Ten Questions for Cynthia Beath

Cynthia Beath is Professor Emerita, Department of Information, Risk and Operations Management at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin. Her research interests include organization redesign for the digital era, the management of data assets, and the organizational impacts of artificial intelligence.

Beath served as one of the first Chairs of the ICIS Women’s Breakfast, which later became the AIS Women’s Network. She has served many leadership roles for AIS, including Region 1 Representative, Vice President of Publications, and Vice President of Meetings and Conferences.

1. You have been heavily involved as an AIS volunteer from its early days, first as Region 1 Rep, then as Vice President of Publications, then as Vice President of Meetings and Conferences. How has AIS changed over the years from your perspective?

OMG, you should have seen some of those early Council meetings!!  A dozen guys with scads of ideas about what a professional organization could do – after all, most of them were already members of a few of them!  Occasionally someone would say, “We should do X!” but very quickly that poor guy would realize that he was essentially volunteering his very limited “free” time to doing X, so he’d let the idea die. So most people sat on their ideas because they didn’t have the time or resources to deliver them.  Fortunately, a few people really gave a lot of their time to getting the organization off the ground.

2. What are some of the challenges you faced in the early years of AIS, specifically surrounding the lack of women in leadership roles. How have you seen those challenges evolve (and hopefully dissipate) over the years?

In the mid-80’s, when I joined the field, there were very few women in leadership roles anywhere in academia. A few, but not many. But the bottom ranks were full of women, so it was easy to see that with time things would change. There was, nevertheless, resistance to any kind of feminist spirit, like the Women’s Breakfast. I think the expectation was that those junior women would be very helpful – reviewing, being empathetic teachers, doing grunt work – but that leadership would remain in the hands of men. Change is threatening. You don’t have to even be consciously aware of the loss of privilege or entitlement for change to be threatening. But it was inevitable that women would come into leadership roles. I think most of us still don’t quite realize how entitled we are. There is still a lot of discrimination, it’s just far more subtle than it used to be.

3. You were involved in the early years of the AIS Women’s Network when it was still the ICIS Women’s Breakfast. Can you share a bit about how that organization has changed over time?

The women’s breakfast was started by a few women who understood social networks and knew the women attending ICIS needed to know each other in order to support each other. They needed to hear each other’s stories to understand that any misogyny they were experiencing was common, not uncommon, and to get ideas about how to deal with it. It was, in essence, a support group. I think the AIS Women’s Network serves roughly the same purpose. In essence it helps develop women who are not otherwise being developed in their home institutions. Today the AIS Women’s Network provides a lot of formal recognition to women by giving awards, by running workshops, and by recognizing contributions, which is something the Women’s Breakfast couldn’t really do.

4. How did the association change as AIS shifted from a volunteer-run organization to a staff-run organization, moving from more tactical roles for AIS volunteers to more strategic roles?

It’s so much better! I’m sure all those guys who served on the early AIS Councils appreciate so much that there are now minds and hands to pursue their dreams for AIS. In particular, AIS is succeeding admirably in its early mission to be a global organization, not a US-focused organization. Of all the professional organizations that my business school colleagues belong to, AIS is the only one whose membership and activities are truly global. That means that our discipline develops from the intellectual contributions of people around the globe. It also means that our members compete for publication slots and visibility with people around the globe, not just their country or region. We could not have accomplished this without the professional staff at AIS.

5. What is your perspective on how AIS journals have changed over the years?

Both CAIS and JAIS have developed into excellent journals that readers turn to for high quality work. Our finest researchers want to serve in editorial roles for these journals, a testament to their high quality. It takes a while for a journal to find their audience – of submitters and readers. Both these journals have steadily made their way into the top ranks of our journals.

6. What was the most rewarding part of your time as an AIS volunteer? Are there any programs or initiatives that stand out that you were especially proud to be involved in?

I think my proudest moment as an AIS Council member was being the right person at the right time to keep AIS from killing the ICIS Women’s Breakfast. AIS Council used to always have a planning meeting at the site of a future ICIS conference, to understand how the conference was going to work there.  At the planning meeting for the 2002 Barcelona conference, it became apparent that space would be limited and breakfast might not be offered.  I asked what the plan was for the Women’s Breakfast. The answer was that the Women’s Breakfast had outlived its usefulness, and besides, it was divisive. I raised a big red flag, and I’m happy to say that most AIS Council members rallied around it. The Women’s Breakfast was not only saved, but institutionalized as a feature of ICIS. I am glad someone was there to raise the flag.

7. If you had to go back and change one thing about your time as an AIS volunteer, what would it be? 

I can’t think of anything I would change!

8. What is your favorite memory at an AIS event (ICIS/AMCIS) or affiliated conference (ECIS/PACIS/etc.)?

I have so many great memories! I love attending panels to hear what people are working on and thinking about. I used to attend paper sessions to build lists of potential reviewers. Most of my favorite memories had to do with seeing old friends and meeting new people. I met a lot of women for the first time in the ladies’ room, where they are easy to spot. (I made sure the newbies knew about the Women’s Breakfast.) Then there was the time I dragged Lynne Markus over to meet Dan Robey (her long-time co-author) because I thought she would like his work. I had an argument once with a guy who insisted that my last name wasn’t Beath but was Breathed (like the cartoonist). For me, the conferences are all about the ideas and the people. I’ll be in Bangkok in December.

9. What do you think the next big area of focus will be for IS? How can AIS support it?

There is a push in many universities to hire more adjuncts, and I think AIS could better support adjuncts. They are expected to do some research but they often lack the right skills. Several AIS organizations offer mentoring services, but that’s not an efficient way to up-skill adjuncts. How about an online research bootcamp?

10. What are some of the most important research areas with the potential for lasting global impact that IS researchers should focus on more?

I still think the most impactful area of IS research is in the “Business value of IT’ space. The problem of how best to use IT in any given organization changes because technology is constantly changing. This problem is probably never going to be solved! Plus, working on this problem means that you’re doing research that is relevant. I strongly believe that researchers should be working on solving real-world problems, not just endlessly elaborating theory.

11. BONUS QUESTION! What is the one trend you are most excited about for the future of IS?

Generative AI. It’s a whole new wrinkle in the unceasing challenge of getting value from IT investments. Data scientists and feature engineers need deep math skills, but prompt engineers need deep language skills, and that’s going to lead to big changes in how IT is exploited in organizations, it’s going to open up new reference disciplines for IT research, and it’s going to drive changes in what we teach students about IT. People are activated today about the possibility that Gen AI will drastically reduce the cost of coding, for example. Any economist would tell you that cost reduction drives up demand. Say, for example, that organizations could use Gen AI tools to wipe out their technical debt by rewriting core legacy code (or “replatforming” as some call it)?  What opportunities does that unlock? Lots of them!

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