AIS Newsletter                                    Fall 2008

IS SECTION / AMERICAN ACCOUNTING ASSOCIATION.

President’s Letter

             What an honor it is to serve with you as we pursue

our collective mission! As we begin another year, it is always

good to remind ourselves just what we are all about.

Our mission statement is as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             Keeping our mission statement in mind and reflecting on the many initiatives, both new and ongoing, that are underway for the current year, it looks to be a great year. I’m excited to have the opportunity to report on these initiatives that, in keeping with our mission, are designed to promote excellence in all that we do.

             First is our mid-year meeting, to be held in Charleston, SC, from January 7-10, 2009. This is our core means of promoting excellence in research, teaching, and practice for both new scholars and those of us who are not so new (we prefer experienced to “old” but will answer to either). In addition to great networking opportunities and both research and education paper sessions, we have one of our own members, Nancy Bagranoff as President-Elect of the AAA, presenting at the plenary session and two very current and intriguing topical speakers for lunch. The Friday lunch speaker will be from ISACA on new COBIT initiatives. The Saturday lunch speaker will be from KPMG on Green IT. Immediately preceding the conference, Brad Tuttle has put together an excellent program for new scholars and we have a new workshop. Roger Debreceny and ISACA are initiating a new afternoon Workshop on IT Governance and Assurance. The workshop promotes excellence in all three areas of research, teaching, and practice and I encourage you to come a day early and partake in this opportunity for pursuing excellence. Finally, we’ve also arranged an excellent opportunity for continued networking in a more relaxed environment. On Friday evening, we will have a private dinner cruise of the beautiful Charleston Harbor in a yacht with climate controlled dining salons. Please thank Marianne Bradford for organizing the meeting, and Faye Borthick and Ronny Daigle for coordinating the paper selection process. Please come and make this the best mid-year meeting ever!

             This is also the year we will be publishing our fourth volume of C³, A Compendium of Classroom Cases and Tools. C³ offers valuable active learning exercises to engage our students in better understanding the nature of accounting information systems in a variety of contexts. Given the constantly changing nature of information systems, the tri-annual publication of instructional materials is an important collaboration in our pursuit of excellence.

             We also are involved in several new initiatives this year. The first is to begin work on a special section of JIS, “Reviews of Information Systems Research” that will publish selected reviews of a stream of research in information systems (IS). The reviews will seek to align that stream of research to current and future research in Accounting Information Systems (AIS). Short proposals are due November 30. If you are interested, see the call for papers on our web site.

             A second new initiative is to promote partnerships with related professional associations. This year we are working on expanding our partnership with ISACA. The Workshop of IT Governance and Assurance (WITGA) held in conjunction with the mid-year meeting is one outcome of this expanded partnership. Another initiative is to proactively promote an academic career among ISACA members with a goal of increasing the PhD candidate pool. With that in mind, we need to gather information about schools who offer PhD programs with a concentration in IS. If you haven’t sent me the information and your school would be interested in being included in the promotion, please send me a brief description of your program. We are pursuing several other initiatives and will keep you updated as we make progress.

             Finally, in conjunction with the new AAA Commons initiative introduced at the annual meeting, Bruce Dehning and Terry Glandon are working with Julie Smith David to develop space where we can work with one another and pursue excellence through improved communication. One of the ideas we would like to implement is an expert column where members could give thought pieces to advance a particular area that they are interested in. If you would like to participate please let me know.

             Now you can see why I am excited about this year. We are working on great initiatives in our pursuit of excellence and we have so many dedicated volunteers who tirelessly give of their time and energy to make it happen. Thank you for this opportunity to work with you! I hope to see you in Charleston!

 

 

 

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