DIALECTICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN AND BEYOND
by Kristo Ivanov
2002-02-08 01-10-16
DIALECTICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN AND BEYOND
by Kristo Ivanov
DIALECTICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN AND BEYOND
by Kristo Ivanov
Umeå University, Department of Informatics, S-901 87 UMEÅ (Sweden).
Phone +46 90 7866030, Fax +46 90 7866550, E-mail: kivanov@informatik.umu.se
http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/PerspSem2000.html
1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. The contribution
4. Applications
5. Criticism of my contribution
6. Criticism of other alternatives and present trends
6.1. The dilution and re-framing of dialectical systems approach
6.2. The misunderstanding of systems as IS
6.3. From Habermas to Foucault, Latour, Lakoff & Johnson, Weick, etc.?
6.4. Dissertations-older: Hidden rationales and "design theory"
6.5. Dissertations-recent: I.S. and multipurpose networks.
6.6. Dissertations-recent : I.T. adaptation and sense making.
6.7. The new unconscious positivism
6.8. Eclecticism is also an -ism, or a postmodern pluralism
6.9. Postmodernism vs. relativistic pluralism
6.10. Against relativism, for truth
6.11. On postmodernism from Norris 1990
6.12. On postmodernism from Norris 1994
6.13. On postmodernism from Honderich 1995
6.14. Postmodern positivism and the "How" vs. "Why"
6.15. "Multiple interpretations" vs. commitment? Understanding and sense-making (of "how" and of "multiple interpretations")
6.16. The Sokal affair, 1996 and "Science Wars"
6.17. Faster and faster
6.18. "Success": fads and the emperor's new designed clothes
6.19. Unconscious second-hand philosophy
6.20. Unconscious first-hand philosophy?
6.21. Unconscious economics
6.22. Questioning definitions, reality, and truth
6.23. The problems of empiricism and its practice
6.24. The cost of evidence
6.25. Risk for careerism of new generations
6.26. Peer review and publish-or-perish syndrome
6.27. Competence-inflation, and parasitary aestheticist ambitions
6.28. Ultimately
7. The particular case of the design trend
8. *The particular case of the phenomenology
9. *Further and future contributions
10. A future policy for the discipline
11. Hand-out
DIALECTICAL SYSTEMS DESIGN AND BEYOND
FROM LOGICAL POSITIVISM TO POST-ROMANTIC VS. POSTMODERN
DESIGN: SUMMARY OF 40 YEARS IN MANAGEMENT AND BASIC RESEARCH
by Kristo Ivanov
Umeå University, Department of Informatics, S-901 87 UMEÅ
(Sweden).
Phone +46 90 7866030, Fax +46 90 7866550, E-mail: kivanov@informatik.umu.se
http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/PerspSem2000.html
Commented headlines for a series of research seminars
at the universities of
Umeå (Sweden), Hull (England), The Andes-Mérida
(Venezuela), and , and Italian Switzerland-Lugano (Switzerland) year 2000-2001
©Kristo Ivanov. Permission to make digital/hard copy of
this work for personal or educational use is granted provided that it is not
done for profit or commercial advantage, and notice is given of the
source.
1. Abstract
1.1. The contents of the series of seminars from which an
appropriate selection will be made ad-hoc for each seminar are structured along
the following main titles (1) this abstract itself: (2) introduction (3) the
contribution, (4) the applications, (5) criticism of the contributions, (6)
criticism of other alternatives and present trends, (7) the particular trend of
design, (8) further and future contributions, (9) a future policy for the
discipline, and (10) hand-outs for the seminars. I will describe the path of
intellectual development of the discipline of information systems as observed
from Scandinavia between 1970 and 2000, both from the point of view of my
practice and research, combined with my teaching at universities. The purpose is
to relate the whither of were we are going and where we ought to go to the why
of where we start, that is the why we came to where we are. It will be seen
that the beginning of the seventies was characterized by a conscientization of
researchers that they belonged to the post-war mentality of logical positivism.
This was followed by an ethical pathos expressed as a socialization or
politization of research associated to the names of, say, Marx and Habermas. The
eighties were characterized by a weakening of the political aspects towards an
aesthetical pathos of design theories that ultimately, in the nineties took a
postmodern or even a relativist twist. In the Anglo-Saxon sphere these
intellectual tendencies were discussed for instance in works by Christopher
Norris and Ernest Gellner. This criticism, however, did not eventually reach the
mainstreams of our discipline where the issue was further confounded by the rise
of, and merging with the hermeneutical, phenomenological and other approaches.
In the meantime the practice of information technology, including games and
multimedia communication, in parallel with the gradual deregulation of the
market economy, followed the neo-liberal play, and "third way" of the so called
global market as reported, for instance, in the insightful analyses of The
Economist. This trend backs the claims that the Western post-industrial world
is creating a new informational economic theory. My message will be that late
development suggest an ethical crisis of our research which would benefit from a
back-to-basics response. Some early hints on the direction of my search can be
found in some recommended preliminary readings.
2. Introduction
2.1. This seminar (series):
2.1.1. I distribute this table of (commented) structured
contents from which I will select appropriate items. Possible questions if not
covered in my presentations can be addressed preferably at the end or by e-mail,
unless they deal with the meaning of what is been said. Please consider that the
text includes certain minor repetitions since it grew "organically" out of
several part-seminaries and each part requires some autonomy with regard to
references and such.
2.2. Personal and professional story
2.2.1. Is "history" important?
2.2.2. Industry 1961-1975, struggling with "Product
Engineering", and "Manufacturing Engineering" in the communications and computer
industry. Struggles with EC (Engineering Changes), and world-wide computerized
data-bases, BM (Bill of Material) and Routing files, and eventually with errors
in data-bases and "quality-control of information". "Coding" errors, errors, and
what is an error? And truth?
2.2.3. Asst. prof. 1976, professor 1984, and dept. head
1986-1998
2.2.4. Today trendy international and multi-ethnical
experience (and "tacit" knowledge): War and poverty, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia,
Italy, Brazil, Sweden, France & USA. Catholicism, atheism, Protestantism,
and back to Catholicism.
2.2.5. Background: EMPIRICAL, both technical and
user-industrial, including economic-political. Electrical-electronic in the
sixties when semiconductors substituted electron-tubes in laboratories and
industry. Engineer + BA (Fill and) in psychology with statistics and political
economy + minor in Industrial economics and organization
2.2.6. Both real technique and engineering, and human science
(BS in statistics, political economy, psychology) plus Jung and philosophy
starting with Churchman. Technique as other than pressing of buttons.
2.2.7. The typically "informatic" difficulty of grasping both
technique and human science
2.2.8. My prejudices and intellectual context? Cf.
interpretive research principles applied to my own statement and overview of my
"perspective"?
2.3. "Thrown into the world" of computer industry: business practice
2.3.1. Business practice as fireman: paradoxical reliance on
"improvisation-bricolage-shift-and-drift" which is trendy today
2.3.2. Research by "user-practitioner" - rare in
academia
2.3.3. Relevance: the invented formulation of my discovered
research topic
2.3.4. My exposure to relevant contexts (through the IBM of
the sixties)
2.3.5. The discovery or decision that reality and practice are
philosophical, as also found today in the pages of e.g. The Economist
3. The contribution
3.1. The experience of an "archetypal engineer"
3.1.1. The infological equation, hermeneutics, and
Marxism
3.2. The experience of non-positivism
3.2.1. Ref. to Vitalis Norström, 1912, (below)
3.2.2. Pre-condition for framing the research
question
3.3. *Quality-control of information
3.3.1. Ivanov, K. (1972). Quality-control of information:
On the concept of accuracy of information in data banks and in management
information systems . The University of Stockholm and The Royal Institute of
Technology. (Doctoral diss. Nat. Techn. Info. Service NTIS order No. PB-219297
at fax +1 703 6056900, orders@ntis.fedworld.gov,
http://www.ntis.gov/ordernow.)
3.4. *The Design of Inquiring Systems
3.4.1. Note: also " Basic principles of organization". Still
today: best and most advanced theory of systems, information systems, and
artificial arti-facts in context. How & why best? "On the shoulders of
giants" and historical build-up upon philosophy, logic, statistics, military and
industrial applications ("action" of OR/OA), and 68's political debate including
the politics of science. Parallel branch of successful industrial and social
(black ghetto) consultancy. Latest off-shots: Checkland's SSM and Ulrich's CSH
(vs. for instance ANT)
3.4.2. My role: first introduction (Scandinavia) into
computer- and information science of American pragmatism (cf. "use-users" in the
version of W. James, beyond J. Dewey and later followers of D. Schön's
"reflective practitioners") as applications of Singerian "experimental
idealism", in the form dialectical social systems theory
3.4.3. Information as Fact nets, consensus, representations,
dialectic, progress.
