Twelfth President of AIS:  Michael Myers

Michael D. Myers is professor of information systems and head of the Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at the University of Auckland Business School, New Zealand. Before joining the University of Auckland in 1989, he worked for IBM New Zealand Ltd.

One of Michael’s initiatives as president of AIS was to develop a strategic planning process for the association. With a regular turnover of elected leaders, unpaid volunteers providing many services to members, and members scattered all around the world, Michael believed that a clear vision and direction was critical for the future growth and development of AIS. One outcome of this work was a stronger focus on marketing and on providing products and services that are relevant to all IS scholars around the world including expanding the AIS eLibrary and growing AIS publications. Specifically, the AIS Council agreed to:

• Establish a public relations function to support the marketing of the profession. We agreed that we need to raise the visibility of IS both within and outside the field. 
• Provide customized services and products to serve our diverse communities. Since we are an international association, we agreed that we need to provide services and products relevant to all IS academics around the world. 
• Expand the committee infrastructure of volunteers by improving their effectiveness and numbers. 
• Support teaching by providing tools and strategies. 
• Develop multiple curricula that apply worldwide. We realized that it is not feasible for just one IS curriculum to meet the needs of all IS programs around the world. 
• Take a leadership role in scholarship. One of the major academic issues facing our field was and still is a perceived lack of A journals. This issue impacts directly on tenure and promotion decisions of IS faculty. 
• Fix AIS technology. Because many AIS systems (including the AIS website and the AIS library) needed urgent attention. Michael and the council created the new role of AIS vice-president (Technology).

Michael’s research interests are in the areas of qualitative research methods in information systems, and the social and organizational aspects of information technology. His research publications appear in such journals as Communications of the ACM, Communications of the AIS, Information & Organization, Information Systems Journal, Information Systems Research, Information Technology & People, Journal of Information Technology, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, and MIS Quarterly. His book Qualitative Research in Business & Management was published by Sage Publications in 2009.

He won the Best Paper Award (with Heinz Klein) for MIS Quarterly in 1999. This paper has been cited over 2000 times. His paper with Lynda Harvey was selected as the best paper published in Information Technology & People in 1995.

Michael is editor of the AISWorld Section on Qualitative Research and senior editor of Information & Organization and Pacific Asia Journal of the AIS. He is on the editorial boards of Information Systems Journal, Information Technology & People, Journal of the AIS, Journal of Systems and Information Technology, and Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management. He served as senior editor of MIS Quarterly from 2001-2005, as senior editor of Information Systems Research from 2008-2010, and was founding editor of the University of Auckland Business Review from 1999-2005. He served as program co-chair of the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Shanghai in 2011, as program co-chair of the Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) in Japan in September 2002. For the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 8.2 he was program co-chair in Barcelona in December 2002,and was conference co-chair in Turku, Finland, in 2011. He was co-chair of PACIS in Auckland in July 2011 and will be co-chair of ICIS to be held in Auckland in 2014

Michael was chair of the doctoral consortium for the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) on two occasions: once in Brisbane in December 2000, and again in Christchurch in December 2008. He was also the chair of the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Working Group 8.2 on the interaction between information systems and organizations from 2006-2008.

He is a fellow of the Association for Information Systems.

MA, 1978, and PhD, 1987, University of Auckland.