Business Informatics:Cross-cultural differences between Germany and Australia

Inhaltsangabe: Abstract: This study gives an overview about the Business Informatics discipline in Australia with a strong focus on Business Informatics aspects at Australian universities. Therefore the different terms Business Informatics and Information Systems (IS) are defined first in chapter 2. The approach taken to exploring Business Informatics at Australian universities was to conduct intensive interviews with eleven Australian university IS academics within the following states and territories of the country: Queensland, New South Wales, The Australian National Capital and Victoria. Questions were asked relating to the specific universitiy, the educational Business Informatics courses on offer, the organisational structure and cultural aspects within the Business Informatics discipline. The results of the interviews are then supported by a strong web and literature review and are shown summarized in chapter 3. Additional information was obtained by the 13th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) - from 4th to 6th of December 2002 at the Victoria University Building in Melbourne. The conference gave an insight into topics as Online Learning, the IS discipline at universities and Approaches for Problem-Based Learning in Information Systems. These conference papers are summarized presented in chapter 4. This detailed overview of IS in Australian universities can then be compared to the Business Informatics discipline in German universities. Several aspects are considered for this in chapter 5 like the educational offers within this discipline area, the organisational structure of Business Informatics/IS within universities and cultural aspects in dependence to the structure of the interview guideline. Differences and similarities within the Business Informatics/IS discipline in higher education between Germany and Australia are explored, which is the aim of this study. Additional recommendations from the author should be seen as a thought