Bengaluru: IIM Bangalore’s strong presence made a mark at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), held by the Association for Information Systems (AIS), from December 14 to 16, 2020. Due to the Covid situation, the entire conference was held on the virtual mode, seamlessly.

IIMB was not only one of the sponsors, the school also had award-nominated papers by faculty and students. Professor Rahul Dé from the Information Systems area of IIMB spoke at the opening and closing sessions. The conference will return to India, Hyderabad, in 2023.

A paper titled, “A ‘Linking Pin’ or Beyond? A Decision Rights Perspective of the Guardian Vendor Role in IT Multisourcing”, co-authored by Professor Rajendra K Bandi, Dean, Administration, IIM Bangalore as well as Chair, Information Systems area, and Bhavya Peapully Shroff, doctoral student of the Information Systems area at IIMB, won the ‘Best Short Paper in Track’ for the track – IS Development and Project Management – at ICIS 2020.

A paper titled, ‘Actualizing affordances – Story of Indian Information Technology (IT) Industry delivering Artificial Intelligence based solutions’, co-authored by Professor Rajalaxmi Kamath of the Public Policy area of IIM Bangalore and Vinay Reddy Venumuddala, doctoral student at IIMB, won the ‘Best Student Paper in Track’ for the track ‘IS Development and Project Management’, at ICIS 2020.

Congratulating the winners, Professor Rahul Dé said, “This is a rare achievement because getting a paper into ICIS is very difficult, let alone win a best paper award!”

ICIS 2020 was held on three days at three different times, corresponding to the three zones – Asia, Europe and the Americas. There were over 1500 paid attendees. A total of 1142 papers were submitted, of which 317 were selected through peer review (about 30%), and 970 authors of the selected papers were from 33 countries.

Germany had the highest number of authors, followed by USA and then China. India had a good presence. The conference was supported by 1795 reviewers and 593 AEs.

N. R. Narayana Murthy, Co-founder of Infosys, was the keynote speaker and delivered an inspiring lecture. He was recognized with the Leadership Excellence Award.

Most of the presenters were doctoral students. Many of the topics were focused on social, economic and environmental issues. Diversity and inclusion were strong themes. Most papers were very strong on quantitative analysis. One popular method was the difference-in-difference approach. AI, ethics, robotic process automation, and platforms had a lot of papers. There were also tutorials on making chaat, Odishi dance and yoga.