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Associate Professor Sabine Matook

Associate Professor

School of Business
Faculty of Business, Economics and Law
s.matook@business.uq.edu.au
+61 7 334 68049

Overview

Dr. Sabine Matook is an Associate Professor in Information Systems at the UQ Business School, University of Queensland. She received her doctoral degree from the Technische Universität (TU) Dresden, Germany.

Research Excellence and Leadership

Sabine's research interests focus on the creation, adoption, and use, and consequences of effective use of IT artifacts in the two areas of information systems development (ISD) and social media. Within the context of ISD, she seeks to understand why and how the behaviors of teams and individuals dynamically shape the design and development of the IT artifact, including technology-mediated teams (including human-AI hybrids). Her interests also motivate the work on affordances and influences of social IT artifacts (e.g., social media) on and by users in the real and the virtual world.

In 2022, Sabine was recognized for her excellence in publications with the UQ Business School Research award.

Sabine is a Senior Research Fellow with the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society - The German Internet Institute. She has also held visiting positions at the University of Arizona (Eller College of Management), Georgia State University (Robinson College of Business), the University of Louisville, Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (Austria), and the University of La Serena (Chile).

Her research is funded by Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project (single CI) Grants in the fields of Sabine's expertise, especially information systems development and social media.

Dr. Matook's work has appeared in MIS Quarterly, Journal of Management Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, the International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Decision Support Systems, and the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. Over the years, Sabine Matook has presented numerous research papers at international conferences, including the ICIS, ECIS, and PACIS.

Teaching Excellence and Leadership

Sabine Matook is a passionate educator and a champion for work-integrated learning in higher education. She is the recipient of the 2022 UQ Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning and the 2021 Teaching Excellence Award of the UQ Faculty BEL on "Enhancing Employability". She was also awarded the 2021 UQ Business School Award for "Innovation in Large Courses".

She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE -- an advanced level of professional standing is evidence of her expertise in teaching and learning in higher education. In 2022, Sabine was appointed to the HEA@UQ Review Panel as an Assessor.

Sabine also engages in the scholarship of teaching with a focus on digital employability through citizen development. Her work is currently under review in high-quality academic journals, and she published initial findings at the 2021 Australasian Conference on Information Systems.

An opinion piece at The Conversation about "How work-integrated learning helps to make billions in uni funding worth it" and an article in the Campus Section of the Times Higher Education about "Helping students to see the future career value of their work-integrated learning" reached a large readership and influenced the practices of educators in Australia and internationally.

Service Excellence and Leadership

Sabine Matook received the 2021 AIS Technology ATLAS Award. This award is given to those individuals who have made the most significant contributions toward the intellectual infrastructure of the Association for Information Systems (AIS). In 2022, Sabine was awarded the AIS Vision Award to recognize her contributions to the vision of the Association for Information Systems.

She is a Senior Editor for the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), a Senior Editor for the journal AIS Transactions on Replication Research (TRR), a member of the editorial review board for Information System Research, and has been a guest Associate Editor for MIS Quarterly (MISQ) and Information Systems Journal (ISJ).

Sabine Matook is the AIS Council Secretary for The Association for Information Systems (Sep 2021- 2023).

In 2019, Dr. Matook served on the Expert Panel 'Information Systems' that reviewed the 2019 Australian Business Deans Council Journal Quality List, and in 2022, she served on the Expert Panel that reviewed the 2020 journal ranking list of the Australian Council of Professors and Heads of Information Systems (ACPHIS)

Sabine Matook was the program chair for the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) in 2022 and 2021 and 2019. In addition, she served repeatedly as track chair for the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) [2023, 2015), Pacific-Asian Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) in [2020, 2022], and the Australasian Conference on Information Systems [2018, 2019].

Research Interests

  • Agile Information Systems Development
    This research field focuses on the software development under the agile methodology paradigm. I study interpersonal relationships and particularly commercial friendships in agile teams, governance mechanisms for the team, critical success factors in agile ISD, lean agile development, issues related to distributed development teams and team performance.
  • Human Behaviour in Social Media
    This research field focuses on social media and particularly online social networks as a technology for humans for their leisure and work. I examine behaviour of collectives and individuals in social media, the use and adoption of the technology, change is network structures over time, and possibilities for innovative usage.