3.4.4. Perspectives as (1) Leibnizian fact-nets, (2) Kantian
representations, (3) Hegelian dialectic of theses & Weltanschauung
3.4.5. Structure vs. function
3.4.6. See the closer context and developments in Churchman,
C. W. (1968). Challenge to reason . New York: McGraw-Hill, Churchman, C.
W. (1968). The systems approach . New York: Delta. (Page references are
to the 2nd ed., 1979, and Churchman, C. W. (1979). The systems approach and
its enemies . New York: Basic Books.
3.4.7. Development of systems conceptualization as following
categories of the dialectical social systems approach: (1) Clients, purposes,
measures of performance, (2) Decision makers, components, environment, (3)
Planners, implementation, guarantor, and (4) Systems philosophers, enemies of
the systems approach, significance. In Churchman, C. W. (1979). The systems
approach and its enemies . New York: Basic Books.
3.4.8. Today http://www.isss.org/lumCWC.htm,
http://haas.berkeley.edu/~gem/,
http://www.informatik.umu.se/~kivanov/chuindex.html
3.5. What(for) systems and information
3.5.1. Why inquiring systems vs. information systems,
different conceptions of "information", and cf. networks
3.6. Dialectics, and Marxism
3.7. Pluralism vs. relativism
3.8. Individual vs. social learning
3.8.1. A matter of Leibnizian networking, Lockean degree and
size of consensual community, or Hegelian conflict process
3.9. Rigor vs. relevance as precision vs. accuracy
3.9.1. With recognition of the role of power in the dialectic
between power and knowledge, which is not often mentioned as per today
3.10. Sense-making as inquiry
3.10.1. As plain teleology: my basic attitude, of Platonic and
Aristotelian heritage, as patent in Western ethics and law
(responsibility)
3.10.2. As Leibnizian or Hegelian Weltanschauung
3.10.3. Interpretation of meaning possible through
"epsilon-error"
3.11. Negotiations in actor-networks (ANT)
3.11.1. Actors=Roles, Network=System (or Leibnizian
sub-nets)
3.11.2. Inscription≈morphology,
translation≈functionality and teleology
3.11.3. "Closure refers to a state where the stability and
durability of the network is relatively assured. The stabilization of a
technology is the result of the controversy and strategy that surrounds
technical change. Stabilization of a technology implies that its contents are
black-boxed and are no longer a site for controversy"
3.12. Conversation vs. debate
3.13. "Management by deals"
3.13.1. (Ciborra in the context of infra-structure and
strategy)
3.14. Infrastructure as system "environment"
3.14.1. general case of or analog to fixed or sunk costs in
business economics
3.15. Change vs. improvement
3.16. Technology as resources
3.16.1. Cf. tools as means, and systemic means as
resources
3.16.2. Tools vs. instruments (Koyré)
3.17. Aesthetics and postmodernism
3.17.1. Cf. progress vs. process
3.17.2. Cf. my "complementary word index" to the Design of
Inquiring Systems
3.18. Creating bywords
3.18.1. Data-quality (information-knowledge)
3.18.2. Why not, or easy questions with difficult answers
3.18.2.1. The more difficult the answers become because of
(too) easily formulated questions, and the fewer the number of knowledgeable
potential answerers, the easier it will to disrupt the possible wisdom that has
been accumulated in history and tradition
3.18.3. The Don Juan-syndrome
3.18.3.1. Relativistic postmodernism and
"change-improvisation". Cf. the subtle "ethics" in Cottingham, J. (1998).
Philosophy and the good life: Reason and the passions in Greek, Cartesian and
psychoanalytic ethics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3.18.4. Learning is good vs. learning the good
3.18.4.1. Or "good learning" or "good knowledge". The lost
Plato's insights (information for learning and knowledge)
3.18.5. I don't argue, I shoot - emphasis
3.18.5.1. In the context of "Popperian" discussions with Ian
Jarvie, reference to ("Nietzschean") nazist, and easy reliance on language
communication and science. Cf. need for Frankurt's critical school's reliance on
psychoanalysis (shifted by Habermas upon language)
4. Applications
4.1. This seminar: "perspective" of or on informatics?
4.1.1. Leibnizian or Hegelian Weltanschauung, or in Singerian
"sweep in"
4.2. The politics of research
4.2.1. Contribution identified with misunderstood isolated
"quality" (rather than, as it was, "information system" and therefore
politically unobstructed allowing for a subversive future oasis or niche,
consolidated in the research-political struggle for a professor chair in
Umeå Academic opportunity for non-positivism
4.2.2. The build-up of the department and its international
network
4.2.3. Research and education (graduate education with the
proposal of an ideal -type "E40-course" of readings)
4.3. The Umeå-school of informatics, or Berkeley on systems?
4.3.1. See end on Umeå-policy and the
discipline
4.3.2. *Pre-condition for the establishment of non computer
science and Umeå's informatics and design
4.3.3. Supporting the legitimation of IS as not exclusively
technical (Klein & Hirschheim, and Lyytinen inclined to Habermas), Ehn's
appointment in Lund, and Dahlbom at Tema in Linköping, further in
Gothenburg. Also supporting Klein's & Hirschheim's successful "infiltration"
of the field of I.S. in general and IFIP WG 8.2 in particular: Ivanov, K.
(1984). Systemutveckling och ADB-ämnets utveckling [Systems development and
the development of the discipline of informatics/ADP]. In H.-E. Nissen (Ed.),
Systemutveckling, av vem, för vem och hur? [Systems development, by
whom, for whom, and how?] (pp. 1-14). Stockholm: Arbetarskyddsfonden.
(Report No. K4/84. Orig. also as report LiU-IDA-R-84-1, University of
Linköping, Dept. of Computer and Information Science, 1984. The essay's
diagram of key philosophers' names for information systems development is also
found adapted by Hirschheim, R. A., 1985, Information systems epistemology:
An historical perspective, in E. Mumford, et al., eds., Research methods
in information systems, Amsterdam: North Holland, 1985, pp. 37-38. Reprinted
in R. Galliers, ed., Information systems research: Issues, methods and
practical guidelines, pp. 28-60, Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Publications,
1992.)
4.3.4. Pragmatism's focus on "use" and "user" (actor, agent,
brukare). Ex. address as systemic atom of information
4.3.5. Opening towards philosophy (practical philosophy
including ethics in its relation to aesthetics, and theology)
4.3.6. Establishment of contacts and identity: Churchman, Ian
Mitroff, Dick Mason (and visits), Harold Nelson for "design", Peter Checkland
for soft systems methodology, and Werner Ulrich for critical systems thinking.
Nevertheless: critical attitude to "followers" like in unsystematic Jung. Most
serious active student of Churchman: Werner Ulrich
(http://www.isss.org/lumCWC.htm)
4.4. System and information: thirty years of stability
4.4.1. Both concerning the follow-up and evaluation of ongoing
research, and the undergraduate & graduate course on "Design of Inquiring
Systems": because of the philosophical basis
4.5. The transient phase of my empirical research & consultancy
4.5.1. LIBRIS for scientific libraries
4.5.2. SCB-data quality
4.5.3. Privacy vs. participation (basic first discussions
about the information society) and book about Systems Development and Rule of
Law. Datainspektionen (Data Inspection Board) and privacy act: permission vs.
inspection (tillstånd vs. tillsyn) and the nature of information
4.6. *Privacy and participation
4.6.1. Parliamentary (Kerstin Anér's book) contacts at
the time of datalagen och medbestämmandelagen (data privacy and
participation acts). Anér, K. (1975). Datamakt . Stockholm:
Gummessons
4.6.2. Ivanov, K. (1986). Systemutveckling och
rättssäkerhet : Om statsförvaltningens datorisering och de
långsiktiga konsekvenserna för enskilda och företag [Systems
development and rule of law]. Stockholm: SAF:s Förlag.
4.7. Design of arti-facts in context = of arti-ficial systems
4.8. *Work & design of artifacts , and Constructive systems development, and
Hypersystems
4.8.1. In the seventies See Ivanov, K. (1995). A subsystem in
the design of informatics: Recalling an archetypal engineer. In B. Dahlbom
(Ed.), The infological equation: Essays in honor of Börje Langefors
(pp. 287-301). Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, Dept. of Informatics.
