【Topic】Exploring Service Research: Concepts, Experiences, and Directions

【Speaker】J. Leon Zhao

【Time】2008-6-25 10:00-11:00

【Venue】Room 453, Weilun Building

【Language】English/Chinese

【Organizer】Department of Management Science and Engineering

【Backgound Information】

J. Leon Zhao, Eller Professor and Interim Head

Dept. of Management Information System Director, Lab on Enterprise Process Innovation and Computing (EPIC Lab)

Dept. of Computer Science (Joint Faculty)

University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721

URL:http://www.u.arizona.edu/~jlzhao

Email:jlzhao@u.arizona.edu

Abstract

The world is becoming a complex service system as marked with many recent advances in information technologies and business practices such as service-oriented architectures, software as a service, wholesale outsourcing of IT services, and offshoring of large data centers. During the past couple of years, researchers in industry and academia have started exploring new research directions concerning service science, service computing, service management, and service engineering.

As a personal effort in this context, I organized wo panels on service computing and management in AMCIS'07 and ICIS'07, respectively, leading to two articles recently published in the Communications of AIS, which can be downloaded athttp://www.u.arizona.edu/~jlzhao/vita.html#JOURNAL.

Although there have been a number of recent publications exploring service research, this area is not yet well defined and has many open issues. As such, there is currently a great opportunity for new perspectives and new thoughts from various disciplines such as computer science, information technology, marketing, organization science, operations management, economics, and so on. In this talk, I will share my knowledge and personal views on service research. I will first go

over some background material and basic concepts in service science, management, and engineering, then give an overview of several projects of mine related to service computing and management, and finally open a discussion on research opportunities in service research.

Biography

J. Leon Zhao is Eller Professor and Interim Head of the Department of MIS. He also holds a joint appointment in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Arizona. He taught previously at HKUST and College of William and Mary, respectively. He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. from Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, M.S. from UC Davis, and B.S. from Beijing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization. He has published more than 120 research articles in major journal and conference outlets.

He received an IBM Faculty Award in 2005 for his work in business process management and services computing. Leon has been associate editor of Information Systems Research, IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, and Decision Support Systems among others. He has co-edited nine special issues in various IS journals and chaired numerous

conferences including the Workshop on E-Business (2003), the 15th Workshop on Information Technology and Systems (2005), the IEEE Conference on Services Computing (2006), and the First China Summer Workshop on Information Management (2007), the Arizona Exposium on Frontiers in Information Technology and Applications (2008), and the IEEE Symposium on Advanced Management of Information for Globalized Enterprises (2008).