|
||||||||||||||||||
 |
||||
|
||||
|
Niels Bjørn-Andersen began his Ph.D. studies at the Copenhagen Business School (CBS) in 1966. He received his Ph.D. in 1973 for his thesis on decision support systems, became an assistant professor in 1972, an associate professor in 1974, and a full professor in 1987, the first full professor in information systems in Denmark. He started his career at department of Organization and Industrial Sociology (first as a PhD student and later as head of department), co-founded the Information Systems Research Group in 1976, and merged this group into what in 1986 became Department of Informatics and Management Accounting. When department of Informatics was established in 1996, he became the first head of that department. Dr. Bjørn-Andersen is widely recognized as the founder of the socio-technical IS tradition in Denmark, beginning in the early ‘70s; and he has been the prime mover in the management of IS/IT since the late ‘80s in Denmark. He also founded the Center for e-Commerce at CBS in 1998, and at the opening of the center no less than 230 individuals attended. This is one of the most impressive openings of a center at CBS, and for almost 8 years, this was the leading research center in Denmark within e-commerce/e-business. His key research interests include e-business, IT-innovation, IT strategy, ERP-systems, inter-organizational systems, and IT for new organizational forms. He has published 15 books, more than 50 journal articles, and more than 100 other publications. He has worked extensively on more than ten EU-funded research projects during the last 20 years, and has been project leader for several of them. In 2005, he received two large research grants totaling approximately ten million dollars, where he is project leader for one and part of the steering committee for the other. He started the first part-time masters program (HD i organisation datamatiklinien) in information systems at CBS in 1976, a bachelor program in information systems in 1984, and a M.Sc. program in information systems in 1987. He was also one of the three co-founders of the Global e-Management Program EMBA program in 1999 – a joint program with eight leading business schools on three continents focusing on e-business and the new economy. Innovation and globalization in the relationship between IT and organizations has always been center stage in his endeavors, always searching for new projects, new conferences, and new collaboration partners. He was one of the founders of IFIP TC 8, where he was the Danish national representative for more than ten years; and he was a founder of IFIP WG 8.2, where he played a major role as conference chair for more than a decade. He received the IFIP Outstanding Service Award in 1988 for his work within IFIP. Dr. Bjørn-Andersen was one of the first Europeans to ‘discover’ ICIS, and has participated in the conference since the early ‘80s. In 1985, he proposed to move the conference outside the U.S., and successfully pulled off the first truly international ICIS conference in 1990 in Copenhagen with more than 850 participants, with approximately half coming from outside the U.S. A key element in this success was his pioneering effort in creating a European directory of IS researchers. After its second edition, this directory was folded into the AIS directory of IS academics. But this directory and the network of European IS academics have been instrumental in putting IS on the agenda of the EU research programs, in national research programs, and in business schools across Europe, particularly in early days of the CEMS program. Dr. Bjørn-Andersen is one of the academics who have done most to promote the field of IS as different from computer science on the one hand and from operations research, management science, and other business-school disciplines on the other. This has been accomplished through service in numerous review boards, research committees, research councils, and committees including the UK Social Science Research Council. He served on several committees defining the EU Framework for Research Programs and participated in the ceremony of the Millennium Technology Award (the ‘Nobel prize of Technology’), where he was one of the only one dozen speakers within all technology areas. When AIS was first established in 1995 he became the first European to become President of AIS in 1996, succeeding the inaugural president, Bill King. He was honored as an AIS Fellow in 1999, and the queen of Denmark knighted him in 2003. |
|
|||