4.8.2. Marxism: work or design. Scientific legitimation of
politics for, and later criticism of Ehn, P. (1973). Bidrag till ett kritiskt
socialt perspektiv på datorbaserade informationssystem
(TRITA-IBADB-1020). Dept. of Information Processing, University of Stockholm,
and, further Ehn's dissertation in 1988 (and Mathiassen)
4.8.3. Forsgren, O. (1988). Samskapande
datortillämpningar [Constructive computer applications] (Doctoral
diss., Report UMADP-RRIPCS-3.88). University of Umeå, Inst. of Information
Processing. (In Swedish. Summary in English.)
4.8.4. Levén, P. (1997). Kontextuell
IT-förståelse [Contextual IT-understanding] . Umeå:
Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics. (Doctoral diss. ISSN
1401-4572.)
4.8.5. Whitaker, R. (1992). Venues for contexture: A
critical analysis and enactive reformulation of group decision support
systems . Umeå: Umeå University, Inst. of Information
Processing. (Doctoral diss. UMADP-RRIPCS 14.92.)
4.8.6. Ivanov, K. (1993). Hypersystems: A base for
specification of computer-supported self-learning social systems. In C. M.
Reigeluth, B. H. Banathy, & J. R. Olson (Ed.), Comprehensive systems
design: A new educational technology (pp. 381-407). New York:
Springer-Verlag. (Also as research report, Umeå University,
UMADP-RRIPCS-13.91, ISSN 0282-0579.)
4.9. Other uses and influences
4.9.1. Note 16 in Ivanov, K. (1995, above). A subsystem in the
design of informatics: Recalling an archetypal engineer. In B. Dahlbom (Ed.),
The infological equation: Essays in honor of Börje Langefors (pp.
287-301). Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, Dept. of Informatics.
4.9.2. Data quality programs of Agency for Administrative
Development and Central Bureau of Statistics (Statskontoret and SCB)
4.9.3. "Co-constructive computer applications", and
"Contextual IT-understanding"
4.9.4. Methods for the Swedish Agency for Administrative
Development, and Central Bureau of Statistics
4.9.5. Adoption and criticism of soft systems methodology in
Ivanov, K. (1991). Critical systems thinking and information technology. J.
of Applied Systems Analysis, 18, 39-55. (Report UMADP-RRIPCS 11.90, Univ. of
Umeå, Inst. of Information Processing. ISSN 0282-0579.)
4.9.6. My own development: Jung, I Ching, philosophy, theology
(cf. Mitcham & Grote's "Theology and technology", & Lindbom on
socialism, democracy, and cultural-moral crisis)
4.10. Comparisons with other taxonomies or "onto-epistemological
frameworks"
4.10.1. Paradigms for qualitative research
4.10.1.1. Underlying "paradigms" for qualitative research: (1)
Positivist, (2) Post-positivist, (3) Critical theory, and (4) Constructivist,
according to Guba, E. G., & Lincoln, Y. S. (1994). Competing paradigms in
qualitative research. In N. K. Denzin, & Y. S. Lincoln (Ed.), Handbook of
Qualitative Research (pp. 105-117). Thousand Oaks: Sage
4.10.1.2. Or (1) positivist, (2) interpretive, and (3)
Critical, in Orlikowski, W.J. & Baroudi, J.J. "Studying Information
Technology in Organizations: Research Approaches and Assumptions",
Information Systems Research (2) 1991, pp. 1-28, following Chua, W.F.
"Radical Developments in Accounting Thought," The Accounting Review (61), 1986,
pp. 601-632.
4.10.1.3. all the above as ref. in Myers, M. D. (1997).
Qualitative research in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 21(2, June),
241-242. (Archival version June 1997 at http://www.misq.org/misq961/isworld,
updated version at http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/ accessed 14 December
1999.)
4.10.1.4. Klein, H. K., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A set of
principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in
information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-93. (Pre-publication of the
paper found at http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/MMyers/Klein-Myers.html,
accessed 14 Dec. 1999.): Right away at least #1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 out of (1)
The fundamental principle of the hermeneutic circle, (2) Contextualization, (3)
Interaction between researchers and subjects, (4) Abstraction and
generalization, (5) Dialogical reasoning, (6) Multiple interpretations, (7)
Suspicion
4.10.2. Contexts in place of systems, networks, infrastructure
4.10.2.1. Context and networks vs systems,
infrastructure and activities vs. organization and mission. In Dahlbom, B.
(1996). The new informatics. Scandinavian J. of Information Systems,
8(2), (http://iris.informatik.gu.se/sjis/magazine/vol8no2/Dahlbom.htm,
accessed 9 Feb. 2000.)
4.10.3. Practitioners and customers
4.10.3.1. Questioning whether "the practitioner" is the
"customer" of our research, and practitioners would not be the judge of
the relevance of our research. Lee (1999) and Lyytinen (1999) below. Cf. other
role denominations like "IS professionals" and "managers"
4.10.4. Process theory, and logics of change or opposition
4.10.4.1. Rethinking the link between IT and organizations
with the use of (1) Process theory (to understand better how change occurs), (2)
Different theoretical logics of change (motors of life cycle, teleology,
evolution, and dialectics), and (3) Multi-level perspective (individual,
team interdepartmental, and organizational; or institutional, managerial, and
technical). In Robey, D., & Boudreau, M.-C. (2000). Organizational
consequences of information technology: Dealing with diversity in Empirical
research. In R. W. Zmud (Ed.), Framing the domains of IT management:
Glimpsing the future through the past . Cincinnati, OH: Pinnaflex,
forthcoming. No refs. to our local Scandinavian-anchored names like H.K. Klein,
Latour, Ehn or Dahlbom
4.10.4.2. Cf. the above multi-level thinking with the more
extense taxonomy of multi-modal systems thinking in de Raadt, D. (1998).
A new management of life . New York: The Edwin Mellen Press.
4.10.5. Correspondence vs. coherence theories of truth
4.10.5.1. See the classification of correspondence
(Anglo-Saxon, Logical empirical LE) vs. coherence (continental,
hermeneutic-dialectical HD) theories of truth as adduced by e.g. Hans-Erik
Nissen on the basis of Radnitzky, G. (1970). Contemporary schools of
metascience . Gothenburg: Akademiförlaget. In HD theories the
historical context of data plays a role
4.10.6. Teleological systems turned into existentialism
4.10.6.1. Ciborra (in the personally communicated manuscript
"Hospitality and IT") suggests that in order to "make sense in a deep,
existential way" or project goals or plans one must not disregard "the complex
chemistry and alignment between the "because of" and "in order to" motives of
action.
4.10.6.2. Ciborra's differentiation between the business view
(global transactions, cross-border investments and data flows) vs. the global
view (time more important than space and little moves having big effects,
traditions, expert systems, side effects, risk, reflexivity) of globalization,
where the so called global view with its purported recognition and acceptance of
e.g. "side effects" amounts to a paradoxical call for a systems view
4.10.7. Systems as cooperation with no conflict
4.10.7.1. Computer Supported Cooperative Work or CS
Collaborative Learning
4.10.8. Critical systems thinking
4.10.8.1. Critical systems theory CST support of justification
break-offs and the challenging of boundary judgments or normative
presuppositions in systems design: grouping 12 boundary questions in 4 classes,
each comprising 3 kinds of categories: social roles, role-specific concerns, and
key problems. The 4 classes ask for the normative ought of (a) the
sources of motivation: clients, purpose-measure of performance, (b)
sources of control: decision maker, components, environment, (c) sources
of expertise: designer, expertise, guarantor, and (d) sources of
legitimation: the affected people's witnesses, their emancipation, and their
world views or Weltanschauung. The 12 ought questions above are then to
be contrasted with the pertaining answer to the corresponding is
question, laying open the normative basis of the planning system and its
evaluation. From Ivanov, K. (1991). Critical systems thinking and information
technology. J. of Applied Systems Analysis, 18, 39-55. (Report
UMADP-RRIPCS 11.90, Univ. of Umeå, Inst. of Information Processing. ISSN
0282-0579.): Ref. to Ulrich, W. (1987). Critical heuristics of social systems
design. European J. of Operational Research, 31, 276-283
4.10.9. Soft systems methodology SSM
4.10.9.1. Checkland's SSM "CATWOE" categories: (1) Customers,
(2) Actors, (3) Transformation processes, (4) Weltanschauung, (5) Ownership of
the system, and (6) Environment
4.10.10. Paradigms of I.S. development in postmodern formulation
4.10.10.1. Various paradigms of I.S. development to be
described and interpreted in terms of the following categories: (1) Key
actors (the "who" part of the story), (2) Narrative (the "what", or
the key activities), (3) Plot ("why" did the action take place, akin to
causes and purposes), (4) Assumptions (the fundamental beliefs or
Weltanschauung, or epistemological-ontological assumptions). From Hirschheim,
R., & Klein, H. K. (1989). Four paradigms of information systems
development. Communications of the ACM, 32(10), 1199-1216.
