Letter from the editors
Authors: Stafford Tom , Chau Patrick Y.K. 
Published: February 2008

Greetings, Scholars! Welcome to another issue of Data Base.

In this issue, we are happy to present the leading edge work of well-known colleagues on topics of importance to both the discipline and our society. Trauth and her colleagues, in continuing a tradition of inquiry into women's issues in the IT profession, provide a study of factors influencing the under-representation of women in the IT practice. This study is carried forward through the lens of regional economic influences and the environmental factors that impact these economies and the employment trends within them

Guzman, Stam, and Stanton investigate the IT culture in organizations. Their view that IT workers have their own subsection of corporate culture is quite interesting, and explains much of the differences that have heretofore been anecdotally accounted for between the IT professionals in companies and their colleagues in other functional areas of the firm. That the cultural differences between IT workers and other employees of the firm could lead to potential conflicts is not surprising, but the study provides us with the basis for understanding how the situation can be remediated, providing an excellent focus for future research on organizational subcultures

Ocker and Fjermestad study the interactions between members of virtual design teams in this issue. The focal point of their investigation regards the influences of asynchronous communications between teams, and they analyze differences between differing levels of team performance. This topic will be increasingly important in the world of outsourcing, where design team members interact across large geographical distances.

Watch these pages for interesting global developments to come! With the able guidance of Global Co-Editor Patrick Chau, we have top papers headed our way from the Chinese AIS chapter meeting, from the Pacific association meeting, and other corners of the increasingly wired world. We'll also be bringing you leading edge thinking on important technical topics such as systems testing in future issues. Meantime, please visit our online global publishing portal at http://www.editorialmanager.com/sigmisdb/ and register yourself as a participant in our fine publication. We're eager to see your best work in our pages, and welcome your contributions. It's just one click of the mouse away

As we've progressed through the past several issues, we've added new members to our Editorial Staff, and said farewell to departing members who've moved on to other responsibilities. Notably, we're grateful to Detmar Straub for his long-term contribution to Data Base; he departs to take the editorship of another leading journal in our field, and we offer him our thanks, gratitude and a heart-felt "Godspeed" as he takes this important new step. We're pleased to have new members join us to increase our global presence and theoretical diversity, including Laku Chidambaram, Phillip Ein-Dor, George Marakas, Paul Pavlou, and Hock Hai Teo. As of this issue we also bid farewell to Technical Editor Clint Lanier and welcome Professor Loel Kim to the position for her first issue as Data Base Technical Editor