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Research interests

I hold a position as an Associate Professor at the Department of Applied IT at the IT University in Göteborg, Sweden (see my page at academia.edu). I received my doctoral degree in Informatics in March 2002 with my thesis Designing the new intranet, which addresses organisational intranets from a Knowledge Management perspective. My research as a PhD student was a joint venture between Volvo IT, the Viktoria Institute, and the Department of Informatics at Göteborg University. My research interest has shifted slightly over time but it has until recently always had the intranet as the technology platform around which my work has circled. Since 2008 my research focus has shifted towards the transport industry and IT-enabled innovation.

Service innovation and Sense and Respond organising

Currently, I am studying sensor technology usage and how this class of IT affects organisations' ability to innovate and become more proactive. The rapid development of sensor technology such as RFID has resulted in the technology becoming cheaper and more powerful, which in turn has generated a growing interest and an increased use amongst many of the transport industry actors. Today's problem is that much of the data that sensor technology generates is piled up in isolated subsystems where it risks becoming a liability rather than an asset. To be able to exploit the large potential that sensor technology implies, at least two requirements need to be satisfied: There must exist technical possibilities to combine data from different sources (systems and actors) in innovative ways and with maintained integrity, and; There must exist a desire amongst the actors to share their information.

The advances in IT in general and in sensor technology in particular that we have witnessed in recent years have enabled organisations to digitise much of the work that previously was carried out manually or supported by analogue tools only. As this development continues, it is likely that IS in the future will have an even more profound impact on organisations and their capacity to innovate, i.e., not just do what has previously been done somewhat more efficient but to change radically the way business is conducted. Being able automatically - and in real time - to collect and monitor digital representations of an external environment, sensor technology can enable remote analysis and decision making and thus act as the organisation's extended "eyes and ears".

However, changes to technical artefacts affect not only the technology per se, but also the context in which it is situated. This is due to the mutual influence that technology and organisation has upon one another; new technology adapts to the operations in place but also alters the routines and configurations of the hosting organisation. While IT innovation in its simplest form may involve only a technological component, it is almost always accompanied with and amplified by various organisational innovations such as new forms of processes, routines, business models, and/or organisational structure. In my work I thus try to approach the topic of organisational innovation from a broad perspective; including the technology, the organisation and the business.

Knowledge management (KM), Information seeking and intranets

I did most of my dissertation work within the VINNOVA-sponsored Knowledge Management programme. This was in the late 90s/early 2000. During 2004 and 2005 I taught Knowledge Management to Master students in the Business Technology programme at the IT University. I was also the coordinator for these students' Master Thesis course and supervised many of them. I have continued to publish papers on various aspects of IT-supported KM and I am still a member of the Editorial Review Board for the International Journal of Knowledge Management, although I do not actively do any KM research these days.

More recently, I worked in a project sponsored by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research (FAS) entitled "Individualisation and cotextualisation of unstructured information: strategies and techniques for decreasing information overload". In this work, I set up a sub-project called BiSON - Business-related information-seeking in organisations. This project, which closed in December 2007, focused on how ordinary employees found the information they needed to carry out their work and how this could be better supported by IT. Most notably, we analysed intranet search engine log files to understand usage.

On the administrative side I acted Programme Manager for the Business Technology Master programme between 2004 and 2007. Until 2010 I was also responsible for setting up the higher seminars at the department.
I currently teach two courses:
Information infrastructure, which is a 15hp advanced course at Master's level, and
Science and Research Methodology, which also is a 15hp advanced course at Master's level. The former typically only has Swedish students whereas the latter has international students and is taught in English.

Other time-thieves

As most scholars I also serve on various committees. Below is a list of some of my recent engagements

  • I am a member of the Editorial Review Board for the International Journal of Knowledge Management (present)
  • I am a member of the Editorial Review Board for the International Journal of Social and Organizational Dynamics in Information Technology (present)
  • I served as the primary international examiner for Krishna Venkitachalam PhD Thesis presented at the University of Melbourne (2006)
  • I was on the half-way seminar committee for Lars Lindsköld at Karolinska Universitetssjukhuset 2009.
  • I reviewed for HICSS 38 & 39 (2004 & 2005)
  • I reviewed for ECIS (2005, 2006, 2008, 2009 and 2010) and served as an Associate Editor (2008, 2009, 2010)
  • I reviewed for ICIS (2006, 2008, 2009, 2010)
  • I was an Associate Editor for the KM track at ICIS 2007 (2007)
  • I reviewed for MISQ (2008)
  • I reviewed for Journal of MIS (2005, 2007)
  • I reviewed for Journal of American Society for Information Science and Technology (2008)
  • I reviewed for European Journal of IS (2005)
  • I reviewed for Journal of Organizational and End User Computing (2006)
  • I reviewed for Organizational Studies (2006)
  • I reviewed for Group & Organization Management (2007)
  • I reviewed for Information Systems Journal (2007)
  • I reviewed for Information Processing & Management (2006, 2007, 2010)
  • I reviewed for Journal of Applied Social Psychology (2010)
  • I was the local Organising Chair for the ECIS 2006 Doctoral Consortium in Gothenburg (2006)
  • I was on the programme committee for IADIS Applied Computing conference (2006 & 2007)
  • I was on the programme committee for the IIT '06 in Dubai (2006)
  • I was on the programme committee for the IFIP 8.6 Working Conference On The Transfer and Diffusion of IT for Organizational Resilience, Galway, Ireland (2006)

I also try to maintain a list of conferences that are of interest to me and my research. It contains all the call-for-paper deadlines, word limits and stuff.

   
 

© Dick Stenmark. Page updated May 31, 2010. This product has not been tested on animals or students.