ECIS 2004 doctoral consortium

Issues for discussion

Chrisanthi Avgerou

At this stage, the preparation for the consortium is going very well and it seems we have an excellent team of doctoral students and faculty. However, as I have been working for this year’s consortium I became aware of three interrelated issues about the consortium I would like to discuss at the ECIS business meeting:

1. The number of nominations is declining over the years. This year we had only 21 nominations by the deadline of 16 February. We announced a two weeks extension time and received another 14 nominations. I think we need to explore the reasons for the decline and perhaps make a special effort to advertise the consortium.
2. The distribution of nominations by country and region is very uneven. Although we know that IS as an academic field is not uniformly present around West Europe, East Europe, Middle East and Africa, we may be able to attract more students from the regions with ‘weak’ IS with an appropriate policy.
3. There is no institutional ‘memory’ for the consortium. We need a mechanism for passing on experience.