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

[Murray Jennex]

to be honest our discipline is chock full of discrimination, we
discriminate based on what university you go to or work at, we discriminate
based on journal, and on research method, on where you are located, on
research focus/relevance/lack of relevance, (all discussed in this forum,
journals and relevance very recently) (and all discriminations I have
personnaly felt) as well as age, race, gender as pointed out, and I'll add
by disability, especially when older. Positions, grants, publications are
all influenced by this discrimination. So what do we do about it? I have no
answers, not sure there are any answers, maybe this is just the nature of
humanity and perhaps its just the have nots complaining about the haves. I
totally agree that meritocracy does not exist but it is an ideal to strive
for. We talk about the digital divide but what about the academic divide?
Just some musings here.....murray jennex

On Sun, Jun 12, 2022 at 2:25 AM wombat <c.conway at ieseg.fr> wrote:

> 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://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2019.1335
>
> [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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