[AISWorld] [EXT] Re: [External] Hiring Professor (Female Only) in Information Systems and Technology Management, UNSW Sydney

[Shailendra Palvia]

Wow. I never expected such a lively and educational discussion - about so many aspects including meritocracy and objectivity.  

Thank you Dr. Conway, Dr. Jennex , Dr. Venable, Dr. Gupta and others.

Human beings are subjects.  They are not objects. Hence, there is no chance of human beings completely objective.  Each one of us has built in biases from heredity and environment.  And then most organizational decisions are group based.  Diverse subjectivity of group members may result in more objectivity than a single person making decisions.

Sincerely

...Shailendra 

-----Original Message-----
From: AISWorld <aisworld-bounces at lists.aisnet.org> On Behalf Of wombat
Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2022 5:23 AM
To: aisworld at lists.aisnet.org
Subject: Re: [AISWorld] [EXT] Re: [External] Hiring Professor (Female Only) in Information Systems and Technology Management, UNSW Sydney

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On 6/12/22 05:21, John Venable wrote:
> Apologies for filling your in-tray if this doesn't interest you.

And likewise! :-)

I'd like to add a "Hear hear!" to this email. Dr. Venable has said in a much clearer and less inflammatory way what I have been trying to point out.

With respect to Dr. Cuellar's and Dr. Palvia's posts:

Meritocracy is a lovely fantasy. It's not real. Whenever people are judging other people, there are ALWAYS biases[7]. Even people like us who are trained to be, and try very hard to be[3], as objective as possible cannot possibly be completely objective. Frankly, I believe this is a consequence of Gödel's theorem[1], and the ideal of complete objectivity is unreachable. I'm far from convinced that even "good enough" is reachable; our brains wire themselves to group the things that we perceive to make classification and decision-making easier. It's not something that can be unlearned.

Read the research on meritocracy. Maybe it will open your eyes.

A great place to start is this article, and it's even in the business literature (most critical work on meritocracy is published in sociology journals, and tends to focus on its inherent socioeconomic biases):

Castilla, E. J., & Ranganathan, A. (2020). The Production of Merit: How
        Managers Understand and Apply Merit in the Workplace.
        Organization Science, 31(4), 909–935.
        https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2019.1335__;!!DeIc-uvKXH9G!6l1HWfj2PPiZVl4HFBuerzJjaHXYdy-BTNPt7KAr15UDPQnsBvZNcAy5G5Su7p7TaUPjUWSdBrrI4YzT$

[1] Yes, I know that Gödels thereom is about formal systems and not the human self[2], but what is the brain if not a formal system?

[2] And, for that matter, exactly what is the human self? How can we determine objectively that it is in fact capable of objectivity?

[3] Which I respect greatly, and I am sure that all concerned in this dispute practice as much as possible; attestations of experienced discrimination[4] suggest that good intentions abound.

[4] I, too, have experienced age discrimination. Sucks, but that's how the system currently works. And because of this, I work very hard to change the system for the better, and do not assume that anyone[5] can truly be objective, because they can't.

[5] And don't even get me started on so-called "AI".

[6] There is no footnote 6. You're just reading all the footnotes, aren't you?

[7] In fact, what is the "merit" in "meritocracy"? Every single one of us has a definition which differs at least slightly, and sometimes wildly, from others. Our idea of merit often involves being "someone like me", because we *think* we live in a meritocracy, thus we *deserve* our current status, and the idea that we got that status because of luck or socieconomic or cultural or racial or genetic or sexual advantages challenges our notion of self. Thus, we reject the idea that we don't deserve what we have; we must "merit" it, and the definition of merit becomes rapidly "like me". Again, see the org science paper for how this plays out. Look at the sociology and social psychology research that it cites. The scientific verdict is clear: meritocracy isn't based on any objective definition of the word "merit".

Christopher M. Conway Ph.D. also known on the net as wombat since 1986.
Computer scientist, software engineer, social psychologist, musician, statistician, amateur philosopher, polymath.

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