4.10.11. Old Weick's social psychology of organizations in new form
4.10.11.1. Weick, K. E. (2nd ed. 1979). The social psychology
of organizing. New York: McGraw-Hill, as used in Henfridsson, O. (1999).
Adaptation as sense making: Inventing new meaning for technology in
organizations . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics.
(Doctoral diss.) pp. 41-42.
4.10.11.2. The transition from the phase of ambiguity about an
IT-artifact to the phase during which it is used in a common-sensical way can be
difficult to trace both in space and time. It is an organizational process,
implying that it goes on in several places and over time. It involves many
actors, pursuing different goals. Roughly speaking, however, I suggest that an
IT-artifact becomes a natural part of an organization's daily activity as
individual meanings, co-existing initially, solidify into collective and
taken-for-granted interpretations, expressed and reinforced in organizational
action as double interacts (interlocked behavior) . They consist
of actions performed and maintained by people reducing ambiguity.
These actions are highly skilled in that they are responsive to the
imagined responses of other people. [cf. conflicts and "pathological
narcissism" as described in Kernberg, O. Internal world and external reality:
Object relations theory applied . New York: Jason Aronson, 1980, See esp.
part III]. This is an intersubjective process in that it is defined in the
relation between two or more actors. If the executed actions works well in
terms of expectations, such confirmation maintains and reinforces the double
interact as an element of order in the interpersonal relation. An organization
would not exist without these interacts. They make the organizational world
intelligible for those involved, and, thus, they also make IT-artifacts
intelligible. The elements (enactments) of the transitional process can be
described as identity-construction, self-fulfilling prophecies, and
organizational defenses.
4.10.12. Moral Imagination
4.10.12.1. Johnson, M. (1993). Moral imagination:
Implications of cognitive science for ethics. Chicago: The Univ. of Chicago
Press, pp. 240-257. Recommended in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI)
by John Waterworth and Andreas Lund, Umeå university, dept. of
Informatics,
4.10.12.2. We are in position to make some general claims
about the nature of a reasonable and realistic human objectivity, as opposed to
an impossible God's-eye-view objectivity. Human objectivity is what
characterizes a reflective process by means of which we are able to take up
multiple perspectives as a way both of criticizing and transforming our own
views and those of others. Human objectivity can be characterized as a form of
transperspectivity [ref. Steven Winter, "Bull Durham and the Uses of
Theory", 685-686; cf. Ivanov's Hypersystems and Churchman's DIS chap. 7 and 9]
which is the ability of a physically, historically, socially, and culturally
situated self to reflect critically on its own construction of a world, and to
imagine other possible worlds that might be constructed.
Transperspectivity involves acts of imagination. To some it will seem strange
and even inappropriate to combine objectivity and imagination. But forms [which
other forms?] imaginative rationality are, in fact [define fact], what makes
human objectivity possible. They are what permits us to take up various
perspectives as a way of criticizing any given position, our own or others', by
envisioning different framings and metaphorical structurings of situations, by
empathetically taking up the part of others [cf. Christian charity] in order to
understand what they experience and how various possible actions might affect
them, and by exploring the range of possibilities for action open to us [cf.
Kantian aesthetics].
4.10.12.3. Among the key Enlightenment assumptions, which also
lie at the heart of the Moral Law folk theory, is that morality is a set of
restrictive rules that are supposed to tell you which acts you may or may not
perform, which you have an obligation to perform, and when you can be blamed for
what you have done [and not have done?]. It is not fundamentally about how to
live a good life [cf. Plato and Aristotle], or how to live well. Instead, it is
only a matter of doing the right thing -- the one right thing required of you in
a given situation. This drastic narrowing of the scope of morality has
monumental consequences. Treating moral reasoning as if it consists only in
discovering and applying moral laws ignores the imaginative structure of
our moral concepts and reasoning, and thus excludes from consideration all of
the evidence that would support the central role of imagination [or excludes all
moral evidence that would be supported by imagination?].
4.10.12.4. Where "moral laws" exist, they are best understood
as capsule summaries of the collective wisdom we derive from our shared moral
experience as a community [cf. "practice"]. But moral reasoning must not be
discovering and applying such laws. They hide much of what matters. We need a
different model of moral reasoning that encompasses the imaginative
dimensions of conceptualization and thought. If you strip away all absolutistic
metaphysical and epistemological supports, what is left of moral criticism is
the basis for criticism that we had all along, namely transperspectivity.
We can be critical through an ongoing dialectical process in which we bring
different perspectives to bear on our present moral understanding to see what it
entails for our lives, how it affects others, what it misses that might be
significant, and how it might be changed. Criticism becomes a social practice in
which individuals and entire groups subject their values, principles, and
fundamental frames to continuous scrutiny.
4.10.13. Philosophy in the flesh
4.10.13.1. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999).
Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western
thought . New York: Basic Books. Recommended in the field of human-computer
interaction (HCI) by John Waterworth and Andreas Lund, Umeå university,
dept. of Informatics, pp. 552-568.
4.10.13.2. We argue for an empirically responsible philosophy
-- a philosophy informed by an ongoing critical engagement with the best
[define] empirical science available. We are promoting a dialogue between
philosophy and cognitive science [=empirical general science, =psychology?].
Philosophical sophistication is necessary if we are to keep science honest
[define, vs. true, good, useful?]. Science cannot maintain a self-critical
stance without a serious familiarity with philosophy and alternative
philosophies. Scientists need to be aware of how a priori philosophical
assumptions [and resulting empirical results? cf. metaphysics, and Capaldi] can
determine their scientific results.
4.10.13.3. The traditional Western view of the person is at
odds on every point with the fundamental results from neuroscience and cognitive
science. An actual human being has neither a separation of mind and body, nor
Universal Reason, nor an exclusively literal conceptual system, not a monolithic
consistent world view, nor radical freedom. Our conceptual system is grounded in
our perceptual and motor systems. Primary metaphor is the activation of neural
connections allowing sensorimotor inference to structure the conceptualization
of subjective experience and judgments. People cannot be self-interest
maximizers, and there is no "Higher" Morality: our concepts of what is moral,
like all our other concepts, originate from the specific nature of human
embodied experience, and we each have within us a moral pluralism. There is no
disembodied mind. Whether you call it mind or Soul, anything that both thinks
and is free-floating is a myth [define myth]. It cannot exist. We then need an
alternative conception of embodied spirituality that at least makes justice to
what people experience. What embodied sense can be made of transcendence?
How are we to understand our sense of being part of a larger all-encompassing
whole, of ecstatic participation -- with awe and respect -- within that
whole, and the moral engagement within such experience? Imaginative [cf.
imagination] empathic projection is a major part of what has always been called
spiritual experience. A mindful embodied spirituality is an ecological
spirituality. It requires an aesthetic attitude to the world that is
central to self-nurturance, to the nurturance of others [cf. Christian charity
or social political solidarity], and to the nurturance of the world itself. It
requires an understanding that nature is not inanimate and less than human, but
animated and more than human. It requires pleasure, joy in the bodily
connection with earth and air, sea and sky, plants and animals -- an the
recognition that they are more than any human beings could ever achieve.
Embodied spirituality is more than spiritual experience. It is an ethical
[cf. the earlier mentioned aesthetic attitude] relationship to the
physical world [ref. to Abram 1996, and Spretnak 1991 1997]. It is the body that
makes spiritual experience passionate, that brings it intense desire
and pleasure, pain, delight, and remorse. In the world's spiritual
traditions, sex and art and music and dance and the taste of food have
been for millennia forms of spiritual experience just as much as ritual
practice, meditation, and prayer. The vehicle by which we are moved in
passionate spirituality is metaphor. It is a neural mechanism that recruits our
abilities to perceive, to move, to feel, and to envision in the service not only
of theoretical and philosophical thought, but of spiritual experience. Cognitive
science has given us the philosophy in the flesh.
4.11. Contribution of system science to I.S. research
4.11.1. Cf. with the kind of reasoning by Xu, L. D. (1995).
Systems thinking for information systems development. Systems Practice,
8(6), 577-589, and Córdoba, J. R., & Midgley, G. (2000).
Rethinking stakeholder involvement: An application of the theories of
autopoiesis and boundary critique to IS planning. In S. Clarke, & B. Lehaney
(Ed.), Human centered methods in information systems: Current research and
practice (pp. 195-230). Hershey, USA: Idea Group
4.12. Miscellaneous
4.12.1. The fostering of philosophical consciousness
(cf. hand-out for "Why Plato" seminar in 991208)
4.12.2. See System and IS as elements in
actor-networks and not as elementary objects, and networks as generated
in "patterned networks of diverse (not simply human) materials"..."structure of
relationships in the flux of interactions"
4.12.3. Systems ≈ Focus only on organizational resources
was unfortunate. Thus, it is critical for future developments also to include
organizational objectives in the Powerplay IS.
