Walton College Appoints New Chair

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — The Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas has announced the appointment of Moez Limayem as chair of the information systems department, effective June 1.

Limayem comes to the Walton College from Lausanne University in Switzerland where he was professor and director of the information systems graduate programs in the information systems department, HEC Lausanne. He replaces Fred Davis, holder of the David D. Glass Chair in Information Systems. Davis, who was chair of the information systems department from 1996 to 2007, is returning to the faculty to teach and research.

“We are very excited to have an international researcher of Dr. Limayem’s stature join the Walton College to lead the information systems department,” said Walton College Dean Dan Worrell. “He is an outstanding teacher and has extensive research and consulting experience in academic, private business and governmental information technology fields.

“In addition, we are deeply appreciative of the contributions made by Dr. Davis. During his tenure, he and his faculty built a wide range of real-world technology facilities to help students land top technology jobs right out of college. Through gifts and partnerships with top technology companies, such as IBM, NCR and SAP, the information systems department has developed an enterprise systems curriculum to mirror the technology of corporations.”

Tom Jensen, chair of the marketing and logistics department, said, “The search committee and faculty in the department were very impressed by Dr. Limayem’s education, research, international experience and management style. He brings a lot of knowledge that complements and augments the other faculty.”

Limayem was previously a professor and the BBA Electronic Commerce program director at the information systems department at City University of Hong Kong. He was also the chair of the management information systems department at Laval University in Quebec, Canada. He holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in management information systems from the University of Minnesota. His current research interests include information technology adoption and usage, centralized resource management, knowledge management and electronic commerce. He has had several articles published or forthcoming in many journals such as MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Information Systems Research, Communications of the ACM, Journal of AIS, IEEE Transactions, Accounting, Management & Information Technologies, Group Decision and Negotiation, and Small Group Research. Limayem is on the editorial board of several important journals such MIS Quarterly. He has been invited to present his research in many countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. He won the best MIS paper award at the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada conference in 1998 and at the International Conference on Information Systems conference in 2003. Limayem is the current elected president of the Association of Information and Management. He is also the program co-chair for ICIS 2008 and the chair of the AIM 2007 conference.

In 1994, Professor Limayem won the prestigious Hermes Award for excellence in teaching. In 1995 and 1998, he won the award for the best MIS teacher in the faculty of Business Administration at Laval University, and more recently, he received the 3M award for the best teacher in Canada. In November 2001, he won the Teaching Excellence Award at City University of Hong Kong. In January 2003 and October 2004, he received the best teacher award of the information systems department at City University of Hong Kong. Limayem has more than 15 years of experience in executive training in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong and several European countries. He is the highest rated executive MBA instructor at City University of Hong Kong, Concordia University and at Laval University. Limayem also acts as a consultant for the UNESCO and several private and public companies. His consultancy services cover e-government, e-commerce, business process re-engineering and customer relationship management.

Davis earned a Doctor of Philosophy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management in 1986 and has served on the business school faculties at University of Michigan, University of Minnesota and University of Maryland. He holds a bachelor of science from Wayne State University in industrial engineering. He has taught a wide range of information technology courses at the undergraduate, master’s, doctoral and executive levels. Davis serves as associate editor for the scholarly journal Management Science and has published extensive research on user acceptance of IT in the workplace and computer-assisted planning and decision making. Current research interests also include IT training and skill acquisition, the motivation and retention of IT professionals, virtual teams, and technology-supported distance learning. He teaches decision support systems, organizational productivity with information technology, business problem-solving, an MBA field project and a doctoral research seminar.