AIS Fellow Award Winner - Chrisanthi Avgerou
			Chrisanthi Avgerou Chrisanthi has been on theforefront of efforts to extend the international community of IS academicsto less developed countries. Her research and consulting support her globalactivities. Chrisanthi is a Lecturerin the Department of Information Systems at the London School of Economics.She received her Ph.D. in Information Systems from the London School ofEconomics in 1989 and has an M.Sc. in Computer Science from Loughborough University of Technology and a B.Sc. (Honors) in Mathematics from the Universityof Athens. Chrisanthi is a member ofthe Association for Information Systems (AIS) and was elected councillorfor Europe, Middle East, and Africa (1995-1997). She has made significantefforts to extend the reach of AIS to less developed countries and to assistfaculty members in these countries to be active in the international communityof IS scholars. She is currently serving the International Federation forInformation Processing (IFIP) as vice-chair of Technical Committee 9 (SocialImpact of IT) and has served as Chair of Working Group 9.4 (Social Implicationsof Computers in Developing Countries) since 1995. Chrisanthi’s current researchcenters on information systems and organizational diversity. The researchstudies the way local and global context affects IT implementation andorganizational change. Drawing from recent research in the sociology oftechnology, institutionalist organizational theory and the ongoing debateon globalization, it seeks to develop a theoretical platform for the studyof information systems and organizational change as an intertwined andcontext-dependent process. Subsequently, this research aims at developingprinciples for a contextualist professional practice for information systemsimplementation that is capable of addressing the dialectics of local meaningsand global influences. Another area of interestis information systems implementation. The research identifies typicalinformation systems project situations and studies the knowledge and professionalexpertise they require. Recently completed action research includes informationsystems enabling collaboration in projects of the construction industry(1997-1999). Chrisanthi conducted a surveyof the academic field of Information Systems in Europe from 1996 to 1998.The research involved two stages: a preliminary survey that collected reportson the main institutional and cognitive features of the field from IS academicsin 11 European countries and a questionnaire survey addressed to all entriesof the European Information Systems academics directory. Chrisanthi’s past researchincludes information systems in public administration and involved doctoralresearch on the factors that affect the development of computer-based informationsystems in social administration organizations. Another study involvedinformation systems that support national development planning. This researchexamined the nature of development planning and drew data from initiativesof international development organizations, such as UNESCO, UNDP, and IDRC,to assist developing countries to set up information and technology resourcesfor development planning purposes. Research on the efforts to use IT forthe "modernization” of traditional public bureaucracies drew data frompublic administration in Greece and developing countries. Researchon information systems for managing the utilization of medical drugs includeda survey of drug utilization information systems and strategic optionsfor the development of drug use information systems in the European context. In addition to research andconsulting work, Chrisanthi has served as an advisor for the redesign ofthe M.Sc. program of the Department of Informatics, Athens University ofEconomics and Business (1998-1999), as well as advising the Director Generalof the Greek Social Security organization, IKA, on information systemsmanagement. Chrisanthi is the authorof several books and numerous articles. She is Associate Editor for thejournal The Information Society and a member of the editorial board ofInformation Technology for Development. She served as Guest Editor forthe special issue on Information Systems in Greece of the European Journalof Information Systems (2:2, 1993). She is a reviewer for MISQuarterly, European Journal of Information Systems, Journalof Information Systems and Omega, as well as for the InternationalConference on Information Systems, the European Conference on InformationSystems, and the International Federation for Information Processing.