4.12.4. Empirical industrial "tolerance" ranges vs
economics-politics of scrap-rework. Cf. "stabilization vs. exclusion" in
negotiation loops seen as "validations" in ANT's multipurpose networks
4.12.5. Objects as statements, artifacts, models, concurrent
Leibnizian nets (cf. Plato)
4.12.6. The idea of "Shift & drift" of
"inscriptions-translations" of technology corresponds to morphological
vs. functional and teleological classes (as in decision model): "Purposes and
functions of technologies can neither be read from their consequences, nor
conversely"
4.12.7. "The elementary operation of translation [in
ANT] is triangular: it involves a translator, something that is translated, and
a medium in which the translation is inscribed": cf. the "semiotic"
observer, observed, and measurement.
4.12.8. Note that Exploitation vs. triggered
exploration of IT (by breakdown or power-politics) or "negotiation
loops" in "evolving multipurpose networks" (EMN) and "windows of opportunity".
"Cultivation" (of EMN) as balancing the dynamics between standardization
and flexibility (Cf. Hegelian and Singerian IS). Identity arising from
network of exchanges and relationships with others. Useful or pleasurable
exchanges vs. friendship (identity as individuation)
4.12.9. The Stability vs. flexibility of an
application, considered to have to do with contents vs. different uses of these
contents, amounts to an implicit (positivistic) differentiation between database
and use (management information system) of the database.
4.12.10. The logic of determination vs. the logic of
opposition, can in an analog way be seen as simplifications of the
positivistic "positive" Lockean determination vs. the Hegelian dialectic
opposition in the so called logic of
4.12.11. [W]here different technological frames (cf.
systems) between groups as managers, systems designers, and users exist, it
is likely that the development and use of a particular IT-artifact is
distorted
4.12.12. Note that Stabilization of an artifact through
(1) Rhetorical closure (of the debate on it) changing or shaping the meaning
that various social groups attach to it in order to enroll their support, or (2)
Redefinition of the problem for which the artifact is then seen to be a
solution, corresponds to the alternation between consensus and conflict (thesis,
antithesis, synthesis)
4.12.13. The case of departmental subscription for the
controversial Samtidsmagasinet-Salt (2000) vs "balance" and
DN/SvD goal-clarity. In the field of media and communication one talks about
"balance", which together with "neutral presentation" adds to "impartiality, and
the latter added to matter-of-factness (Swedish saklighet) which consists of
truth and relevance, constitutes media-objectivity.
4.12.14. The Power: negotiate only if one has to:
consensus formation and sects seen as traditions
4.12.15. Ian Jarvie on Karl Popper and nazi-"I don't argue,
I shoot" (Nietzsche-Spengler). Cf. grin of "What do you mean?" (about
e.g. postmodernism or aestheticism) implying a displacement of burden of proof.
4.12.16. Cf. Peer-Review or Disputation of
doctoral dissertations and grading committee
4.12.17. Note that Empiricism is consensus triggered:
controllability in dissertations vs university research as a broker
4.12.18. Concerning Accuracy & precision. Cf.
credibility=reliability+validity with reliability as "extent to which
observations by multiple researchers studying the same phenomenon with similar
purposes will yield approximately the same results" and validity "involves
checking the credibility of knowledge claims". Cf. also "Criteria for convincing
texts" (e.g. Walsham's ref. to Golden-Bidlle & Locke in Organization
Science, No.. 4, 1993): Authenticity (the ability of the text to convey the
vitality of everyday life as encountered in the field setting), plausibility
(the ability of the text to connect to the personal and professional experience
of the reader, and criticality (the ability of the text to actively press
readers to consider their taken-for-granted ideas and beliefs)
4.12.19. Conflict between "traditions" of research: The
example of availability of advisors for graduate students vs. need of
instructors. Should a department accept a graduate student when no advisor is
available who can support his choice of scientific or methodological school? Cf.
why should anybody read Plato instead of Giddens?
4.12.20. Mature researchers tend to not care about each
other. What makes a "community" our of a bunch of research groups?
4.12.21. The threatening stranger: right to visit
≠ right to stay (designer-user-sponsor). Hospitality ≈
Practice vs Methodologies and theories as commitments. Cf. my dissertation and
"frames or rules of negotiations"
4.12.22. Cf. Identity as presuppositions or as rules of
negotiation
4.12.23. What about symmetry between humans and
non-humans
4.12.24. Consider History (old Plato) as
dialogue-negotiation with the dead. Why many democrats and emancipators claim
the importance and ethics of respecting the oppressed weak third parties, but do
not respect the dead forefathers?
4.12.25. The RESEARCH process itself: Mainstream vs
counterpoint (& Kuhn). And research "traditions" as "multipurpose networks"
(in ANT)
4.12.26. Ultimately: East or West? Quality as Tao in
Pirsig, R. (1974). Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance . New York:
Bantam Books or as in Jullien, F. (1992). La propension des choses: Pour une
histoire de l'efficacité en Chine [The propensity of things] . Paris:
Seuil. (English trans. The propensity of things: Toward a history of efficacy
in China. New York: Zone Books; Cambridge: distributed by MIT Press, 1995,
or as an actualization of the classical Kantian-Hegelian issue of subjectivity
and aesthetics (e.g. in Luc Ferry's Homo Aestheticus) introduced in IS by
Churchman and now related to Plato), with alternative romantic, postmodern, or
Whitehead-Lindbom religious terms (presentational immediacy, perceptions,
feelings, judgments, decisions)
5. Criticism of my contribution
5.1. Self-criticism
5.1.1. Ivanov 1972 dissertation questioning the
Churchman-basis
5.1.2. Svensson, O. (1998). En kritisk granskning av
Churchman och hans kritiker . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of
Informatics. (D1-uppsats, VT98.)
5.2. *The arrow-diagram of philosophical key-names
5.2.1. See in Ivanov 1984 (Mumford et al. 1985, Galliers
1992)
5.2.2. Everyone criticizes the others, especially if one does
not envisage such a kind of network
5.3. Mainstream vs. counterpoint
5.3.1. Aant Elzinga's research on research, ex. of issue which
is not considered in IT research
5.3.2. Cf. Kuhn's reference to revolutionary science (vs.
normal science), and its political implications, especially for untenured
university personnel
5.4. Weak empiricism and action-process
5.4.1. The technical and economic limits of the technology
available at the time
5.4.2. No personal "use"
5.4.3. No institutional interest (as for labour unions with
their money for "participation")
5.4.4. My experience of recurrent analog empirical "findings",
while the difficult thing is to understand the acting forces in order to design
future ethical action about them
5.5. Reaction to obsolete logical positivism
5.5.1. Today taken for granted: but from ashes into the fire
of postmodernism? No pendulum
5.5.2. Vitalis Norström (1912) who wrote in a similar
context: "Emellertid behöfver en filosofisk författare i våra
dagar, som framträder med en definitiv åsikt, ingalunda vara en
profet för att rätt klart kunna förutse sitt arbetes yttre
öde. Yngre, lyckligare släkten, hvilka mödolöst insupa ett
högre vetande med själfva den moderna kulturluft, som omsveper dem,
skola nog frestas att gladeligen slå i vädret de resultat, hvartill
en långsam och svår mogning har ledt. Redan åsiktens fasta
skick måste bortstöta dem, som älska blott sväfvande,
åt alla håll öppna möjligheter. Det är nästan,
som om det – visserligen mycket relativa och hofsamma –
anspråket på att vara färdig innebure ett attentat mot
ungdomens egen framtid. Och de äldre vilja merendels ej veta af något
annat än antingen hvad de i yngre dagar emottagit af vördade
lärofäder eller hvad de själva anse sig ha åstadkommit. Mot
sådana utsikter ämnar jag tillgripa endast en stillsam och enslig
consolatio philosophica. Men ord har jag inga för det, som ligger
bakom mitt verk och som drifvit det fram."
5.5.3. And, yet, much of today's attitudes are positivistic:
(partial) consensus in sub-cultures, peer review, web-page hits, etc.
5.6. The gap to the researcher (≈duplicate below)
5.6.1. Vs. followers or practitioners, or managers
5.6.2. The expectations upon the mid-generation and the gap
towards the younger and undergraduates. Irrelevance or rhetorical inability (or
opportunism)?
