ABOUT THIS ISSUE

Alexandre Reis Graeml
DOI: https://doi.org/10.21529/RESI.2010.090201

Abstract

Dear readers, authors and reviewers,

As usual in RESI's issues, vol. 9, n. 2, brings papers from authors from many different institutions. This time, the authors of the ten papers come from eleven different universities. This provides clear evidence of the journal's spread of reach and capilarity.
What calls the attention now is the fact that three of the papers were submitted in English, although there are Latin Americans among their authors. There are at least five other papers going through the review process right now that were also written in English in spite of their authors being native speakers of Portuguese or Spanish, which increases or perception that there is a trend towards that.
RESI's editors consider this a very positive movement, because it increases the visibility of the journal among a broader audience. The fact that RESI pioneered the adoption of DOAJ, now the leading indexer of open access academic journals in the world, and that it started using DOI to identify its issues and papers prior to most other Latin American journals demonstrate our concern in providing more visibility to the research that is carried out in Latin America. Of course, publishing papers in English will make that effort more effective. RESI intends to become a connection hub between our scientific community and that of the Norther Hemisphere. Therefore, papers in English will always be very welcome.
In spite of that, we would like to stress our commitment with the publication of sound research developed in Portugues or Spanish, because that is essential for the integration of ibero-american researchers, something which still needs a lot of promotion. We should also highlight that issues involving information systems many times have a relevant cultural component that needs to be addresses by researchers that are familiarized with local realities and generate results that can be discussed with local authorities and society in general. And that is, surely, easier to do using the national language of those concerned. We shouldn't be happy to only import technologies that were developed in "the developed world" (no matter what that means!) adapting them to our local problems without a thorough reflection on their capacity, or even usefulness, in solving them.
Therefore, at the same time we celebrate the interest and the courage of our authors to try and express themselves in a foreign language, in order to increase the visibility of their work, we will always be open to papers written by authors in their native language, if we have the technical conditions to review it properly, which currently only happens to Portuguese, Spanish and English. After all, an electronic journal such as RESI can provide international visibility for those who seek it, while also creating a democratic environment for the discussion of local issues with those who have a particular interest on it, which may be less effective if not done in the national language of the stakeholders.
Having this reflection been made, we invite our authors, reviewers and readers to keep this "caotic" diversity of languages, perspectives and ideologies which have always characterized the University and now call attention to the papers that comprise this issue, which will be briefly presented in the next few paragraphs:
The first paper, "Information systems graduate education and research in Brazil", written by Renata Mendes de Araujo and Márcio de Oliveira Barros, opens this issue with an important issue to all of those involved with graduate education in the Information Systems' field, which is the way we are forming the next generations of researchers in our maters and doctorate programs. In this paper, the authors report their experience in consolidating their graduate school at Unirio. The paper is addressed to researchers that deal with IS from an informatics perspective, but could also interest those who see IS from a managerial perspective.
Lisiane Barea Sandi and Amarolinda Zanela Saccol show their concern with the way our society is assimilating new technologies, highlighting the fact that, in spite of the obvious benefits, there are also reasons for concern. In " Information overload due to the adoption of mobile and wireless information technologies and its consequences to sales professionals" the authors use an exploratory survey with 75 sales professionals, trying to analize the impacts of mobile telephony on their quality of life.
"The influence of managerial work determinants on the perception of fitness between technology and task: an exploratory study" is the work developed by Débora Bobsin, Monize Sâmara Visentini and Mauri Leodir Löbler, where they try to contribute to the understanding of information systems as tools to support the activities that are expected to be carried out by managers in organizations. The authors conclude that the more experience managers have with information systems, the more they consider that technology can affect his/her tasks. Also, the more access a user has to a system, the more he/she perceives the fit between technology and task.
In "Motivation to create free and open source projects and how decisions impact success", Carlos Denner Santos Jr. and Kay M. Nelson propose a theoretical model that helps assess the reasons that lead an organization to get involved in open software development projects, so that, in the future, such projects can have their success evaluated in a more objetive way. This is an interesting complement to another paper the first author had published at Revista de Administração de Empresas, v. 50, n. 4, late in 2010.
In "Engagement or friendship? The perspective of customers and suppliers about business relationships in the software sector", Rita de Cássia de Faria Pereira, Carlo Gabriel Porto Bellini and Fernando Bins Luce use a very original approach (interviews of pairs of customers-suppliers in the software industry – 14 dyads) to analyze issues concerning their relationships (commitment, trust, adaptation, cooperation, and communication) and contextual factors that may amplify or moderate those attributes (uncertainty, interdependence, and the existence of alternative suppliers).
Edimara Mezzomo Luciano, Leandro Pilatti, Maurício Gregianin Testa and Ionara Rech deal with the use of COBIT framework to improving management processes of outsourced activities for both involved companies. The paper's title is " Applicability of COBIT in managing outsourced information technology activities: an investigation based on two multinational companies".
Perceiving the influence of information technologies on the way companies organize themselves and coordinate their activities with those of customers and suppliers, Dayane Mayely Silva de Oliveira and Max Fortunato Cohen (UFA), carried out a literature review and mapped 21 technologies that facilitate the integration of production processes and emphasize the collaboration among autonomous organizations. This is reported in: "IT use along the supply chain in conjunction with the major management collaboration techniques".
Problems involving information security increase as companies integrate their processes and systems to those of their business partners by means of computer networks. Concerned with that, Alexandre dos Santos Roque, Raul Ceretta Nunes and Alexandre Dias da Silva developed, in their paper "Proposition of a dynamic model for managing security information on industrial environments", a dynamic model for information security management, in which interaction, cooperation and motivation (of upper-management, supervisors and workers) are emphasized in order to meet the new demands of information security management: responsibility, trust and ethics.
In an environment of activity/process integration of organizations and their business partners and huge information flow among the interested partiesas discussed in a previous paper in this issue (see Oliveira and Cohen), it becomes essential to adopt information security policies to make sure that information is always available to those who need it and do not fall in wrong hands. Leonardo Guerreiro Azevedo, Diego Alexandre Aranha Duarte, Fernanda Baião and Claudia Cappelli developed a set of criteria and a method to assess tools for management and execution of authorization rules for the access and use of information systems, applying them to a real situation at Petrobrás, one of the leading oil companies in the world, which they discuss in "Evaluating tools for execution and management of authorization business rules".
Finally, the paper "Requirements and wished features for software testing tools: a study based on the use of SQFD", authored by Ismayle Sousa Santos, Rodolfo S. Ferreira de Resende, Pedro Alcântara Santos Neto and Clarindo Isaias P. da Silva e Padua presents the adaptation of QFD (Quality Function Deployment), a Quality technique developed originally for industrial products, to sortware development. By means of intelligent argumentation and detailing of all necessary steps for implementing the methodology, the authors make it easy for the reader to understand its possible use in the new field and contribute for its dissimination among the software developers.
I wope you all have fun reading the papers in this issue!

Alexandre R. Graeml
Editor



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