Elena Karahanna, the Rast Professor of Business at UGA’s Terry College of Business, received the Association for Information Systems’ AIS Fellow Award last month at the 2012 International Conference on Information Systems in Orlando.
The award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding research, teaching and service contributions to the field of information systems throughout their careers. An AIS Fellow is also expected to have made significant global and local contributions to the discipline.
Karahanna, who teaches in the Management Information Systems Department at Terry, has spent her career helping understand information systems implementations—from email to telemedicine.
“One of my main areas of research involves technology acceptance and resistance,” she said. “I try to understand the factors underlying adoption and use of information systems as well as those leading to resistance or underutilization. Organizations spend millions in developing and implementing new systems that could increase efficiency and performance, and in many cases people do not use them or do not use them to their full potential. I try to figure out why that is and what interventions may promote more effective use.”
Karahanna’s research has been published in leading scholarly journals such as Management Science, MIS Quarterly and Information Systems Research as well as in practitioner journals such as MIS Quarterly Executive, Cutter Benchmark Review and Business Horizons. It is highly cited, with more than 9,000 citations as per Google Scholar; and three of her articles are among the top 15 most frequently cited articles in the history of the MIS Quarterly.
“Elena is a phenomenal researcher—prolific and relevant,” said Maric Boudreau, head of the MIS department at Terry. “She is sought after by our students, both graduate and undergraduate, and is also very active in terms of service. To truly excel on all three fronts of academic life is quite unique…But Elena will never be too busy to help others or share her wisdom, which makes her quite delightful to be around.”
For her research achievements, Karahanna also received the Terry College of Business Outstanding Research Award in 2010.
“AIS Fellow awardees have distinguished themselves as role models to colleagues and students, and are highly esteemed for their high levels of professional and personal contribution to the field,” said AIS President Doug Vogel. “Elena Karahanna clearly demonstrates these qualities and we congratulate her on receiving this high honor.”
The Association for Information Systems, founded in 1994, is a professional organization whose purpose is to serve as the premier global organization for academics specializing in Information Systems.