Information Systems and Change Management (ISCM)

Department Chair
Jos van Hillegersberg

The mission of the Information Systems & Change Management department (IS&CM) is to conduct high-quality internationally leading research, valorisation and teaching in the field of services engineering for the networked society. Our focus is on IT enabled services. IT-enablement of services is substantially changing many industries, like logistics, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, and the software industry. We are focusing on creating and applying knowledge in the areas of the design, valuation, coordination, integration and transformation of services. This is accomplished via cross-disciplinary expertise.

Central to the research is the successful implementation, management and control of IT. Crucial issues include: architecture, change management, adoption issues, leadership and investment issues. Current business, process and IT architectures are too fragmented and legacy systems hinder innovations. The research of IS&CM focuses on the design, composition and exploitation of ICT enabled services with the target of properly matching supply and demand. We believe that this can be achieved by three modes of thinking and expertise, resulting in the following themes

1. Design and Value: focuses at a rational approach for the value-driven design of knowledge- and IT-intensive services.
2. Coordination and Integration. In a globalizing world, dynamic composition and customization of services is a promising way to meet customer demands. This requires mechanisms for effectively searching and integrating services.
3. Change and Transformation. To achieve service innovation and effective service management, organisational change is required and transformation programs need to be run.

The department has good contacts in the business world with whom a great deal of joint research is undertaken. Some examples include: a collaborative project with the Port of Rotterdam on a multi-agent system to coordinate container processing; simulation software to design new care regimes at Gelre Hospitals; and, a joint research project with Thales to investigate how to use IT to speed up complex decision-making among multiple stakeholders. In many organisations research into leadership takes place with the use of modern video-observation techniques.

IS&CM's composition is international. Working alongside their Dutch colleagues are staff from Germany, India, Austria, Thailand and America. The department actively maintains its contacts, not only with the neighbours in Münster, but with other national and international departments also conducting research on information systems. Additionally, several staff members are actively involved, on a part-time basis, in business to assure tight links to the business community.