Qualifications

  • Doctor of Philosophy, T.U.Dresden
  • Diploma of Business Administration, T.U.Dresden
  • Master of Business Administration, T.U.Dresden

Publications

View all Publications

Grants

View all Grants

Supervision

View all Supervision

Available Projects

  • PhD Topic1: Agile Software Development – Forming and Maintaining High Performance Software Development Teams in Dynamic and Rapidly Changing Environments

    Agile development is praised as a method that superiorly handles rapid and constant change in all aspects of the development process. It requires that the team possesses high levels of trust and can rely blindly on each other’s knowledge and skills. As a result, very little knowledge is codified in documents and rahter resides with the individual. Thereby team members need to be able to tranform the disruptive changes into positive energy for the development process and product. At the same time, a newly formed team lags the trust necessary to be high performing and able to manage the frequent change demands from the beginning of the project.

    Little research exists about questions such as those below which could be the topic for a higher degree research thesis (MPhil or PhD).

    Potential Thesis Questions:

    1) How can an agile software development team become early on a high-performance team?

    2) What factors increase and decrease team performance in agile teams?

    3) Why and how do agile software development teams outperform traditional-waterfall development teams?

    Please contact Dr Sabine Matook if you are interested in pursuing one of the outlined research topics in a higher research degree program with the UQ Business School.

  • PhD Topic 2: Agile Software Development – Understanding the Role of Workplace Relationship in Agile Software Development Teams

    Agile development is a development method that focuses on the team and their interactions as a means to develop software under conductions of frequent changes in project scope and customer requirements. Agile software development teams are small, cohesive teams (seven to nine professionals) that develop software in weekly iterations in a collaborative manner with little formal control. These team members are highly intrinsic motivated to achieve their shared goal of delivering software to satisfy customer needs.

    Little research exists about questions such as those below which could be the topic for a higher degree research thesis (MPhil or PhD).

    Potential Thesis Questions:

    1) What factors contribute and impair the formation of different workplace relationships in agile software development teams and what is their impact on team performance?

    2) How does an agile software team ensure motivation and avoid effort-withholding of their team members?

    3) What aspects of the agile method and workplace relationships impact on the flow of development critical information in and out of the team?

    Please contact Dr Sabine Matook if you are interested in pursuing one of the outlined research topics in a higher research degree program with the UQ Business School.

  • PhD Topic 3: Social Media – How Individuals and their personal Relationships impact Behaviors

    Worldwide, more than half of all Internet users regularly use social media applications to connect, interact, and exchange information online with others. Social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter, have emerged to satisfy the desire of people to form and maintain personal relationships online. However, not all online relationships are lasting and a user’s behaviors may positively and negatively affect different aspects of any online relationships.

    Little research exists about questions such as those below which could be the topic for a higher degree research thesis (MPhil or PhD).

    Potential Thesis Questions:

    1) What factors – for example physical appearance or similar interests – impact on the formation of an interpersonal relationship in an online environment?

    2) How do people decide who to add as a ‘friend’ and thus, give access to their online social media network?

    3) What behaviors but also characteristics, e.g., personality affect on how people use social media?

View all Available Projects

Publications

Book Chapter

  • Social media and relationships

    Butler, Brian S. and Matook, Sabine (2015). Social media and relationships. The international encyclopaedia of digital communication and society. (pp. ---) London, United Kingdom: John Wiley & Sons. doi: 10.1002/9781118767771.wbiedcs097

  • Design science approach to measure productivity in agile software development

    Vidgen, Richard, Donnellan, Brian, Matook, Sabine and Conboy, Kieran (2012). Design science approach to measure productivity in agile software development. Practical aspects of design science: European Design Science Symposium revised selected papers. (pp. 171-177) edited by Markus Helfert and Brian Donnellan. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-33681-2_15

  • Quality Levels of Electronic B2B Marketplaces

    Zumpe, S. and Esswein, W. (2002). Quality Levels of Electronic B2B Marketplaces. E-Commerce: Netze, Markte, Technologien. (pp. 117-126) edited by Weinhardt, Christof and Holtmann, Carsten. Germany: Physica Verlag.

Journal Article

Conference Publication

Other Outputs

Grants (Administered at UQ)

PhD and MPhil Supervision

Current Supervision

  • Discontinued Use of Social Media

    Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

  • AI Systems in Public Libraries: Unintended Consequences and User Resistance

    Doctor Philosophy — Principal Advisor

  • Countering Extremism on Social Media: An exploratory sequential mixed method study of online extremism counter measures

    Doctor Philosophy — Associate Advisor

    Other advisors:

Completed Supervision

Possible Research Projects

Note for students: The possible research projects listed on this page may not be comprehensive or up to date. Always feel free to contact the staff for more information, and also with your own research ideas.

