Dr. Mohamed Osman Shereif Mahdi attended both conferences mentioned above and presented a paper entitled: “Strategies for IT and Changes in the Banking Sector of Developing Countries: the Case of the Sudanese Banking Industry”. The paper was presented in Track 20: Global Business Studies, Session III: Organizational Change in a Global World at the IFSAM 8th 2006 Congress which took place from the 28th to the 30th October 2006 at the Free University in Berlin, Germany. A similar paper was also presented at the AAOM 5th Conference hosted by Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, from the 19th to the 21st of December 2006 in an interactive session entitled: “Examining and Improving the Innovation Process”

The papers have given attention to the context of a developing economy that aims to advance into the international banking arena through the introduction and use of new technology that is consistent with global electronic banking services. The papers draw on empirical research conducted in a developing country to examine technology strategies and change for improving the innovation process in developing regions. Primary data was collected from the fieldwork. This was combined with secondary data that was collected from several conventional sources. The design for the study used multi-strategy research which comprised a combination of deductive and inductive approaches. The findings reveal how banks in developing countries (such as Sudan) are adopting different IT strategies, which reflect an absence of any agreed comprehensive or coherent IT strategy to implement change in the banking sector.

About five hundred papers were presented at both the IFSAM 8th Congress and the AAOM 5th Conference. Dr. Mahdi's papers were well received, and in general, both conferences were well organized and very successful.