of the UK Academy for Information Systems, and is a member of the IS Senior Scholars Forum. David was joint program chair of the International Conference in Information Systems (ICIS) in Las Vegas, joint program chair of International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) TC8 conference in Santiago, Chile and again in Milan, Italy, program chair of the IFIPWG8.2 conference in Amsterdam, and chair of several other conferences. He was founding editor (with Guy Fitzgerald) of Information Systems Journal, rated as a 'core' international research journal in information systems. So far, twenty-five books are to his credit, including the fourth edition of the well-used text Information Systems Development: Methodologies, Techniques and Tools (with Guy Fitzgerald), and Information Systems Project Management (with Reza Torkzedah). He edited (with Jan Pries-Heje) Research in Information Systems: A Handbook for Research Students and Their Supervisors (Elsevier). He is co-editor of Journal of Management Information Systems (2017) Special Issue on Action Research. He has been awarded the IFIP Silver Core and has also been honored as Fellow of the AIS.

“Clash” Restaurant at NYX Hotel

TEST session (tbc)