Professor Carmel's area of expertise is globalization of technology. He studies global software teams, offshoring of information technology, and emergence of software industries around the world.

His 1999 book "Global Software Teams" was the first on this topic and is considered a landmark in the field helping many organizations take their first steps into distributed tech work. His second book "Offshoring Information Technology" came out in 2005 and has been especially successful in outsourcing and offshoring classes.

He has written over 80 articles, reports, and manuscripts. He consults and speaks to industry and professional groups.

He is a tenured full Professor at the Information Technology department, Kogod School of Business at American University. In the 1990s he co-founded and led the program in Management of Global Information Technology. In 2005-2008 he was department Chair. In 2009 he was awarded the International Business Professorship. He has been a Visiting Professor at Haifa University (Israel) and University College Dublin (Ireland). In 2008-2009 he was the Orkand Endowed Chaired Professor at the University of Maryland University College.

He received his Ph.D., in Management Information Systems from the University of Arizona; his MBA from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), and his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley.

Offshoring Information Technology: Sourcing and Outsourcing to a Global Workforce co-authored with Paul Tjia © 2005 (pub: Cambridge University Press) The decision to source software development to an overseas firm (offshoring) is looked at frequently in simple economic terms - it's cheaper, and skilled labor is easier to find. In practice, however, offshoring is fraught with difficulties. As well as the considerable challenge of controlling projects at a distance, there are differences in culture, language, business methods, politics, and many other issues to contend with. This book explains how to put offshoring into practice, avoid the pitfalls, and develop effective working relationships. See book review in Computerworld [go to middle of page]

Global Software Teams: Collaborating Across Borders and Time Zones © 1999 (pub: Prentice Hall) A pioneering book on virtual teaming and global software development that has been cited hundreds of times in studies, used in dozens of classes around the world, used as a guidebook by managers in dozens of technology companies, and used as a quick primer by technocrats learning about how ICTs can make a difference to their emerging nations.

• The Maturing Chinese Offshore IT Services Industry: it takes 10 years to sharpen a sword. Written by Carmel, Gao, and Zhang, MIS Quarterly Executive , 2008.
  Reprinted as book chapter in China 's Emerging ITO and BPO Capabilities edited by Leslie Willcocks and Mary Lacity, Sage Publications, 2010.
• Why nearshore means that distance matters . By Carmel and Abbott. Communications of the ACM, (CACM), October, 2007.
• Narratives that Software Nations Tell Themselves. Communications of the Association of Information Systems. By Carmel and Eisenberg 2006.
• Three articles on the "New Software Exporting Nations" in a special issue of The Electronic Journal on Information Systems in Developing Countries, Vol, 13, May 2003. Full articles:
• Taxonomy of New Software Exporting Nations
• The New Software Exporting Nations: Impacts on National Well Being Resulting from their Software Exporting Industries
• The New Software Exporting Nations: Success Factors
• Israel 's Silicon Wadi: the forces behind cluster formation. Written by Catherine De Fontenay and Carmel . Appeared in the book by Bresnahan, T. Gambardella, A. and Saxenian, A. (editors) Building High Tech Clusters , Cambridge University Press, 2004. The Full chapter appeared earlier as Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) article number 00-40.
• American hegemony in packaged software trade and the "culture of software" The Information Society, Vol. 13, Num. 1, 1997.

• Is the World Really Flat? A Look at Offshoring in an Online Programming Marketplace , Written by Gefen and Carmel , Management Information Systems Quarterly (MISQ), 32(2), 2008.
• Small Firms and Offshore Software Outsourcing: High Transaction Costs and their Mitigation. Written by Carmel and Brian Nicholson . Journal of Global Information Management 13(3), 2005.
• The Maturation of Offshore Sourcing of IT Work, Written by Carmel and Ritu Agarwal, Management Information Systems Quarterly - Executive , June 2002, Volume 1, Issue 2. Voted one of 10 best MISQE articles. An epilogue and notes on stage models appears here.

