Call for Papers for a Special Issue of Journal of Information Technology
Information Technology in China
Special Issue Editors: Ping Gao, Heejin Lee, Kalle Lyytinen and Kanliang Wang
For the past quarter century, the rise of China has been a defining factor in global economic development. During this time,China has recorded an average annual GDP growth rate of about 10%, and constructed a modern IT infrastructure across the whole country. IT has become an important part of business and social life in China, and has brought with it some significant changes. As a result, more and more scholarly attention is being paid to IT in China, including special issues in mainstream information systems journals.
Although there has been some significant work on IT in China, the focus was on IT applications and IS at the micro-level of the organization, which reflected well-established but rather bounded interests within information systems more generally. This special issue of JIT on “Information Technology in China” seeks to both update and expand the coverage. It aims to draw out the particular insights that policy-making, development and application of IT in recent years in the world’s most-populous country have to offer from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives.
We wish to bring together research on important recent IT developments and applications in China that have been relatively ignored in the literature. Particularly, we are interested in the following phenomena (although not restricting submissions to this range). First, China has formed a true “digital economy” infrastructure. It is important to understand the various factors that determine fast growth of IT infrastructure in China, and analyze the challenges that China faces in future growth, for example the institutional and legislative barriers for the convergence between the Internet, telecommunications and media sectors. Second, Chinese firms are catching up with the global innovation frontier in IT manufacturing. In the meantime, the government has promoted indigenous IT innovation. There are interesting issues for debate around China’s national system of IT innovation: its successes, its failures, and criticisms of a techno-nationalism that jeopardizes fair, open competition for private and foreign firms. Third, China’s IT services market is booming. Amazon, Google and other major Internet firms have set up in China, yet it is Chinese firms that dominate the domestic market. Interesting lessons can be drawn from case studies of the business models of Chinese and foreign IT service providers inChina. Fourth, it is interesting to know how the central government has sought to use IT to promote socio-economic development, to help reduce social divisions, and to create a more “homogeneous society”. We call for investigations into the impact and challenge when various IS are applied in healthcare, education, justice, agriculture, environmental protection, disaster alleviation, etc.
This special issue aims for a deep understanding of the key aspects of IT in China, linking those phenomena to China’s particular social, economic, cultural, political and institutional context. We call for innovative research papers addressing the opportunities and challenges of IT in China in the above and other areas. Comparative studies of China with other developing countries and emerging economies (especially in Asia due to some similarities of development history and context) are particularly welcomed. At a more practical level, we invite submissions that are theoretically and empirically rigorous on topics that may include but are not limited to:
l IT infrastructure
l IT policy
l The role of government in IT development
l IT innovation and standardization
l Organizational strategies and procedures for IT development
l IT manufacturing industry
l The telecommunications sector
l IT convergence
l IT service adoption and diffusion
l IT and socio-economic development in healthcare, agriculture, environment, etc.
l IT and social development
l Comparative study of IT in China and other countries
l Digital cities
l e-Governance
Timetable
l 31 March 2012: Deadline for article submission
l 30 September 2012: Reviews returned to authors
l 31 December 2012: Deadline for submission of revised articles
l 31 March 2013: Final articles selected
l December 2013: Publication of the JIT Special Issue
Submission Information
l For information about JIT and formatting requirements please see www.palgrave-journals.com/jit/index.html.
l Questions about the Special Issue can be directed to Guest Editor Ping Gao at ping.gao@manchester.ac.uk.
Papers for the Special Issue should be submitted by email to JITedoffice@lse.ac.uk with the title of the Special Issue in the Subject line.