Dear Colleagues,

We are closing in on four years of existence as a research centre focused on ICT centric social and economic issues in the heart of the global IT and IT-enabled services industry. Our geographic location, in the heart of Hyderabad’s golden mile, coupled with our three-pronged programme of rigorous and relevant research, education and outreach, positions us uniquely in providing insights into how IT creates value in an emerging market setting.

We believe that a key pathway to understanding IT value lies in constantly improving our understanding of how IT artifacts manifest themselves in a fast-paced globalised economy. SRITNE faculty, in the past year, have had their research published in top-tier peerreviewed journals such as Management Science, Information Systems Research and MIS Quarterly. These journals have a single digit acceptance rate. In addition, we have a regular presence at major international workshops and conferences as well as on review panels and editorial boards of the aforementioned journals. Given our location, our focus areas have been, broadly speaking, on human capital strategies of offshore IT services companies and on improving our understanding of the formal contracting and post-contractual relational governance of global sourcing. These are highlyrelevant issues to the Indian IT industry and we expect to continue pushing the envelope in these important areas for some time to come.

On the education front, SRITNE has also been instrumental in partnering with ISB’s Centre for Executive Education in the successful launch and implementation of the Accenture Management Development Academy (AMDA). Nearly 4000, largely technical Accenture employees are now well on their way towards becoming globally capable middle managers through this highly scalable educational programme.

Finally, SRITNE continues to provide an intellectual home to the global IS research community interested in examining Indiaspecific issues related to the evolving production and consumption of IT. Through the annual ISIS research conference and through visiting scholar positions that we offer, SRITNE has been instrumental in providing a vibrant research haven for visiting scholars. Last year we had productive associations from colleagues from the University of Maryland, University of Minnesota, University of Connecticut, University of Texas at Dallas and UT-Austin. If you are interested in partnering with us on similar value-adding relationships, please write to me directly at ravi_bapna@isb.edu.

Sincerely,
Ravi Bapna
Executive Director, Srini Raju Centre for IT
and the Networked Economy