• Follow The Sun: Workflow In Global Software Development: Conceptual Foundations, Written by Carmel, Dubinsky, and Espinosa. Journal of Management Information Systems , forthcoming, 2010.
• Do Gradations of Time Zone Separation Make a Difference in Performance? A First Laboratory Study , Written by Alberto Espinosa, Ning Nan, and Erran Carmel . International Conference on Global Software Engineering, Munich , Germany , August, 2007.
• Building your Information Systems from the Other Side of the World: How Infosys manages time differences . Management Information Systems Quarterly - Executive , March, 2006.
• The Impact of Time Separation on Coordination in Global Software Teams: a Conceptual Foundation , Written by Alberto Espinosa and Carmel Journal of Software Process Improvement and Practice , 8(4), 2004.
• Tactical Approaches for Alleviating Distance in Global Software Development. Written by Carmel and Ritu Agarwal, IEEE Software Journal , March/April 2001.

Cases for Teaching

• "Healthware S.p.A. From An Underdeveloped Region Of Italy - Can It Be A Global Firm?" Full Case - This is a short teaching case about an Italian e-health firm dealing with the dilemma of international growth from an unconventional location. May 2009.
• "PanGenesis: A Creative Costa Rican Approach to the Persistent IT Labor Crunch." . Full Case - This case is about a Costa Rican IT Services firm exploring new workforce models to overcome the tight IT labor markets. August, 2007.
• "Finding a niche in the global software marketplace: The case of the Peruvian firm LOLIMSA, Technologias para Salud." Full Case - This is a short teaching case about a Peruvian software product firm that is exporting niche software products. December 2005.
• "Sheen Software Systems Considers China for Offshore I.T. Outsourcing." Full Case - This is a short teaching case about a small American firm considering offshore work. November, 2003.

Editorial

Carmel serves on the editorial boards of the journals:   MIS Quarterly-Executive, Journal of Information Technology for Development, Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries, Journal of Global Information Technology Management,   Information Technology & People, and others

• Outsourcing & Offshoring
• Information & Technology (MBA core course)
• The Edge of IT (undergraduate core course)
• Nations, Policy, and Information Technology.
• See its repository of ~100 country studies titled "The Landscape of Information Technology" , as well a short article that describes this class in Journal of IT Education Full Article and a short article in a university publication
• International Electronic Commerce
• Global Collaborative Technology
• Economics of Information Goods

• Carmel's Blog
• Selected Quotes and Interviews
• Information Week, (April, 2008). Info Tech Salaries Drop, Our Survey Finds. What's Holding U.S. Pay Down?
• Computerworld, (Feb. 2006).Culture Clash Closing gaps between different worlds is crucial to building team trust.
• San Jose Mercury News (February 25, 2007). Moving tech support jobs closer to home.
• Dallas Morning News (Nov. 2006). The glue in global dealings
• Computerworld (August 15, 2005). Global Workgroups: It takes both tools and processes for developers to collaborate long-distance.
• Business Week (Mar 1, 2004) in the cover story on Software and programming heading overseas
• CIO magazine (July 15, 2004) on "Lost in Translation" and successful knowledge transfer offshore.
• Computerworld (May 24, 1999) Round-the-World Teamwork.
• Outsourcing Journal , March 1999. Global Software Teams Take Flight.

