Not everyone would choose to visit Russia in January, but Information Systems Professor Murray Jennex braved the elements as part of a consulting contract with the Ukrainian government.

The project involved an economic analysis of oil transport through Ukraine with the goal of advising the Ukrainian government as to which direction to send oil through their new Odessa-Brody pipeline. Jennex worked with Energy Solutions to provide the assessment, which was needed due to the highly political nature of pipeline, according to Jennex.

“Russia wants the line so it can maintain a monopoly on oil transport to Europe and wants to transport Urals oil south from Brody to Odessa, then tanker in through the Bosphorus to Europe,” Jennex explains. “Europe, on the other hand, wants a non-Russian source of oil and in particular wants better grade oil from the Caspian Sea and the Middle East, and wants Ukraine to transport this oil from the Black Sea to Brody and into Poland and central Europe.”

The project, which received extensive media attention in Europe and Ukraine, required Jennex to interact with Ukraine’s Minister of Energy, Ukrtransnafta (the state owned oil company), and the European Union’s director for oil projects.
In addition, Jennex has been named founding editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Knowledge Management (IJKM). The journal will provide a comprehensive cross-discipline forum for advancing the understanding of the organizational, technical, human, and cognitive issues associated with the capture and use of knowledge in organizations.

“The International Journal of Knowledge Management provides a forum for global aspects of knowledge management and for differing cultural perspectives on the use of organizational memory and knowledge management,” says Jennex. IJKM will broaden the overall body of knowledge in the field, which will help researchers and practitioners design and implement more effective knowledge management systems.

Jennex co-authored "Success Factors for Offshore Software Developers" recently published in the Journal of Information Technology Cases and Applications. He examined what small companies in developing countries should focus on in order to compete successfully in the U.S. software outsourcing market “We surveyed outsourcers in over 25 countries including the U.S., and we surveyed approximately 70 U.S. companies that outsource software development,” says Jennex “We found a couple of items that everyone agreed were critical: worker skills and trust in the relationship.”