Karahanna and Tiwana awarded endowed professorships in MIS

International leadership of Terry College’s MIS Department is credited
(L-R) Elena Karahanna and Amrit Tiwana

Two professors at the Terry College of Business were awarded new titles this fall in recognition of their international impact in the field of management information systems.

UGA Distinguished Research Professor Elena Karahanna was named to the C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry Distinguished Chair of Business Administration, and fellow MIS professor Amrit Tiwana was named the L. Edmund Rast Professor of Business. Both appointments were approved by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents.

“We are very pleased to award these important professorships and recognize the far-reaching impact of Elena Karahanna and Amrit Tiwana. The Department of Management Information Systems is highly regarded internationally in the field of information systems, as is the demonstrated leadership of these two faculty members,” said Benjamin C. Ayers, dean of the Terry College of Business.

Elena Karahanna, whose research focuses on the impact of digital tools on work processes, use of information systems in healthcare, and the use of bots and chatbots on e-commerce sites and social media, joined the Terry College faculty in 2000.

She is an award-winning researcher who is one of the most prolific publishers in the top journals of her field. She is the co-author of three of the most cited papers in MIS Quarterly, one of the top two MIS journals.

Her work and reputation led the Association for Information Systems (AIS), the Information Systems discipline’s leading organization, to name her a fellow in 2012. She also won the Sandra Slaughter AIS Service Award for leadership and service to the discipline in 2015.

Karahanna has served as a senior editor of MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research and the Journal of the Association for Information Systems. She has served on the editorial board of several other journals, including Management Science. She is frequently invited to speak and deliver keynote addresses at international conferences and research universities.

Karahanna serves as a graduate coordinator for the MIS Department and has taught courses on theory development, systems analysis and design and business intelligence.

Karahanna taught internationally in Hong Kong, Cyprus, Singapore and Australia as well as at Florida State University in the United States. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and a bachelor’s degree in computer science and an MBA from Lehigh University.

Karahanna’s faculty chair is one of several endowed by benefactors C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry. In 1991, the College of Business Administration was renamed in their honor, following what was at the time the largest private gift in University of Georgia history.

Amrit Tiwana, who previously held the P. George Benson Professorship, was named the L. Edmund Rast Professor of Business.

Tiwana researches how information systems intersect with companies’ larger strategic goals. He studies factors that produce the most beneficial uses of new technologies inside companies. He currently serves as a senior editor at MIS Quarterly and on the editorial boards of Strategic Management Journal and the Journal of Management Information Systems.

Tiwana is an award-winning instructor who teaches at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels and has taught as a visiting scholar at many universities in Europe and Asia. In addition to his academic work, Tiwana has consulted with multinational corporations, including UPS, Hitachi, Toshiba, IBM and HP.

He has written three books on IS governance, including IT Strategy for non-IT Managers: Becoming an Engaged Contributor to Corporate IT Decisions, Platform Ecosystems: Aligning Architecture, Governance, and Strategy and The Knowledge Management Toolkit: Orchestrating IT, Strategy, and Knowledge Platforms.

Before joining the Terry College faculty in 2010, Tiwana taught at Iowa State University and Emory University. He received his Ph.D. from Georgia State University in 2002.

Tiwana is the third faculty member to be awarded the Rast Professorship, succeeding Karahanna and previously Robert P. Bostrom. The professorship is named for Ed Rast, who earned a business degree from UGA in 1937 and went on to become president of Southern Bell.