  • PhD Topic1: Agile Software Development – Forming and Maintaining High Performance Software Development Teams in Dynamic and Rapidly Changing Environments

    Agile development is praised as a method that superiorly handles rapid and constant change in all aspects of the development process. It requires that the team possesses high levels of trust and can rely blindly on each other’s knowledge and skills. As a result, very little knowledge is codified in documents and rahter resides with the individual. Thereby team members need to be able to tranform the disruptive changes into positive energy for the development process and product. At the same time, a newly formed team lags the trust necessary to be high performing and able to manage the frequent change demands from the beginning of the project.

    Little research exists about questions such as those below which could be the topic for a higher degree research thesis (MPhil or PhD).

    Potential Thesis Questions:

    1) How can an agile software development team become early on a high-performance team?

    2) What factors increase and decrease team performance in agile teams?

    3) Why and how do agile software development teams outperform traditional-waterfall development teams?

    Please contact Dr Sabine Matook if you are interested in pursuing one of the outlined research topics in a higher research degree program with the UQ Business School.

  • PhD Topic 2: Agile Software Development – Understanding the Role of Workplace Relationship in Agile Software Development Teams

    Agile development is a development method that focuses on the team and their interactions as a means to develop software under conductions of frequent changes in project scope and customer requirements. Agile software development teams are small, cohesive teams (seven to nine professionals) that develop software in weekly iterations in a collaborative manner with little formal control. These team members are highly intrinsic motivated to achieve their shared goal of delivering software to satisfy customer needs.

    Little research exists about questions such as those below which could be the topic for a higher degree research thesis (MPhil or PhD).

    Potential Thesis Questions:

    1) What factors contribute and impair the formation of different workplace relationships in agile software development teams and what is their impact on team performance?

    2) How does an agile software team ensure motivation and avoid effort-withholding of their team members?

    3) What aspects of the agile method and workplace relationships impact on the flow of development critical information in and out of the team?

    Please contact Dr Sabine Matook if you are interested in pursuing one of the outlined research topics in a higher research degree program with the UQ Business School.

  • PhD Topic 3: Social Media – How Individuals and their personal Relationships impact Behaviors

    Worldwide, more than half of all Internet users regularly use social media applications to connect, interact, and exchange information online with others. Social media applications, such as Facebook and Twitter, have emerged to satisfy the desire of people to form and maintain personal relationships online. However, not all online relationships are lasting and a user’s behaviors may positively and negatively affect different aspects of any online relationships.

    Little research exists about questions such as those below which could be the topic for a higher degree research thesis (MPhil or PhD).

    Potential Thesis Questions:

    1) What factors – for example physical appearance or similar interests – impact on the formation of an interpersonal relationship in an online environment?

    2) How do people decide who to add as a ‘friend’ and thus, give access to their online social media network?

    3) What behaviors but also characteristics, e.g., personality affect on how people use social media?

  • PhD Topic 4: Social Media - How Individuals and Companies gain Benefits and create Value through Exploration and Exploitation of Social Media

    Companies worldwide discover online social media applications as a means to get closer to their consumers and connect with suppliers and customers more easily. Social media communities are used to develop software collaboratively, to promote a new product via Facebook, or hire a financial manager through LinkedIn. Despite the various benefits that stem from social media use, it bears risks and challenges for companies and users alike. Nevertheless, social software applications have become an integral part for individuals and companies – now they need to know how to explore, manage, and exploit social media to benefit from them and generate value.

    Little research exists about questions such as those below which could be the topic for a higher degree research thesis (MPhil or PhD).

    Potential Thesis Questions:

    1. What benefits can users and companies generate from their memberships in different social media applications?

    2. How are social integration, trust, and closeness achieved in anonymous social media applications, such as open source software communities and healthcare communities?

    3. What is the role of social media in a company’s supplier and customer relationship strategy?

This staff member is a UQ Expert for media in the following fields:

low-code platforms, digital learning, work-integrated learning, library robots, social media loneliness, discontinued use of social media, IT governance, software development governance, leadership, germany, robots, digitalisation, agile, agility, Siemens, governance, relationship, friendships, workplace friendships, ethical software development, DevOps, adoption and use of technology

They are happy to lend their expertise to your articles or broadcasts and share their research discoveries and insights with the community via media channels.

For additional assistance with story ideas, general advice and information or help with seeking further experts, please email the UQ Media Team or telephone (07) 3365 1120.

Links

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ORCID: 0000-0001-9520-5743

Scopus ID: 26025668900

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