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Kay Nelson

Kay Nelson, Professor of Management

Professor Nelson joined the College of Business faculty in 2005. She was the Director the Partnership for Innovation Center for 3 years and has developed and presented a “one of a kind” hands-on MBA Innovation Course coupled with Engineering College capstone project courses.

Nelson came to SIU from The Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, where she was an associate professor and director of the Center for Information Technologies in Management. She built a research center from scratch in four months while teaching and performing research on a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant.

Nelson also created, managed, and co-sponsored the first Central Ohio CIO Symposium with the Columbus Technology Council (CTC). Attendance by CIOs in 2003 was 162. This is now known as CIOhio and is one of the largest and most respected CIO symposiums in the US with 2006 registration in excess of 250.

Nelson’s teaching interests are graduate, executive, or undergraduate courses in Software Architecture and Metrics, Software Engineering, Innovation and Technology Management, and all general MIS courses. “My criteria for teaching success is how successful my alumni are and how long-term I keep relationships with them,” she said.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee area, Nelson holds a bachelor’s degree from The University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, a master of science from Hampton University and a doctorate in management information systems from The University of Texas at Austin.

Research Interests

  • Management information systems and innovation strategy
  • MIS architecture and personnel
  • Issues involving information systems and their relationship to organizational flexibility, change, and knowledge
  • Software maintenance, architecture, and metrics
  • IS personnel issues;
  • Measurement of e-business tools and methods
  • Business value of IT
  • Qualitative and multi-method research methods, innovation theory and practice.

Recent Publications

Armstrong, D., Nelson, H. J., Nelson, K. M., and Narayanan, V. K. forthcoming. Building the IT Workforce of the Future: The Demand for More Complex, Abstract, and Strategic Knowledge. Information Resources Management Journal (IRMJ).

Bovee, M., A. Kogan, R. P. Srivastava, M. A. Vasarhelyi, K. M. Nelson, 2005. Financial Reporting and Auditing Agent with Net Knowledge (FRAANK) and eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring): 2005 pp. 19-41.

“Reflections on the Interview Process in Evocative Settings”, in Causal Mapping for Information Systems and Technology Research: Approaches, Advances and Illustrations: V.K. Narayanan and D.J. Armstrong Ed. Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA Dec. 2004

“Identifying the Enablers and Barriers of IT Personnel Transition”, Karin Darais, U. Utah, Kay Nelson, Sarah C. Rice, OSU, Mari Buche, Michigan Tech, In Strategies for Managing IS/IT Personnel: Magid Igbaria, Conrad Shayo ed., Idea Group Press, 2004

“In Their Own Words: CIO Visions About The Future of In-House IT Organizations”, with Blaize Horner Reich, The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems (an ACM Publication), Fall 2003, Vol. 34, No. 4, pp.28-44

Awards

  • National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award (Young Presidential Scholars Program). "IT Personnel Transition and Organization Transition Strategy," February 2000
  • "Evaluating the CMM Level 3 KPA of Intergroup Coordination: A Theory-Based Approach," with M. Ghods, M. Buche, and D. Armstrong, The Eighth Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems - WITS, December 1998 Best Conference Paper Award
  • "The Contribution of Shared Knowledge to I/S Group Performance," with Jay G. Cooprider, Proceedings the Fourteenth International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS), December, 1993, Orlando FL. Best Conference Paper Award
  • Named Outstanding Woman in Technology, Columbus Ohio - 2004, by the Columbus Technology Council