Category: announcements

PHIS-NZ commemorated 10 years in 2019, at the University of Waikato, Hamilton, with a special cake.

The panel convened to award the 2019 PHIS-NZ Information Systems Doctoral Thesis Award and is pleased to announce the winner is:

Dr. Haibo Yang,
Victoria University of Wellington

for his thesis: In a Quest to Solve Information Systems Agility Problems: A SaaS Experience

Supervisors: Associate Professor Pedro Antunes (Main supervisor), Associate Professor Mary Tate (HRA), Dr. David Johnstone (Co-supervisor), and Emeritus Professor Sid Huff

In 2019 the panel faced a difficult decision on the top thesis. Four theses were nominated by their respective institutions – each showed significant contributions in several respects and offered a diverse range of research questions, methodologies, approaches and formats. Selected comments from the panellists about Dr. Yang’s research includes:

• A very interesting PhD with significant implications for industry and academia.
• The thesis successfully addresses the long-lasting question of IS agility and benefits of adopting SaaS.
• Very clear articulation and justification of the research problem and its importance, the gap/challenge/issues, and the research questions, goals & objectives.
• Artefact development well-informed by existing methods/ theories. Very clear contributions including implications for practice, and future research

Dr. Yang, currently Head of Business Intelligence at IMPAC, has been invited to receive the award and to make a brief presentation at the New Zealand Information Systems Doctoral Consortium in Hamilton on 27th July 2019. An abstract of the thesis is included below. A summary of the thesis will be available on the PHIS-NZ Web site.

The panel also acknowledges the outstanding quality of research evident in the nomination of:

Dr. Sahar Sabbaghan, The University of Auckland

for her thesis: Principles and Techniques for Creating and Validating Computer-Adaptive Surveys (CAS)

Supervisors: Professor Cecil Chua (primary supervisor) and Associate Professor Lesley Gardner

Dr. Sabbaghan’s thesis will be recognised with a Certificate of Merit.

The members of the award panel for 2019 are:

• Professor David Sundaram, The University of Auckland*
• Professor Antonio Diaz-Andrade, Auckland University of Technology
• Associate Professor William Wang, University of Waikato
• Associate Professor Annette Mills, University of Canterbury (Chair)

* To avoid a conflict of interest Professor Sundaram abstained from voting on Dr. Sabbaghan’s thesis.