• INFORTE workshop (Jyvaskyla, Finland) on Global software development and offshoring, speaker on two topics: Coordination across time zones and on The landscape of nations and offshoring; August, 2009.
• SAP Research Labs-Israel Tel Aviv, Workshop leader on Managing, coordinating, and communicating in a distributed environment, Feb, 2009
• Universita Degli Studi Di Salerno, Managing Outsourcing Relationships and New Governance Models. Salerno, Italy; Invited speaker on Micro-sourcing, Multi-sourcing and Governance. Oct. 2008.
• 6th Caribbean Ministerial Strategic Seminar, Barbados, Invited speaker on Offshoring - implications for the Caribbean, October, 2008.
• Israel Business @60. Co-chair of this two-day conference at American University . Also chaired the panel on Technology, Innovation, and Start-Ups. March 2008.
• International Conference on Global Software Engineering Munich , Germany , keynote speaker on Reflections on a Decade of Studying Global Software Engineering ;August 2007.
• International Offshoring & Nearshoring Symposium . Vienna , Austria , invited speaker on Distance Still Matters: Nearshoring & Time Differences, June 2007.
• Costa Rica Technology Insight 2007, San Jose , Costa Rica , invited speaker on Nearshoring 2.0, March, 2007.
• NYU-IBM Workshop on Global Sourcing , New York , invited speaker on The Stubborn Problem of Coordination Across Time Zones, January, 2007.
• The Norwegian Network on ICT and Development : Annual workshop at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim , Norway , invited keynote on Offshoring to Developing Nations: Current landscape & policy questions, Nov 2006.
• Jiaotong University, Beijing, invited seminar on Configurations of Global Software Development. May 2006.
• University of Wisconsin, Madison, invited talk on Israeli High-tech vs. Indian high-tech. Apr 2006.
• Global Services Conference (CMP Inc.), sourcing strategies, New York City, panelist on "How Technology Is Flattening Global Business" Feb 2006.
• International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS). Invited keynote on Narratives that Software Nations Tell Themselves Cross Cultural Research in Information Systems workshop, Las Vegas, Dec 2005.
• 4th International Peruvian Software Industry Congress, Invited keynote on Offshoring, Software Exports and the Place of Peru November, 2005.
• Infosys, Bangalore, India. Seminar as Visiting Research Fellow on the topic "Time Separation at Infosys," July 2005.
• IBM Research Lab New Delhi , India. Invited seminar on Distributed Software Teams: Distance Matters, July 2005.
• GPI Offshore Seminar Vught , Netherlands. Invited speaker on Distance matters in offshoring, June 2005.
• University of Limerick , ISERC: Irish Software Engineering Research Consortium  Limerick , Ireland . Invited colloquium keynote on Distance Matters, June 2005.
• London Business School , England . Invited speaker at the Emerging Markets Seminar Series, on the topic National Software Myths, May, 2005.
• I DO 2004 (International Developers Opportunities), conference on Brazilian software industry strategies, invited keynote speaker on the topic of Offshoring, Software Exports and the Place of Brazil; Sao Paulo, Brazil, December 2004.
• Russian Outsourcing Software Summit , invited speaker on The Views On Offshore Outsourcing From Inside Washington D.C.: The Politicians, The Press, The Public, St. Petersburg, Russia, June 2004.
• National Software Summit : IT Workforce Workshop , invited panelist on Global Sourcing, Virginia , March, 2004.
• Society for Information Management , Offshore Outsourcing: Strategic Issues and Implications, Moderator and Speaker, Virginia, January, 2004.
• Global Intellectual Property Project, (which Carmel co-founded) Chair of the workshop on "Patenting Business Methods: is the US patent system bad for Business?" at American University, April 2003.
• Romanian International Outsourcing Conference , Keynote speaker, The Global Picture of Software and Services Outsourcing Bucharest, Romania, April, 2003.
• Russian Software Outsourcing Summit , St. Petersburg , Russia , June 2002.
• The Social Implications of Computers in Developing Nations Conference, IFIP working group 9.4; Bangalore, India , May 2002.
• Symposium on Trends in Offshore Outsourcing. University of Manchester , England ; May 2001.
• University of Victoria , Canada . Lansdowne distinguished lecturer, April 2001.
• International Workshop on Global Software Outsourcing: The solution to the IT skills gap? Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin fur Sozialforschung , Berlin , March, 2001.

• He has also been an invited speaker at Motorola, Xerox, Baxter, American Management Systems, and others.
• Carmel has been a guest speaker in university classes in: Pudong University (China), European School of Management (ESCP-EAP , France), Erasmus (Netherlands), Marquette (USA), University of California at Irvine (USA), and others.