#2 PhD scholarship available at QUT’s Information Systems School

PhD scholarships available with my colleague/co-author Prof. Jan Recker.  Contact details are below.

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PhD scholarship available at QUT’s Information Systems School

Applications are invited from suitable qualified graduates for a PhD scholarship at the School of Information Systems at Queensland University of Technology as part of the ARC project “Designing Process Models for Decision-Making”. The term of the scholarship is three years. The scholarships provide financial support towards study and living costs.

Project Background

When seeking to re-design business processes – a perennial top priority of chief information executives – organisations use graphical documentations of their business processes, so called process models. These models act as blueprints of organizational processes, and are a key tool for making re-design decisions, i.e., decisions about where, how and why changes to the processes should be enacted to warrant increased revenues, business growth, improved operational efficiency, cost reductions or increased compliance.

A process model that documents a business process in an incomplete, incorrect, cumbersome to decipher, or otherwise deficient manner will not convey the information about the business domain to the decision maker such that a good decision can be facilitated. Any organizational re-design of the processes, in consequence, will then fail to deliver the expected benefits. When creating process models, therefore, analysts require principles that guide them in conceiving graphical representations of business processes that are useful, intuitive and accurate to the decision-makers (process owners, process managers, business analysts, systems designers and the like) working with these models.

This project aims to develop a theory, and theory-driven guidelines, for developing understandable process models. Specifically, it will deliver:

•       A fundamental theory about factors and consequences of process modelling for decision-making tasks; and

•       on the basis of the new and validated theory, practical guidelines based on rigorous empirical insights to guide the creation of useful, intuitive and accurate process models for decision-making.

Project Governance

The research project is led by Professor Jan Recker, PhD. Jan is Alexander-von-Humboldt Fellow and Woolworths Chair of Retail Innovation at Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia. His main areas of research include process design in organizational practice, organizational innovation and business transformation management. His research is published in the MIS Quarterly, the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, the European Journal of Information Systems, Information & Management, the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems, and other key journals.

More information is available from www.janrecker.com/.

The Research Environment

QUT’s Information Systems School is currently the highest ranked IS research department in Australia based on research quality and the only IS research group that was ranked with a perfect '5-out-of-5' score in the 2010 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) assessment. The school is also among the highest ranked IS departments in terms of publications in the top IS journals worldwide.

QUT’s Information Systems School has a global reputation for its work on Business Process Management and Process Innovation. The School has an unconditional focus on rigorous research with demonstrated practical relevance. Research from the school has appeared in premier journals such as the MIS Quarterly, the Journal of the AIS, the European Journal of IS, Decision Support Systems, Information Systems, ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology, and others.

To find out more, please visit http://www.qut.edu.au/science-engineering/about/about-the-faculty/school-of-information-systems.

Application Criteria

The successful applicant

-       has a Master's degree in management, information systems, finance, marketing, business administration or a comparable field. He or she completed the Master’s degree with a GPA of 6 or higher (or equivalent).

-       has the ambition and capabilities to complete a high-quality PhD project within 3 years.

-       has a strong research mindset, and evidence of skills in theoretical and empirical research.

-       possesses strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.

-       speaks and writes fluently in English.

-       likes to work in an international setting.

Application Procedure

Applicants are required to submit a letter of application for the scholarship to Associate Professor Jan Recker (j.recker@qut.edu.au) by 15 June 2012, briefly describing qualifications, relevant skills and areas of research interest.

Applicants will be screened and, if suitable, invited for further assessment and interviews.

The following supporting documents are required:

-       CV including a comprehensive list and details of all publications if any.

-       Certified copies of academic transcripts.

-       Copies of most important research papers or theses

-       A letter stating how the above criteria are met by the applicant

-       2 letters of reference from academics who have taught/supervised the applicant at university.