Dr Jean-Grégoire Bernard

Introduction

Dr. Bernard's teaching and research focuses on issues pertaining to digital innovation. His work on these topics draws on a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, and sits at the intersection of information systems, strategic management, and organisation studies. His PhD in Management from Queen's University (Canada) investigated how four firms from the high-tech and creative industries appropriated IT to generate the transparency that enabled managers to deal with the challenges of organizational scaling. He is a collaborator on a 5-year ongoing research project hosted by McGill University and funded by the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC, $164 000 CAD).

Dr. Bernard is currently Associate Editor of the Communications of the Association for Information Systems and has been Associate Editor for tracks at the International Conference for Information Systems (ICIS) for 6 years, from 2012-2014 and 2016-2018. In 2018, he served as Associate Editor of the Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Digital Transformation track at ICIS. In 2019, he will join the executive committee of the Association for Information Systems' SIG on the Adoption and Diffusion of IT (SIG ADIT), serving as program co-chair for the pre-ICIS DIGIT workshop. He has been a reviewer for various IS journals, including the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, the Communications of the Association for Information Systems, and the Database for Advances in Information Systems, among others. He was nominated as 2nd runner-up for Best Associate Editor at ICIS 2018, he won an outstanding reviewer award at ICIS 2017 & 2019, and participed in the ICIS 2005 Doctoral Consortium. He is a member of the OCIS, TIM, and Entrepreneurship divisions of the Academy of Management.

Before joining the Victoria University of Wellington in 2010, Dr. Bernard lectured at HEC Montréal and served as project manager at CIRANO, a Montréal-based academic research centre, for which he lead a $1.2 million research project on risk management. From 2012 to 2016, he was Director of the Master of Commerce in Information Systems. He was the founding Director of the Master of Professional Business Analysis which is delivered by the Wellington ICT Graduate School in partnership with Wellington School of Business and Government, having led the program's design and growth 2015 - 2019.

Qualifications

BBA, MSc, HEC Montréal; PhD, Queen's

Administrative responsibilities

Founding Director, Master of Professional Business Analysis
Member of the Wellington School of Business and Government Professional Programmes Board
Member of the SIM Research & Research Degrees Committees
Member of the Victoria University Research Establishment Grant Committee

Current research

Jean-Grégoire is involved in four research streams:

1) Digital entrepreneurship and strategy

This stream investigates how entrepreneurs of high-growth ventures learn about opportunities to develop IT innovations, how they acquire IT resources, and how they adopt IT innovations to facilitate scaling and expansion. A current project is investigating how entrepreneurs overcome resource limitations and institutional voids through digital effectuation. Platform-based business models and digital ecosystem strategy for new ventures are also of particular interest.

2) Competitive and institutional dynamics of markets for IT innovations

This stream looks at how markets for IT innovations are shaped and transformed over time by the interaction of vendors, adopters, industry analysts, consultancies, regulators, and the media. Current projects involve an assessment of the impact of industry analysts on the legitimacy and survival of technology startups. A separate study tracks the social acceptance of blockchain technology based on an analysis of the discourse of media, consultancies, and industry analysts.

3) Online communities and digital platforms

This stream has two foci. A first focus is about how platforms for online communities and peer production, such as Reddit, Wikipedia, Stack Overflow, etc. become the basis of viable business models and entrepreneurial ventures. The second focus is about the governance and control of platforms which rely on online communities. Current projects investigate the nature of work accomplished by moderators and volunteers in the maintenance of online communities, and how this work affects the growth and sustainability of platforms. Of particular interest is the emergence of online community leadership, the impact of abusive leadership on online communities, and the moderation work involved in controlling bad behaviour.

4) Business analysis as a profession

He conducts studies on the work and and professionalization of business analysts. A recent study involved the use of text mining techniques, such as topic modelling, to track the evolution of business analysts' professional identity. A current study investigates how communities of practices and centers of excellence contribute to the development of business analysis' practices in organizations.

Selected publications

Bernard, J.G., Dennis, A.R., Galletta, D.F., Khan, A., & Webster, J. (2019). The Tangled Web: Studying Online Fake News. Proceedings of the 40th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2019). Munich, Germany.

Li, Y., Bernard, J.-G., & Luczak-Roesch, M. (2019). Unpacking Online Firestorms in Organizational Fields: Toward a Research Agenda. Proceedings of the 79th Academy of Management Annual Meetings, Boston, MA.

Khanal, P.B., Bernard, J-G., & Aubert, B.A. (2017). IT-Enabled Frugal Effectuation. Proceedings of SIGMIS-CPR' 17. Bangalore, India.

McGillicuddy, A., Bernard, J.-G., & Cranefield, J. (2016). Controlling Bad Behavior in Online Communities: An Examination of Moderation Work. Proceedings of the 37th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2016). Dublin, Ireland.

McRae, C.O., Bernard, J.-G., & Cranefield, J. (2016). Understanding the Internet Pitchfork Mob: Internal Revolutionary Activity in Self-Regulated Online Communities. Proceedings of the 27th Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS 2016). Wollongong, Australia.

Carillo, K., Bernard, J.-G. (2015). How Many Penguins Can Hide Under an Umbrella? An Examination of How Lay Conceptions Conceal the Contexts of Free/Open Source Software. Proceedings of the 36th International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2015). Forth Worth, Texas.

Bernard, J.G., Gallupe, R.B. (2013). IT Industry Analysts: A Review and Two Research Agendas. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 33(16), 275-302.(c) Association for Information Systems, use for profit is not allowed: http://aisel.aisnet.org/cais/vol33/iss1/16/