5.6.3. Lack of cumulative research results (beyond
"Co-constructive computer applications" and such)
5.6.4. The paradox is "solved" by T.S. Eliot? (See below
≈duplicate)
5.7. The design-doctrine and its criticism
5.7.1. Ehn, Stolterman, Dahlbom. Take the following example:
"To a great extent the design process is reduced to inquiring and detached
reflection by the designer. Users as clients and decision-makers are certainly
involved, but it is the designer that, via reflection, identifies and describes
the problems. Hence, he tends to neglect the non-explicit, practical
understanding of the clients in the design process... The systems approach works
in the world of ideas with breakdown and transcendence, but not with practice
and understanding. Certainly Churchman's designer learns from experience, but in
his idealistic conception of design (deeply rooted in the history of ideas) he
foresees the social history of the labor process to be redesigned. Though
humanistic in spirit, the systems approach provides no means for understanding
the social and historical conditions for emancipatory design. Hence, in practice
it may foster heroic designers to who no one listens, as well as narrow goal
oriented designers that follow the methodology instrumentally, but leave the
humanistic ethics behind. Socially, both are tragic results of a great idea."
[Ehn, P. Work-oriented design of computer artifacts.
Umeå-Stockholm: University of Umeå, Arbetslivscentrum and
Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988, p. 188.]
5.7.2. Cf. the above with Ciborra (in the paper "Hospitality
and IT", personally communicated manuscript) stating that what is often
carefully left out by the current approaches in IS design and management (both
the more managerial or the more participatory ones is "human existence". In the
participatory and ethnographic approaches such existential traits come before
any functional description of practices and allocation of (democratic) roles in
development and use. So even in these approaches closer to the everyday life and
needs of people in organizations, the concern for existence is usually swept
under the carpet
5.8. Low profile: conscious marginalization or fight windmills?
5.8.1. The "silencing criticism" or lack of civic courage or
opportunistic careerism. A new seminar culture, looking for alliances with
"winners" through internet networking instead of friendship. Blacklisting all
critics.
5.8.2. Cf. the "pathological narcissism" portrayed in my
chapter on "Cooperative work: Examples of problems" in Ivanov, K. (1991).
Computer-supported human science or humanistic computing science? Steps
toward the evaluation of a humanistic computing science
(UMADP-WPIPCS-41.91:3). Umeå University, Inst. of Information Processing.
Rev. ed. of paper presented at the Tenth International Human Science Research
Association Conference, August 18-22, 1991, Gothenburg.
5.8.3. Guerilla against the "publish-perish" syndrome seen as
the solution to the paradox of why (university) teaching today is undervalued as
compared to "research"
6. Criticism of other alternatives and present trends
6.1. The dilution and re-framing of dialectical systems approach
6.1.1. Singerian hypersystem-interactivity turns into Internet
activity, and postmodern "conversation" (Rorty)
6.1.2. Singerian sweep-in turned into conversation (and
debate?)
6.2. The misunderstanding of systems as IS
6.2.1. The Design of Inquiring Systems DIS syndrome: lame
citations and the equivalent of conspiracy of silence
6.2.2. The "new informatics", courting Aristotle's four causes
("efficient and final causes not dealt with") and the new "dialectical theory",
theories of communication overload or overflow, etc. vs. the "Copernican
syndrome" Truesdell, C. (1984). The computer: Ruin of science and threat to
mankind. In C. Truesdell (Ed.), An idiot's fugitive essays on science
(pp. 594-631). Berlin: Springer Verlag. What about "information
overload-overflow" applied to the research process itself vs. the emphasis on
updated empiricism?
6.2.3. "Once you have begun thinking about an organization as
a system it becomes very difficult to see it as a process...the whole idea of
systems thinking is to view the entity in isolation, to avoid having to consider
a complex context...In contrast to systems thinking an Aristotelian theory of
organizations may very well regard infrastructure and activities as more stable
than organization and goals. We go on performing the same activities with a
different organization and for a different reason." In Dahlbom, B. The new
informatics. Scandinavian J. of Information Systems, 8(2),
(http://iris.informatik.gu.se/sjis/magazine/vol8no2/Dahlbom.htm, accessed 9 Feb.
2000.) Cf. Churchman The Design of Inquiring Systems, chap. 3, and about
"process" cf. Whitehead, A. N. (1978). Process and reality: An essay in
cosmology . New York and London: The Free Press and Collier Macmillan.
(Corrected edition of original from 1929. Ed. by David Ray Griffin and Donald W.
Sherburne.). Cf. also my concept of "Don Juan syndrome" and ambiguity of
"reason" [Waterworth's hint on ethics]
6.2.4. "To stress the importance of activities and
infrastructure over goals and organization will mean to argue in favor of
networked organizations". In Dahlbom, ibid. Cf. networks as systems in Gras, A.
(1997). Les macro-systèmes techniques . Paris: PUF. (Que Sais-Je
series, No.3266, ISBN 2 13 048556 1. One chapter, in English, is found in
Olivier Coutard, Ed., The governance of large technical systems.):
networks should be seen as systems
6.2.5. The failure of seeing e-commerce as opposed to systems:
the denial of core competence and the neglect of functions such as logistic,
distribution, reimbursements, and, in general, handling of customer complaints
or wishes
6.3. From Habermas to Foucault, Latour, Lakoff & Johnson, Weick, etc.?
6.3.1. Bloor, D. (1999). Anti-Latour. Studies in History
and Philosophy of Science, 30(1), 81-112. Also found in
www.sciencedirect.com (Feb. 2000)
6.3.2. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in
the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western thought . New
York: Basic Books. Implications for HCI human-computer interaction (ref.
Waterworth)
6.4. Dissertations-older: Hidden rationales and "design theory"
6.4.1. The source: Stolterman, E. (1991). Designarbetets dolda
rationalitet: En studie av metodik och praktik inom systemutveckling [The hidden
rationale of design work: A study in the methodology and practice of system
development] . Umeå: Umeå University. (Doctoral diss. UMADP-RRIPCS
14.91.)
6.4.2. The post-romantic or postmodern intuition: Page 124 (my
trans.) In the same way [a an improvising playing musician] a designer must
dare to trust his right feeling [or "the intuitive", developed through prior
training]. Therefore it is not plausible to require that the designer in each
design occasion rationally shall be able to explain or argue for the design
choice he has made. The arguments for just this specific design cannot
be explained only with reference to this particular occasion. This because
of two reasons: First, the action in a particular situation is to a great degree
the result of earlier actions since the designer's aesthetics and figures of
thought get formed and influenced during the accomplishment of many design
processes, own and the study of others'. Second, the right feeling means indeed
that an action if performed on the basis of a choice that is so complex that it
very simply cannot be explained. A design process is therefore not rational
only when is possible to argue explicitly for its performing.
6.5. Dissertations-recent: I.S. and multipurpose networks.
6.5.1. The source
6.5.1.1. What follows is from: Holmström, J. (2000).
Information system and organization as multipurpose network. Umeå:
Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics. (Doctoral diss. ISSN 1401-4572.).
6.5.2. Politics and ethics as Lockean communities or Hegel's absolute mind
6.5.2.1. Page 8 The actor-network model does not distinguish a
priori between content and context or good and bad. The starting point is rather
that it is impossible in advance to decide whether new technology will be a
success or a failure. What is crucial to the result is whether the actors
participating in the process of design and use of an IS manage to build a stable
actor-network around the new IS...Actors are involved into..."trials of
strength" in which they try to convince colleagues and outsiders that their
contributions are valid and useful. A successful trial means that an outgoing
concern has incorporated the contribution into its institutional set of
practices.
6.5.2.2. Page 73 (Quoting M. Callon "Some elements of a
sociology of translation", 1986). Why speak of enrollment? In using this term,
we are not resorting to a functionalist or culturalist sociology which defines
society as an entity made up or roles and holders of roles. Enrolment does
not imply, nor does it exclude, pre-established roles. It designates the
device by which a set of interrelated roles is defined and
attributed to actors who accept them. Intressement achieves enrolment if
it is successful. To describe enrolment is thus to describe the group of
multilateral negotiations, trials of strength and tricks that accompany
the intressements and enable them to succeed.
6.5.2.3. Page 75 Some people believe that by placing non-human
actors on the same level as human actors is to inflate human value.
6.5.2.4. Page 77 Why follow some actors and no others? What
about actors who never enroll? These are certainly important questions that need
to be considered when using ANT as a theoretical perspective.
6.5.2.5. Page 183-184 Actor groups: Initiators, dept.
controllers, technicians, and politicians. [And civil servants, and
public?]
