Winner. Scientist of the Year 2020

Jolanta Kowal

Academic title, degree: Ph.D. in Economics
Fields of science: Interdisciplinary Social Research
Research interest: Managerial economics, organization and management, information systems, research methodology, psychology of management, analytical psychology, and cross-cultural research
Institution: University of Wrocław
Position: Assistant Professor, Researcher, Tutor
Country: Poland

Dr. Jolanta Kowal is an Assistant Professor, Researcher, and Lecturer at the Institute of Psychology of Wrocław University, Poland, a Jungian Analyst, and holds a Doctoral degree in Economic Sciences from the University of Economics in Wroclaw (1995). From 2014 Jolanta Kowal held functions in the Board of the Polish Chapter of the Association for Information Systems (PLAIS) (President 2015-2018) and in the Polish Association for Analytical Psychology (President 2013-2018), and as a Professor and Vice-Rector of the College of Management “Edukacja” in Wroclaw, Poland (2008-2015). She is a member of AIS, IEEE, the Polish Statistical Association, and the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP).

Dr. Kowal has published in many journals as The Journal of Information Systems Management, The Journal of Information Technology for Development, The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, Journal of Business and Economic Management, Journal of Global Information Technology Management, Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, and numerous conference proceedings.

Jolanta served as the conference and track co-chair for the America’s Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), International Conference on Information and Communication Technology Management (ICTM), International Conference on Industrial Informatics (INDIN), and European Conference on Management, Leadership, and Governance (ECMLG).

She acted as a member of Editorial Boards of the Economy-Market-Education Journal and the Polish Journal of Applied Psychology, and as a Guest Editor of Information Systems Management, Guest Editor of The Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, among many others. Jolanta has given lectures related to her scientific and educational interests in the USA (the State University of New York at New Paltz - School of Business; The Innovation University - Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey), in the Czech Republic (Masaryk University in Brno, the Newton College), in Slovakia (the Technical University of Košice), in Great Britain (Keel University), among many others.

Jolanta gave over 100 scientific papers. She was a Grant Manager and an Executive in several international, interdisciplinary research grants. She is a laureate of several scientific awards and prizes in the field of IS. She is active in scientific networks of international projects. Dr. Jolanta Kowal has considerable experience in preparation of teaching programs and materials, as well as extensive experience in conducting lectures at international universities. She also has vast experience in promoting master's theses (80 masters) and over 50 undergraduate. She also acted as an auxiliary doctorate promoter.

Dr. Jolanta Kowal’s recent achievement is a series of 13 coherent and thematic publications, described in the self-report: Interdisciplinary Aspects of Multivariate Models of Human Capital among IT Professionals. The publications concern business competencies, organizational ethics, job, and life satisfaction among IT professionals, as well as models of relations between these factors in information systems (IS). The results contribute to the development of science in the field of methodological, economical, and psychosocial aspects of innovation, organizational potential, and ethics in IS.

Dr. Kowal focused on micro and small enterprises and studied these selected issues on the example of Polish, German and Indian companies. The results fill the gap in research on human capital, and non-material dimensions of motivation systems, such as job satisfaction, belief in the quality of life, work-life balance. Important analyses related to the field of intellectual capital, the theory of mind, in particular on the predispositions to make innovations, ethical competences, or the ability to communicate. These aspects were investigated employing IT dimension and competence to use IS. The results contribute to the development of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Dr. Kowal proposed her own approach based on passive experiments theory. She proposed methods and algorithms for selecting the sample and verifying its representativeness. The concepts resulted in computer software in developing qualitative methods.