AMIGE 2008 Keynote Speakers:

Dr. K.K. Wei, Chair Professor and Dean
Faculty of Business, City University of Hong Kong

Dr. Wei is Dean and Chair Professor of Information Systems in the Faculty of Business at the City University of Hong Kong (CityU). He is Fellow of the Association of Information Systems (AIS) and he was the President of that Association in 2003/4. Dr Wei joined CityU as Head of the Department of Information Systems in 2002. Before joining CityU, he was Professor and founding Head of the Department of Information Systems at the National University of Singapore (NUS). As Head of two major IS Departments in Asia (NUS and CityU) in the past decade, Dr Wei has developed a strong research culture and initiated major research efforts that resulted in both Departments being placed among the top 15 IS departments worldwide (Communications of the AIS, 2005, pp. 555-564). Dr Wei is serving on the Series Editorial Advisory Board of Idea Group Publishing/Information Science Publishing and on the Editorial Boards of a good number of international journals including the IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. He has served as Senior Editor of MIS Quarterly. He has also played major roles in ICIS and PACIS. Dr Wei has published more than 140 journal and conference papers. He is actively pursuing research on e-commerce, knowledge management and virtual communities.

Information Technology Exploitation and Exploration in a Fast Changing Global Business Environment

Organizational agility has recently received a great deal of attention as it is seen as a significant business capability which allows firms to respond flexibly to today's rapidly changing global business environment. In particular, this capability deems essential under a fast growing economy, such as China. However, it is still unclear as to how and why specific information technology (IT) investments can enable this capability. Drawing upon the idea of organizational IT exploitation and exploration, I will elaborate how firms can create IT-enabled organizational agility, and the various types of IT resources. A model was then presented with several predictions about the relationships among IT resources, IT capabilities, and organizational agility. The proposed model was tested through a large-scale field survey with multiple respondents in Chinese enterprises. The results of structural equation model analyses indicate that specific IT resources are significant driving forces behind each type of IT capability, leading to organizational agility.

Keywords: Organizational Agility, IT Capability, IT Resources, Exploration, Exploitation

Dr. Jae Kyu Lee, Professor and Dean
College of Business, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology

Dr. Lee is Professor of Electronic Commerce and MIS at KAIST Business School since he received Ph.D. in Operations and Information Systems from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1985. He was former Dean of KAIST Business School, and Associate Dean of Faculty and Research, School of Information Systems at Singapore Management University. He is the current Dean of KAIST EEWS (Energy, Environment, Water, and Sustainability) Initiative. He has published more than 200 articles in the international journals and conferences in the area of Electronic Commerce, Decision Support Systems, and Information Systems. He was the founding editor-in-chief of the journal Electronic Commerce Research and Applications (Elsevier, SSCI and SCIE Accredited), and founder of the International Conference on Electronic Commerce. He is an editorial board member of international journals such as Decision Support Systems, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, and so on. He has received many academic awards such as the best paper award at HICSS, Korea Society of MIS, Maekyung Economist Award, and Decoration from Korean Government. He was keynote speaker of PACIS, PRICAI, ICEC, and many others.

Globalization and Localization of e-Business: Challenges and Strategies

The Internet has linked up the globe and stimulates the globalization of business. However, the globalization of e-business has not progressed to the level that we have anticipated. The concept of “globalization” from a country’s point of view is somewhat ambiguous in a sense that the realization requires localization in foreign markets and competition with world leaders in the domestic market. To develop the framework of successful global e-businesses, we identified four types of barriers based on empirical studies: Suppliers and Supply Chain, Customers and Community, Platform, and Language. To overcome the barriers, we investigated strategies for the five categories of e-businesses from three perspectives. Five categories of e-business include B2C, B2B, Social Network, mCommerce, and Stock Trading. The three perspectives of study are “Go Abroad”, “Compete with the World Leader in Domestic Market”, and “Contrast the Distinctions between Two Countries”. The empirical study is conducted from Korean companies’ points of view. The “Go Abroad” type study includes the experiences of iMarket Korea (B2B) and Cyworld (Community Service). The competition in Korean market cases includes the experiences of Amazon, eBay, Google, and eTrade in Korean. The comparative study includes the contrast of mCommerce between Korea and Japan; and the contrast of B2C between Korea and Singapore. Many evidences of interesting hypotheses could be generated from this study, which can be applied to other countries as well.