- Nigel Patrick Melville, Ph.D. MS ECE
Nigel Patrick Melville is a sociotechnical scientist at the University of Michigan. His primary scientific contributions are in the information systems field of technology-enabled change, seeking to explain how organizations employ digital technologies to enhance operations and achieve strategic objectives. Professor Melville's expertise includes digital transformation and innovation, AI capabilities and risk, and energy informatics. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed journal and conference articles with more than 11,000 citations. Prior to academia, Professor Melville worked as product engineer and co-founded a CRM software company. He has lived in England, Japan, Bolivia, India, and the U.S., earned degrees in electrical and computer engineering and information systems, and has partnered with Google, Amazon, Riot Games, Microsoft, Bouygues Immobilier, Indeed, and others.
- ImpactsGoing beyond to make a difference
Invited seminar speaker on the topic of "Putting Humans Back in the Loop: An Affordance-based Framework for Safer AI Application," at
Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, 2024, and
Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, September 2023.
Keynote Address at the Munich Summer Institute, entitled " Advancing Environmental Sustainability in the Fourth Industrial Revolution," May 2023.
Invited expert speaker on Ross Business & Society Podcast entitled "The Rise of AI," hosted by Jeff Karoub, April 2023.
Led Workshop Session for Career Development Officers at leading Universities entitled “Implications of AI for University Career Development Services,” University of Michigan, Ross School of Business, March 21, 2023.
Speaker for the Digital Infrastructure, Innovation and Economy Series London (DIIESL), INDEX, IRIS and LSE entitled “Generating Business Value from Machine Interfaces: Models of Efficiency, Focus, & Transformation,” May 2021.
Led a discussion in Fall 2020 for the Society for Information Management Advanced Practices Council (group of leading Chief Information Officers) focusing on the monetization of machine interfaces (APIs) for efficiency, focused value, and transformation.
Led a panel discussion at the 2019 Tauber Global Operations Conference focusing on "Industry 4.0 in the Upcoming Decade."
Chaired a panel discussion of tech founders and entrepreneurs analyzing the incumbent and startup fintech space, past, present, and future.
Engaged U-M IT Services leadership in a discussion of APIs and business value.
Led a group of CIOs in a collaborative session focused on emerging organizational practices in the fourth industrial age enabled by microservices and API-driven machine interaction.
Led a day-long session for global bankers focusing on the technologies and competitive implications of fintech in the context of incumbent banks.
At the request of U-M President Mark Schlissel, served on the VP of IT and CIO search advisory committee.
Partnered with a leading French real estate conglomerate to understand digital transformation opportunities.
At the request of former U-M President Mary Sue Coleman, led the President's Advisory Group in a strategic discussion of digital transformation at the University of Michigan.
Partnered with a leading Indian consultancy to analyze digital transformation and innovation.
Partnered with UNICON (The International University Consortium for Executive Education) to examine the strategic nature of social media within organizations.
Blog examining how digital transformation can enable new forms of environmental sustainability (Information Systems for Environmental Sustainability) has over 55,000 views.
Research papers have been cited more than 8,000 times, and H-index is 23, which according to this analysis is five times the mean for a sample of business scholars.
Article entitled "IT and Organizational Performance" appearing in MIS Quarterly in 2004 authored with Vijay Gurbaxani and Ken Kraemer has been listed on Scopus "Top 20 most cited Business, Management, and Accounting articles" from 2004 to 2008; is 19th in citations among all published MIS Quarterly papers (journal was founded in 1977), and 11th since 2000. Within the IS field, it is in the top .16 percentile in terms of citations (see Iivari (2015))
Article "Information Systems Innovation for Environmental Sustainability" was cited for spanning boundaries of IS and sustainability literatures by the Editor of leading IS journal EJIS: "Seminal papers bridging two research traditions can be found in the literature such as on IS development and new product development (Nambisan, 2003) or IS and sustainable development (Melville, 2010)..." - Current Research ProgramsLiving in the future to understand the present
AI Risk in Organizations
What insights can human-centered methodologies reveal about how organizations can define and manage AI risk?
Human-Centric Futures in the 4IR
Business transformations required to leverage key AI affordances of expansive decision making, creativity automation, intermachine teaming, and human-machine collaboration to generate value while avoiding and minimizing damage.
Information Systems & Environmentally Sustainable Operations
Digital systems and technologies to enable environmentally sustainable and resource productive operations.
(Full list of scholarly articles and cv).
- Information Systems - Scholarly CommunityValuable and unique insights for the emerging 4IR
The information systems discipline is focused on understanding and enhancing socio-technical information systems, including their design, development, implementation, and impacts and implications. In the 4IR, boundaries between physical, digital, and biological systems are blurring. Research insights pertaining to socio-technical information systems are crucial to organizational effectiveness. Here are a few examples:
- Brian Pentland’s research on organizational routines and information systems illustrates the folly of designing technologies when what is desired is new ways of working (Pentland and Feldman 2008).
- Wanda Orlikowski’s examination of a large-scale information system implementation suggests a theory of situated, improvisational change that emerges over time, in contrast to rapid and radical change. (Orlikowski 1996)
- Mark Keil has illustrated the unique factors that promote escalation of digital initiatives (throwing good money after bad) (Keil 1995).
References
Keil, M. 1995. "Pulling the Plug: Software Project Management and the Problem of Project Escalation," MIS Quarterly (19:4), pp. 421-447.
Orlikowski, W.J. 1996. "Improvising Organizational Transformation Over Time: A Situated Change Perspective," Information Systems Research (7:1), pp. 63-92.
Pentland, B.T., and Feldman, M.S. 2008. "Designing Routines: On the Folly of Designing Artifacts While Hoping for Patterns of Action," Information and Organization (18:4), pp. 235-250.
- How to find meHappy to connect
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