In comparison with some other disciplines, the research output of IS was seen as being generally lower. One possible explanation offered is that many IS academics have entered academia from a practitioner background rather than a researcher background.

Research output was, however, considered to have increased in recent years in Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory, reflecting increased effort and productivity. Although Tasmania reported a focus on conference proceedings, in Victoria incentives for publications were linked increasingly to journal rather than conference publications. Queensland also reported a growing preference for journal publications, even when compared with prestigious conferences, which could relate to the planned introduction of the RQF, which is discussed later. Some universities, including those in Western Australia, reported considerable numbers of PhD students, including 20 at the UniSA, which could be expected to bolster the publication records of those schools.

Different factors, however, were reported in some universities. Researchers at Charles Sturt University identified little with IS. In some IS groups in New South Wales, the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) and the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) were not universally considered central conferences for the discipline. Also in New South Wales, some interviewees found it difficult to agree on a definition of IS.

The Australasian Journal of Information Systems (AJIS) is a core local IS journal; however, no reference was made in any state report to the development of any additional Australian IS publication outlets.

Analysis indicated that IS academics have found it difficult to gain research funding, particularly funding from the prestigious Australian Research Council (ARC). As reported in the retrospective chapter, the ARC coding scheme for many years omitted IS, forcing bids to be made within either business or computer science codes—with the result that they were evaluated by assessors who were often unfamiliar with IS.

Academics in Victoria reported that research funding was ‘dwindling’. The limited success reported for IS in attaining ARC funding contrasts with the greater success of the computing discipline. More emphasis on research funding from industry, internal university sources or from research centres was noted by ADFA, the U Tasmania and in Victoria. The low proportion of IS staff holding a PhD at some Australian universities, such as at the UTS, or completing one, would act to limit opportunity to apply and gain research funding, particularly from the ARC, where track record is of major importance

Information systems was seen to have little autonomy in some universities, such as at the UTS, where IS courses were integrated with computing courses.

Many examples were provided where IS groups were dependent on the outcomes from other disciplines. Several states, including Victoria, reported IS groups that delivered teaching within non-IS programs. As an example of common delivery arrangements found in Australian IS, the IS group at the University of Sydney delivers an introductory IS unit to 1000 students in the Bachelor of Commerce degree, while at the UniSA an even greater number of students studied an IS unit within a Bachelor of Commerce. The IS groups at all universities in New South Wales, other than at the UNSW, were dependent on enrolments in other programs and on the number of compulsory IS units in those programs. To counter the disadvantages of such dependence on other disciplines, the substantial financial rewards from teaching large service classes have been seen as a means for IS groups to ‘subsidise’ the running of small specialist IS classes.

It was suggested in the Queensland chapter that IS groups had a greater level of academic control and prestige where they had a separate identity in the university structure. The findings from Western Australia were consistent with this perspective, as the IS groups that were considered to be a subset of other disciplines in their structural location in the university had lower status. In Victoria, however, no correlation was seen between having a separate structural identity in a university and the perception by IS academics of having greater status.

Information systems groups are located in a diversity of faculties. In Victorian universities, although most IS groups were based in science or business, others were located in arts, law, engineering, communication and health science faculties. Variability was noted similarly in the home faculty for IS groups in Queensland. The Queensland report commented that often the IS groups that had moved out from business faculties were highly autonomous

The Queensland chapter commented on a remarkable variation in the location of IS staff in the university structure. In New South Wales, fragmentation of IS staff was reported across different departments and faculties, particularly in science and computing, where most IS groups were ad hoc or informal groups within larger departments, with little interaction among the IS groups. As an example of this characteristic, at Macquarie University there was an ad hoc IS group in computing, while other IS groups existed also in accounting and management, and information management was taught in statistics. Other examples were given in which IS was one component of a school that represented a different discipline, such as at the UniSA.

A range of consequences was identified arising from IS not being seen as having a separate identity in the university structure. It was reported that the wider university communities in New South Wales did not see IS as a separate field. Some IS groups might not have identified themselves in this way either. For example, at the University of Adelaide, where there were only three IS staff and IS degrees were not offered, the staff were not aware of current issues for IS groups at other institutions. In three of the nine universities in Victoria, IS was not seen as having attained a separate identity. In some states, it was reported that there were few strongly identified IS programs; for example, in New South Wales, only the UNSW was seen as having a strongly identified IS program. In one Victorian university, IS staff perceived that IS journals and conferences had not been included in the ranking exercise of their department. Variety in the nomenclature adopted for IS courses was seen, while IS was not offered as a degree at some universities, including at Flinders University.

