# Alan Dennis (scientist)

Alan Robert Dennis, Baron of Cowie (born 1960) is a Canadian-American scientist specializing in Information Systems and nobleman in the Baronage of Scotland. He is a professor and holds the John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University.

## Education and employment

Dennis earned his Bachelor of Computer Science from Acadia University in 1982, his MBA from Queen's University in 1984, and his PhD in Business Administration from the University of Arizona in 1991. He began his academic career as a professor at The University of Georgia and moved to Indiana University in 2000, where he continues to work as a leader in Information Systems research.
Dennis has authored over 150 research papers, chaired 16 dissertations, and co-authored four books. His research explores team collaboration, the spread of fake news on social media, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence.

## Research

Dennis's research focuses on team collaboration, media synchronicity, the spread of fake news, and artificial intelligence.

### Teams and Group Support Systems

Dennis is well-known as one of the early pioneers of research to support teams and groups, working under Prof. Jay Nunamaker at the University of Arizona from 1987-1991. He has published dozens of articles and conference papers on this topic and continues this research stream into the present day. Key papers include
* A.R. Dennis, J.F. George, L.M. Jessup, J.F. Nunamaker Jr., and D.R. Vogel, "Information Technology to Support Electronic Meetings," MIS Quarterly, 12:4, 1988, 591-624.
* J.F. Nunamaker, Jr., A.R. Dennis, J.S. Valacich, D.R. Vogel, and J.F. George, "Electronic Meeting Systems to Support Group Work," Communications of the ACM, 34:7, 1991, 40-61.
* A. R. Dennis, B.H. Wixom and R. J. Vandenberg, "Understanding Fit and Appropriation Effects in Group Support Systems via Meta-Analysis," MIS Quarterly, 25:2, June, 2001, 167-197.
* A.R. Dennis, A. Lakhiwal, and A. Sachdeva, “AI Agents as Team Members: Effects on Satisfaction, Conflict, Trustworthiness, and Willingness to Work With,” Journal of Management Information Systems, 40:2, 2023, 307-337.

### Media

One of his major contributions to Information Systems research was his work on media, including the debunking of Media Richness theory and the development of Media Synchronicity Theory:
* A. R. Dennis, R. M. Fuller, and J. S. Valacich, "Media, Tasks, and Communication Processes: A Theory of Media Synchronicity,” MIS Quarterly, 32:3, 2008, 575-600
* A.R. Dennis and S.T. Kinney, "Testing Media Richness Theory In The New Media: The Effects of Cues, Feedback, and Task Equivocality," Information Systems Research, 1998, 9:3, 256-274.

### Fake News

Dennis was an early contributor to research on Fake News on social media, and continues this research today:
* P. L. Moravec, R.K. Minas, and A.R. Dennis, “Fake News on Social Media: People Believe What They Want to Believe When It Makes No Sense at All,” MIS Quarterly, 43:4, 2019, 1343-1360.
* A. Kim and A.R. Dennis, “Says Who? How News Presentation Format Influences Believability and the Engagement of Social Media Users,” MIS Quarterly, 43:3, 2019, 1025-1039.
* S. Seol, J.M. Mejia, and A.R. Dennis “Lying for Viewers: Comingling Partisan Falsehoods into Political News Videos Drives more Viewing and Sharing by Leveraging Speaker and Media Firm Reputations,” MIS Quarterly, 48:2, 2024, 551-582.

### Artificial Intelligence

Dennis has a major research stream on conversational agents controlled by Artificial Intelligence (AI). This work focuses on text-based chatbots and more realistic digital humans:
* M. Seymour, D. Lovallo, K. Riemer, A.R. Dennis, and L. Yuan, “AI with a Human Face,” Harvard Business Review, March-April 2023, 49-54.
* A. Sachdeva, A. Kim, and A.R. Dennis “Taking the Chat out of Chatbot? Collecting User Reviews with Chatbots and Web Forms,” Journal of Management Information Systems, 41:1, 2024, 146-176.
* M. Seymour, L. Yuan, K. Reimer, and A.R. Dennis, “Less Artificial, More Intelligent: Understanding Affinity, Trustworthiness, and Preference for Digital Humans,” Information Systems Research, in press.

## Books

Dennis has authored several influential books:
* Business Data Communications and Networking (14th Edition)
* Systems Analysis and Design (8th Edition)
* Systems Analysis and Design: An Object-Oriented Approach with UML (6th Edition)
* Networking in the Internet Age

## Career and Personal Life

Dennis was born and raised in Prince Edward Island, Canada. In 1978, he moved to Wolfville, Nova Scotia, to attend Acadia University, where he earned his Bachelor of Computer Science in 1982. He then moved to Queen’s University and received a Master of Business Administration in 1984.
From 1984 to 1987, he taught as a Lecturer at the Queen’s School of Business. Dennis moved to Tucson, Arizona, to pursue his PhD in Business Administration (specializing in Management Information Systems), which he earned in 1991 from the University of Arizona.
In 1991, Dennis joined the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia as an Assistant Professor, later becoming Associate Professor in 1995 and Professor in 1999. In 2000, he moved to Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, becoming the first John T. Chambers Chair of Internet Systems.
Dennis married Eileen Robichaud in 1982; they divorced in 2004. He married Kelley McNamara in 2010; they divorced in 2015. He received the title Baron of Cowie in 2020 following the death of his father, G. Douglas Dennis. In 2022, he married DeVon Rightley-Tucker, Baroness of Cowie.
Dennis has one son, Alexander (Alec) Dennis, Younger of Cowie (born 1993), who is an Assistant Professor of Information Systems at Iowa State University.

## Awards and recognition

Dennis has received numerous awards for research, teaching, and service. The most notable include:
* AIS Fellow (2012): Recognized by the Association for Information Systems (AIS) for significant global contributions to Information Systems.
* LEO Award (2021): Recognized for lifetime exceptional achievement in Information Systems, named for the world's first business computer (Lyons Electronic Office).
* Dennis was ranked among the top 1% of the most influential researchers globally across all scientific disciplines in 2021.