Contact

322 Mervis Hall
ckemerer@pitt.edu
412-648-1572

Profile

Before accepting the Roderick Chair at the Katz School, Chris Kemerer was an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a former principal of American Management Systems Inc., an Arlington, Va.-based software development and consulting firm. He continues serving industry through applied research, consulting, executive education, and expert testimony.

His current research interests include management and measurement issues in information systems and software engineering, and he has published more than seventy articles on these topics in a number of professional and academic journals, including Communications of the ACM, IEEE Computer, IEEE Software, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Information and Software Technology, Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Operations Management, Management Science, Marketing Science, MIS Quarterly, Sloan Management Review, and others, as well as editing two books. He is an ISI/Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher in Computer Science and an INFORMS Information Systems Society Distinguished Fellow.

His paper “A Metrics Suite for Object-Oriented Design” is the most highly cited software engineering paper ever in the history of the field.

He has been invited to address audiences in a dozen different countries and numerous cities throughout the United States. He is the winner of numerous Katz Excellence in Teaching awards and has been voted by his students four times as the Executive MBA Distinguished Professor of the Year at the University of Pittsburgh. His research on software evolution has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and from IBM.

Dr. Kemerer serves or has served on the editorial boards of the Annals of Software Engineering, Communications of the ACM, Empirical Software Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Information Systems Research, the Journal of Organizational Computing, the Journal of Software Quality, and MIS Quarterly, and is a member of Beta Gamma Sigma, INFORMS, ACM, and the IEEE Computer Society. He is a past Editor in Chief of Information Systems Research, Departmental Editor for Information Systems at Management Science, and Senior Editor for MIS Quarterly.

Courses Recently Taught

• BMIS 3022 Economics and Information Systems (PhD)
• BMIS 2801 Information Systems: IT and Business Value (EMBA)
• BMIS 2679 Technology Innovation, Adoption, and Diffusion (MBA)

Research Interests

• Management of Information Systems
• Software Engineering Measurement and Modeling
• Accounting and Economic Issues in Information Systems Technology
• Adoption and Diffusion

Professional Service and Activities

Consulting Activities

Significant experience as an expert witness, including the Microsoft antitrust litigation and the
Oracle v. Google software copyright case.

Degrees

• PhD in Systems Sciences (Information Systems), Carnegie Mellon University
• BS (magna cum laude), Economics and Decision Sciences, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Selected Publications

Liu, C., E. Gal-Or, C. Kemerer, and M. Smith, “Compatibility and Proprietary Standards: The Impact of Conversion Technologies in IT-Markets with Network Effects”, Information Systems Research, v. 22, n. 1, pp. 188-207, March 2011.

Jiang, Y., J. Shang, C. Kemerer, and Y. Liu, “Optimizing E-tailer Profits and Customer Savings: Pricing Multistage Customized Online Bundles”, Marketing Science, v. 30, pp. 737-752,July-August 2011.

Harter, D., C. Kemerer and S. Slaughter “Does Software Process Improvement Reduce the Severity of Defects?  A Longitudinal Field Study”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v. 38, n. 4, pp. 810-827, July/August 2012.

Liu, C., C. Kemerer, S. Slaughter, M. Smith, ” Standards Competition In the Presence of Conversion Technology: An Empirical Analysis of the Flash Memory Card Market “, MIS Quarterly, v. 36, n. 3, pp. 921-942, September 2012.

“Strategies for Tomorrow’s “Winners-Take-Some” Digital Goods Markets”, (with C. Liu and M. Smith), Communications of the ACM, v. 56, n. 5, pp. 76-82, May 2013.

Ramasubbu, N. and C. Kemerer, “Managing Technical Debt in Enterprise Software Packages”, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v. 40, n. 8, pp. 758-772, August 2014. 

Ramasubbu, N. and C. Kemerer, “Technical Debt and the Reliability of Enterprise Software Systems: A Competing Risks Analysis”, Management Science, v. 62 n. 5, pp. 1487-1510, May 2016.

Janansefat, S., C. Liu, and C. Kemerer, “Diversification Strategy for Mobile App Developers: Understanding the Role of App Category Characteristics on App Performance”, European Conference on Information Systems, June 2020.

Ramasubbu, N. and C. Kemerer, “Controlling Technical Debt Remediation in Outsourced Enterprise Systems Maintenance: An Empirical Analysis”, lead article, Journal of Management Information Systems, v. 38, n. 1, pp. 4-28, April 2021.

Singh, S., C. Kemerer, and N. Ramasubbu, “Innovation in Complex Assembled Electronic Products: An Analysis of the Evolution of Television Components”, Journal of Operations Management, v. 67 n. 6, pp. 680-703, September 2021.

Teaching Cases

MacCormack, A., B. Dunn and C. Kemerer, “Research in Motion: The Mobile OS Platform Wars”, Harvard Business School Case 613-001, June 2012.  (Recognized by Harvard Business School as “Most Popular”)

MacCormack, A., B. Dunn and C. Kemerer, “Barnes & Noble: Managing the E-Book Revolution”, Harvard Business School Case 613-073, January 2013.  (Recognized by Harvard Business School as “Most Popular”)

Kemerer, C. and B. Dunn, “Netflix Inc.: The Disruptor Faces Disruption”, Ivey School of Business Publishing (University of Western Ontario, Canada), 9B17E016, November 2017.  (Nominee, EFMD Case Writing Awards 2018, Ivey’s second best-selling case in the world, 2019-2020 academic year, Harvard Business School “Bestseller”.)

Kemerer, C. and M. Smith, “Apple v. The FBI”, Ivey School of Business Publishing (University of Western Ontario, Canada), 9B18E013, September 2018.  (Nominee, EFMD Case Writing Awards 2018)

Kemerer, C. and M. Sooy, “Google vs Oracle: Software Theft or Fair Use?”, Ivey School of Business Publishing (University of Western Ontario, Canada), W25889, January 2022. 

Academic Area

Information Systems and Technology Management

Personal Interests

Golf