6.5.2.6. Page 212 Again, it is necessary to evaluate the
network outcomes from an ethical perspective. Even though organizational members
saw the Powerplay IS as a success, this focus only on organizational resources
was unfortunate. Thus, it is critical for future developments also to include
organizational objectives in the Powerplay IS...(Cf. also pp. 171-174,
218)
6.5.2.7. Page 221-222 However [allowing more organizational
members to access more information on financial matters] does not necessarily
eliminate imbalances of power between department controllers and other actor
groups. Even though people in the organization were able to interpret the
information in the light of their own unique situation, they still needed to
rely on a professional controller who can interpret the information for them.
This was due to the complexity involved with interpreting the information as
well as using the application.
6.5.2.8. Page 226 In order to successfully adapt, an IS has to
be consistent with the interests of the actors involved...I would not use the
words "success" if it merely was a matter of a Machiavellian power-game, where
actors with restricted resources were outflanked or excluded. When one actor's
interests translates into an enroller's interest, this action does not replace
the actor's interests with the enroller's interest. I believe that an
actor-network can consist of several purposes and interests and that success is
not confined to the interests of the initiators, but rather success encompasses
a wider range of social phenomena. Thus...success is possible for all actors
involved...
6.5.2.9. Page 227 A multipurpose network is an actor-network
that has successfully enrolled new allies and aligned their interests to the
actor network
6.5.2.10. Page 228 Multipurpose networks reward self-interest
while simultaneously they promote collaboration...I argue that it is central to
develop actor-networks that allow for different interests to co-exist.
6.5.3. The simplification of positivism and its dialectic alternatives
6.5.3.1. Page.11 The logic of determination underlies
most IS research. This idea maintains that one variable accounts for or
determines variations in another variable. By contrast theories that employ a
logic of opposition explain organizational change by focusing on forces
in opposition that promote and oppose social change. I agree that we need to
make use of theories that employ a logic of opposition in IS
research...
6.5.3.2. Page 84 I proposed the idea to the project manager
that a successful adaptation of the Powerplay application would include a proper
balance between stability and flexibility in the application. I suggested that
the stability would have to do with the content, the data, in the
application. Flexibility would mean that every department would be able
to adapt the Powerplay application according to its special needs. This would
mean that different departments would use different features in the application,
but the "information core" would nevertheless be the same. [cf.
stability≈database, flexibility≈use, as in Churchman. 1971, chap. 4
and tenets of positivism]
6.5.4. Non generalizability of qualitative research
6.5.4.1. Page 82...Qualitative research of this kind does not
aim to end up with results that are independent of the researcher.
6.5.4.2. Page 95 An interpretive study relies heavily on the
researchers own presuppositions and skills. Because of this, any other
researcher would end up with very different results [including
prescriptions, cf. accuracy, vs. precision]
6.5.4.3. Page 232 Because this thesis uses only one case
study, the results in this study cannot be easily generalized to other settings.
Since IS are context dependent, we should expect different results in other
organizational contexts. A case study such as this is rather difficult to
generalize to a wider theoretical domain. While more empirical work is necessary
to elaborate and verify this approach to the interplay between IS and
organization, it is believed that a useful beginning has been made.
6.5.5. Truth or relativism
6.5.5.1. Page 76 Latour..argues that "at the end of the
process, there is indeed indisputable scientific facts, and free citizen".
Latour makes this assertion to distance himself from absolute relativism
and social constructivism. Thus, I think that it is fair to say that
there is an important difference between the approach to technology proposed in
the ANT perspective and that proposed by those whose view relies on
relativism.
6.5.5.2. Page 82 The key to managing the unstable dialectical
relationship between ethnographic observation and social critique is to
re-conceptualize validity in terms of reflexive practice. Reflexivity refers to
the researcher's conscious self-understanding of the research process...Are the
respondents merely telling me what they think I want to hear or are they telling
me their real understanding of the situation? Furthermore, the researcher must
ask himself if he is merely seeing what he wants to see or is seeing the real
situation as it unfolds in front of him?
6.5.5.3. Page 114 Two key problems served [whose,
indeed?] as the starting point for the Powerplay project: the problem with
untimely information for decision-making purposes and information overload. [Cf.
the question of WHO]
6.5.5.4. Page 121 The main ambition from the initiators' side
was to increase the quality in the accounting work.
6.5.5.5. Page 123 A central argument from initiators
was that standardization of key ratio would lead to increased quality in
financial analysis...(Cf. also p. 180, 186)
6.5.5.6. Page 125 People at the accounting department wanted
the Powerplay application to be implemented so that politicians as well
as municipal civil servants at the departments were provided with more
timely and useable information. One of the initiators noted that the need for
more timely information was evident among politicians
6.5.5.7. Page 186 An interesting dimension with the process of
adapting the Powerplay IS to the organization was that the problems set up by
the initiators as the problems to deal with were not really
questioned.
6.5.5.8. Page 188 The problem with untimely information for
decision-making purposes and information overload - were seen as problems
that were better dealt with after the Powerplay application had become
established in the organization.
6.5.5.9. Page. 212-213 However a sense of security is
central for an effective organization. The main reason for the persistence of
the budget's role in the management of municipal organizations lies in how it
gives a sense of security to organizational members...One advantage with the
Powerplay applications that larger departments appreciated was the
security with using the cubes created by the project manager.
6.5.5.10. Page 223 The debates within the actor groups had
been working well for a long time. Nevertheless, these debates were
improved after the implementation of the Powerplay IS since the debates were
based on more precise information concerning consumed resources in the
organization.
6.5.5.11. Page 227 Powerplay's design encourages previously
isolated actors to communicate and solve problems together. This allowed the
actor-network to pursue more effectively the control over organizational
resources.
6.5.5.12. Page 230 Standardizing financial data makes it
possible to avoid unnecessary disputes over definitions and terminology
[cf. my diss.]. In the municipal organization of Umeå, the standardization
of key ratio discouraged quarrels over terminology and encouraged real and
useful discussions on financial matters...The different actors could
realize their own interests...The key to cultivating evolving
multipurpose networks lies in balancing the dynamics between standardization and
flexibility.
6.5.5.13. [Cf. all the above with a politician's accusation of
a chief civil servant of the Social services and her response (newspaper VK 23
and 24 March 2000) for irresponsible disrespect of budgetary constraints. How
would the researcher test his work against such "facts", against the
inconsequential adduction of their precedents on pp. 167-174?]
6.5.5.14. [Cf. also with the adaptation of the university's
press release in VK 8 April 2000, p. 6, on the disputation of April 13th:
"Projektet beskrivs som framgångsrikt och visar hur Umeå kommun
lyckats med att få fram information snabbare och bättre strukturerad
till beslutsfattare". My English trans."The project is described as successful
and shows how the Umeå country succeeded in securing information to its
decision makers more rapidly/timely and better structured.]
6.6. Dissertations-recent : I.T. adaptation and sense making.
6.6.1. The source
6.6.1.1. What follows is from: Henfridsson, O. (1999).
IT-adaptation as sensemaking: Inventing new meaning for technology in
organizations . Umeå: Umeå University, Dept. of Informatics.
(Doctoral diss. ISSN 1401-4572.)
6.6.2. Ethics in sense-making of exploration and exploitation phases
6.6.2.1. Page 29 The notion [by Orlikowski and Gash] of
technological frames refers to "...that subset of members' organizational frames
that concern the assumptions, expectations, and knowledge they use to understand
technology in organizations...Where different technological frames between
groups such as managers, systems designers, and users exist, it is likely that
the development and use of a particular IT-artifact is distorted [cf. my
diss.]...The articulation of the assumptions, expectations, and knowledge can
avoid unnecessary misunderstandings when introducing new technology in
organizations. Furthermore, this articulation can facilitate the way
incongruent frames can come together into a congruent view of what
the nature of a particular technology is, and what it should be used
for.
6.6.2.2. Page 38 Response repertoires [ref. Mead, Weick] are
the organized sets of responses that individuals use when monitoring the
environment for stimuli. Confronted with the IT-artifact, it is natural to ask
which are the good aspects and the bad aspects, the interesting
parts, and the banalities. With no frame of reference against which to evaluate
these questions, we would be unable to make any sense out of the new
artifact. However, we usually have responses to new phenomena. The process of
understanding IT is much about selectively picking out aspects ; we pick out
features of the technology that we can recognize and relate to our response
repertoires [cf. my diss. on who, and whose repertoires]. Without establishing
this connection, meaning cannot be produced.[Cf. Leibnizian nets, deduction and
induction]
6.6.2.3. Page 41-42 How can we understand the transition
between the phase of exploration and the phase of exploitation...The question
raised can be answered if we are able to describe and explore the transition
from the phase of ambiguity about an IT-artifact to the phase during
which the same artifact is used in a common-sensical way...The transition
involves many actors, pursuing different goals. Roughly speaking, however, I
suggest that an IT-artifact becomes a natural part of an organization's daily
activity as individual meanings, co-existing initially, solidify into collective
and take-for-granted interpretations, expressed and reinforced in organizational
action as double interacts. Double interacts [by Weick] are the elements
of order in organizing. They consist of actions performed and maintained by
people reducing ambiguity. The actions are highly skilled in that they
are responsive to the imagined responses of other people [cf. empathy vs.
opportunism]. This is an inter-subjective process in that it is defined in the
relation between two (or more) actors. If the executed action works well in
terms of expectations [cf. ethics], such confirmation maintains and
reinforces the double interact as an element of order in the interpersonal
relation. An organization would not exist without these interacts. They make the
organizational world intelligible for those involved, and, thus, they also make
the IT-artifacts intelligible [cf. meaningful and sense-making].