Queensland reported that many IS groups had restructured or planned to do so during 2004–06, as a result of reduced demand from students for IT courses. The same state reported two different trends regarding changes to the structural placement of IS groups in that state. Information systems groups at Central Queensland University, Griffith University and the Queensland University of Technology had, before this study, moved to separate IS schools, while the IS groups from the University of Southern Queensland and Bond University at the time of the study were relocating to business. The IS school at Edith Cowan University merged with management in 2007, while at the University of Tasmania, the School of Information Systems in the Faculty of Business merged with the School of Computing into a Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology in 2008. Queensland noted that reduced autonomy of IS groups was associated with the more recent decline in student demand for IS programs, as seen also in Tasmania.

The NSW report noted that of the 10 universities with IS groups in New South Wales, the main IS group at only three included IS in their name. Not being identified with IS by name would also act to reduce the identity of these IS groups.

In New South Wales, a perception was reported that regional universities were less threatened by the decline in IS student demand reported elsewhere, and felt less need to conform with research trends. Certainly, a subset of regional universities reported a disproportionately strong IS presence, associated with positioning of the institution to emphasise external studies and the development of multiple campuses away from the home campus. Two Queensland regional universities, Central Queensland University and the University of Southern Queensland, showed these characteristics.

After the initial state case studies, further data were gathered to assess the extent to which ‘business’ or ‘technology’ predominated in the administrative placement of IS groups in Australian universities. In addition, an analysis was made of the administrative placement of IS groups in relation to the era in which each university was established. The concept of categories of university types associated with different eras is discussed earlier in this chapter, in relation to Table 12.1.

Table 12.3 summarises the placement of IS at Australian universities. ‘Business’ includes faculties that are called business, economics or commerce. ‘Technology’ includes faculties that are called science, IT or engineering. ‘Both’ refers to universities that have an IS group in the ‘business’ and the ‘technology’ faculty types. ‘Combined’ is where the university has a combined faculty called something like ‘business and technology’. ‘Other’ indicates that IS is situated in some other type of faculty, such as arts.

From Table 12.3, we note that IS is located within business at 17 universities, in technology at 11 and in ‘other’ at two. At five universities, IS exists in business and technology, and in four universities IS resides in a combined business–technology area. Information systems is located solely in business in 44 per cent of universities (17), solely in technical in 28 per cent of universities (11), in business or business and technical (17 plus five) in 56 per cent of universities, in technical or technical and business (11 plus five) in 41 per cent of universities. Broadly, we observe an approximately 60/40 ratio of business versus technical.

Note: Several universities have more than one IS group in the same faculty type—for example, Deakin has IS groups in the School of Information Systems and the Deakin Business School, both of which are within the Faculty of Business and Law. ADFA was not included in the count.

We note further that IS is located within business relatively more often for all but one of the six ‘eras’, with IS located more often in technical only at the Unitech universities. Information systems at the Sandstones is generally associated with the Faculty of Commerce/Business/Economics. In two of the three Redbrick universities (the ANU and the UNSW), the main concentration of IS seems to be in the Faculty of Economics/Commerce. The other Redbrick, Monash, has a Faculty of Information Technology in which IS is sited. Although ADFA is a college of the UNSW, IS there is located within a school of technology. Three of the five Unitechs (the QUT, UTS, UniSA) have faculties/divisions of IT in which IS is concentrated. At the other two ‘Unitechs’ (Curtin and RMIT), IS is associated with business.

There is little pattern to the placement of IS at the Gumtrees universities; four have IS situated in business-type faculties, three in technology faculties and two (Macquarie and Griffith) have IS groups in both types of faculty. Information systems groups are associated most often with business at the New universities. There seems, however, to be a trend towards the creation of a faculty that combines business and informatics/computing at some of these universities. Three of the New universities have this type of combined faculty.

