[AISWorld] Who are the Champions of IS?

[Guy Gable]

A COMMENT ON "AUSTRALASIAN CONFERENCE ON INFORMATION SYSTEMS" (ACIS) 4-6 DEC 2013, MELBOURNE ... Perhaps sensitized by my anticipation of the day-2 panel I was on 'Transforming the future with sensitivity to the past', I discerned a theme across several sessions I attended. Much enjoyed Rick Watson's opening keynote "Transforming Information Systems - A teleological shift" which, simply put, advocated increased relevance and societal value from our research; purpose driven research. I wasn't as convinced of the 4 dominant logics ... survival->production->customer service->sustainability ... and the argument that the IS developed during an ERA reflect its dominant logic (thus Rick's interest in energy informatics). I too felt that much of the work that Rick was advocating might be better undertaken by governments (e.g. carbon tax laws) and associations (e.g. standards), and venture capitalists, in cooperation with Universities. As I understood, Rick was advocating that IS morph radically into something completely different; I think IS at QUT already manifests many of the attributes of the 'new' IS discipline Rick was alluding to <http://mo.bf.rmit.edu.au/acis2013/ACIS2013_Watson.pdf>http://mo.bf.rmit.edu.au/acis2013/ACIS2013_Watson.pdf

Jon Venable's talk on 'Making Sense of the Growing IS Research Paradigm Milieu: a classification framework of IS research paradigms,' resonated with Rick's; a message being we should be clear about the values our research serves. I had some difficulty with Jon's hard separation of theorising-building-evaluating in Design Science.

Though I struggled with Diarmuid Pigott's talk (Murdoch U) 'Paying back borrowed meanings: the implications of the metaphor-driven history of IS research for its future,' which stretched my limited grasp of philosophy, he brought the audience along, convincing us of the power of our focal metaphors for good or bad.

The panel on day 2 was largely unplanned. Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic kicked-off with a thoughtful discussion on performativity 'the process by which semiotic expression (in language or a symbol system) produces results or real consequences in extra-semiotic reality, including the result of constructing reality itself' (Wikipedia). In other words, entirely consistent with Diarmuid's concern that we as a discipline are inadequately aware of the extent to which our concepts are self-fulfilling. Roger Clarke went next, with his session titled "What the Dickens is 'The Ghost of ChrIStmas Future'??" advocating the importance of histories and our roles as historians for the discipline. Roger's draft slides are (for now) at <http://www.rogerclarke.com/SOS/ISFP-1312.html>http://www.rogerclarke.com/SOS/ISFP-1312.html. With his colourful storytelling, Roger retained his title as 'Chief Historian' of the IS discipline in Australia. For more of Roger's unabashed insights, have a look at chp.2 in 'The Information Systems Academic Discipline in Australia' at ... <http://epress.anu.edu.au/titles/info_systems_aus_citation/pdf-download>http://epress.anu.edu.au/titles/info_systems_aus_citation/pdf-download . I went last, and given Doug Vogel's  introduction and Dubravka and Roger having gone over their allotted time, I truncated my presentation to leave a few minutes for discussion. Just as well, as mine was by intent, a comparatively dry account of past substantial efforts to document the IS discipline history in Australasia and Pacific Asia, advocating more of the same (slides from a talk I gave in 2007). Given the thought provoking prior presentations I felt compelled to also provoke thought, so suggested at the outset that none of what Dubravka or Roger had related mattered; that it doesn't matter what or how we research. Rather, what matters is governance of the discipline and power. I wasn't pulling this entirely out-of-the-air, as it was in some sense a cross-case conclusion from our Pacific Asia study of the discipline, though never amplified in print (special issue of CAIS Vol 21 (2007)). In truth, as the conference progressed, my belief in this interpretation strengthened; that what matters is the governance and power of the discipline; our Associations (ACPHIS, AAIS, AIS, ACS) our representation (e.g. with ACS, ARC), and our champions. Who are the future champions of IS in Australia?

Guy G. Gable  |  Professor & Academic Director Research Training, Information Systems School
Science and Engineering Faculty | Queensland University of Technology
Y-Block, Level 7, Room Y7-04, Gardens Point Campus  http://gggable.com/
mob +61(0)4 04096411 | mailto: g.gable at qut.edu.au<mailto:g.gable at qut.edu.au>           CRICOS No 00213J

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