In Queensland and elsewhere, numbers of IS academics had achieved increased status in their universities, with the professorial staff total having increased considerably in the past two decades. These staff had similar levels of influence as did professorial staff in other disciplines.

The achievement of IS professorial staff was seen as a crucial step in the enhancement of the reputation of an associated IS group in a university, while IS groups without professorial staff were seen to have a lower profile in their university.

An industry-based Chair in Business Information Systems was appointed at the UniSA in 2006. In addition to local professors, the UniSA also appointed two IS adjunct professors from Europe, which contributed to the reputation of the IS group at that university. It was seen that some professorial appointments had taken place only relatively recently. At the ANU, the first IS professor was appointed only in 2000, which suggests a restricted profile for IS at that university until that year. Also noteworthy is the late emergence of departments and chairs at the University of Melbourne, in 1996, and at the University of Sydney, in 2002. There are no professors in IS at two Sandstone universities—Adelaide University and the UWA.

Appendix 2.4 in the ‘retrospective’ chapter, Chapter 2, identified a total of 69 individuals who had been identified as having held chairs in IS during the period 1974–2007, in 31 of a total of approximately 42 institutions. When people who have held multiple successive professorships are counted, the total is 82. In early 2007, there appeared to be 52 IS professors in 28 institutions. The period 1974–2007 was examined. Building on the steady progress made from 1990 to 1997, considerable growth took place between 1998 and 2004 inclusive, during which time more than 60 per cent of the IS professorial appointments occurred.

A number of senior IS academics had taken on other significant and prestigious roles with recognition beyond IS, particularly since about 2000. In the 1990s, IS researchers had little input into ARC panels; however, in more recent years, a number of senior IS academics had become expert assessors for the ARC, while one had acted as an advisor to the Australian government on IT and national research priorities. In the past five or six years, there has been a concerted effort by the Australasian Chapter of the Association for Information Systems (AAIS) and the Australian Council of Professors and Heads of Information Systems (ACPHIS) to have IS representation on the ARC MICS Panel (the panel that is likely to assess the majority of IS ARC grant applications). Janice Burn, Graeme Shanks and Michael Rosemann have been IS representatives on the MICS Panel; however, Rosemann’s term ends in December 2007, and the AAIS/ACPHIS nomination for 2008–09 was unsuccessful.

As a further example of Australian IS academics gaining national and international status, while at the University of Queensland, Ron Weber was named as the first president from Region 3 of the Association for Information Systems (AIS), and was also the 2001 Co-Chair of ICIS and the 2001 Chair of the ICIS Executive Committee. Weber also received the Prime Minister’s Award for University Teacher of the Year in 2000, and was the first non-US resident to hold the position of editor-in-chief of MIS Quarterly. Shirley Gregor from the ANU was awarded an Order for Australia in 2005 and became the Director of the Professional Standards Board for the Australian Computer Society (ACS) in 2007. Alan Underwood developed the core body of knowledge used by the ACS when accrediting IT courses in Australian institutions. In 2007, Ed Lewis from the Australian Capital Territory chaired the IT-030 Committee for Standards Australia. All these roles enhance the reputation of IS groups, and the IS field.

This section considered the autonomy of IS academic groups from their structural location in universities, and the associated extent to which IS academic groups controlled critical rewards. Although the research output of IS schools was perceived as low in comparison with other disciplines, effort was being made in many IS groups recently to increase research output and to publish in journals rather than in conference proceedings. Although research funding within IS was seen as difficult to obtain—particularly ARC grants—at least one IS group reported increasing success. The independence of IS groups in Australian universities varied considerably, with some being dependent on the enrolment and structure of programs in other disciplines. While most IS groups were found in science or business faculties, many other structures were reported. Although some IS groups had strongly identified programs, and delivered IS degrees, often IS groups were fragmented across departments and faculties, which reduced opportunities for those groups to control critical rewards. Although the number of professorial appointments and the attainment of other prestigious roles for senior IS academics that had an impact outside IS had increased significantly since about 2000, it was hard to generalise about the achievement of mechanisms of control for IS in Australia. This is because the diversity in arrangements is considerable, with significant autonomy experienced by some IS groups, but with little in others. Reduced student numbers have, however, placed pressure for restructuring on IS groups in recent years, which, in turn, has eroded autonomy for IS in Australian universities.