6.6.2.4. Page 49 While the transition from exploration to
exploitation results from a kind of natural attitude among organizational
members to reduce ambiguity, the transition from exploitation to exploration
requires triggers "external" to the IT-adaptation process. Whether a trigger
occasions doubts about the meaning [cf. conflict] of the IT-artifact
concerned depends on its strength in comparison to the degree of embeddedness of
the double interact maintaining the shared meaning.
6.7. The new unconscious positivism
6.7.1. Conventional consensus
6.7.1.1. Conventional consensus, without emphasis on naive
"hard facts", still can be sheer old positivism
6.7.2. The references to March & Simon
6.7.2.1. The references to March & Simon (e.g. by Dahlbom
and Ciborra). Cf. the philosophy of the originality of the "design of the
artificial" and Churchman, C. W. (1970). The artificiality of science: Review of
Herbert A. Simon's book The Sciences of the Artificial. Contemporary
Psychology, 15(6, June), 385-386.
6.7.3. The still relevant "Metaphysics of design"
6.7.3.1. Still relevant Ulrich, W. (1980). The metaphysics of
design: A Simon-Churchman "debate". Interfaces, 10(2, April), 35-40.
6.8. Eclecticism is also an -ism, or a postmodern pluralism
6.8.1. The growing industry of research taxonomies
6.8.1.1. The increasing fragmentation of IT studies that are
in need of a "Copernican revolution" in a badly understood "field" indicate that
an increasing amount of researchers instead of doing own original research make
a living out of writing handbook-surveys and taxonomies or classifications of
what is going on, while neglecting history. This legitimates a "smorgasbord"
mentality in younger generations of researchers who are encouraged to pick-up
their occasional favorite approach among the trendy ones, and forcing everybody
in the "publish or perish" business to dedicate an increasing amount of time to
testify a familiarity with supposed "state of the art" while neglecting the
lessons of history in the field. The ephemerality of this is illustrated for
instance by how an "encyclopedic" work like Hirschheim, R., & Klein, H. K.
(1989). Four paradigms of information systems development. Communications of
the ACM, 32(10), 1199-1216, and of Hirschheim, R., Klein, H. K., &
Lyytinen, K. (1996). Exploring the intellectual structures of information
systems development: A social action theoretical analysis. Accounting,
Management, and Information Technologies, 5, 1-64
6.8.1.2. has swiftly led to the encyclopedia of Klein, H. K.,
& Myers, M. D. (1999). A set of principles for conducting and evaluating
interpretive field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1),
67-93. (Pre-publication of the paper found at
http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/MMyers/Klein-Myers.html, accessed 14 Dec.
1999.)
6.8.2. Qualitative Research
6.8.2.1. Practically equivalent to confusing eclectical
postmodern pluralism as e.g. in Klein, H. K., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A set
of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in
information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-93. (Pre-publication of the
paper found at http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/MMyers/Klein-Myers.html,
accessed 14 Dec. 1999.): Edited quote: Qualitative, case, and interpretive
research from the philosophical perspective of hermeneutics. The set of
principles and guidelines (as standards against which such research is
evaluated) is derived primarily from anthropology, phenomenology and
hermeneutics. We are not dealing with many other forms of interpretivism which
are not necessarily hermeneutic (such as postmodernism or deconstructionism) but
only with evaluation of interpretive research of a hermeneutic nature (social
construction, sense making and assignments of meanings, context and process).
This is a conceptual papers drawing on work in anthropology and hermeneutics
(Gadamer and Ricoeur). Our use of the word "principles" guards against the
idea that their use is mandatory; rather, it is incumbent upon authors,
reviewers and editors, to exercise their judgment and discretion in deciding
whether, how and which of the principles should be applied and appropriated in
any given research project.
6.8.3. Contradiction and logic of opposition
6.8.3.1. Instead of dialectics: cf. the recommendation of
using different theoretical tools, as in Robey, D., & Boudreau, M.-C.
(2000). Organizational consequences of information technology: Dealing with
diversity in Empirical research. In R. W. Zmud (Ed.), Framing the domains of
IT management: Glimpsing the future through the past . Cincinnati, OH:
Pinnaflex, forthcoming. Or the reduction of dialectics to the incoherence of
"contradictions" including multiple theories employing a "logic of opposition",
and application of "multiple perspectives in the analysis of organizational
cultures" in Robey, D., & Boudreau, M.-C. (1999). Accounting for the
contradictory organizational consequences of information technology: Theoretical
directions and methodological implications. Information Systems Research,
10(2), 167-184
6.8.4. Coordination Theory:
6.8.4.1. Practically equivalent to confusing eclectical
postmodern pluralism is also organization and systems theory when suddenly
renamed strategically as "coordination theory" in the foundation of the MIT
Center of Coordination Science, with a research policy as defined in e.g.
Malone, T. W., & Crowston, K. (1990). What is coordination theory and how
can it help design cooperative work systems? In CSCW 90 Proceedings (pp.
357-370). New York: ACM Association for Computing Machinery, and in Malone, T.
W., & Crowston, K. (1994). The interdisciplinary study of coordination.
ACM Computing Surveys, 26(1), 87-119. This survey remarkably neglects the
last thirty years of systems theory in general and dialectical social systems
theory in particular, illustrating what was written above.
6.9. Postmodernism vs. relativistic pluralism
6.9.1. Represented in the IT-field by e.g. Coyne, R. (1995).
Designing information technology in the postmodern age : From method to
metaphor . Cambridge: MIT Press
6.9.2. Cf. the sharp criticism of the third way and Anthony
Giddens at the London School of Economics: cf. Anonym. (1998). The third way
revealed. The Economist, (19 September), and Anonym. (1999). The new
establishment of Downing Street. The Economist, (4 September),
6.9.3. Gellner, E. (1992). Postmodernism, reason and
religion . London: Routledge.
6.9.4. Norris, C. (1990). What's wrong with postmodernism:
Critical theory and the ends of philosophy . New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
(Esp. pp. 16-30, 77-133, 263-282.)
6.9.5. Norris, C. (1993). The truth about postmodernism
.
6.9.6. Relativism, and the difficulty of understanding its
implications as on p. 101 in Bloor, D. (1999). Anti-Latour. Studies in
History and Philosophy of Science, 30(1), 81-112.
6.9.7. Pluralism turned into relativism or "each work
evaluated by the criteria of its own school". But "who is to get the job?", and
what about life-commitment in war and science wars?
6.9.8. Flight from definitions, hypotheses, and
conclusions: e.g. against information systems but no definitions of
them
6.9.9. "Experimentation" understood as trial &
error improvisation
6.10. Against relativism, for truth
6.10.1. Johnson, K. E. (1997). John Hick's pluralistic
hypothesis and the problem of conflicting truth-claims :
http://www.leaderu.com/wri/articles/hick.html, accessed 20 October
2000
6.10.2. Cleary, D. (2000). Antonio Rosmini: Introduction to
his life and teaching . Durham, U.K.: Rosmini House. (ISBN 0 951 3211 61,
http://www.rosmini-in-english.org/Weblife/Lifeconts.htm.)
6.10.3. Scruggs, S. (1996). Truth or tolerance? :
http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/truthtol.html, accessed 26 October
2000
6.10.4. Seifert, J. (1997). From relativism and scepticism
to truth and certainty : http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth14.html,
accessed 26 October 2000
6.10.5. Ratzinger, J. (1996). Samvete och sanning [Conscience
and truth]. Signum, (4 & 5). (Swedish trans. by Yvonne Werner, of an
essay presented as a lecture at the American Bishops' Conference on moral
theological questions in 1991. In "Wahrheit, Werte, Macht. Prüfsteine der
pluralistischen Gesellschaft". Herder 1995, pp. 29-62. Italian trans. in "La
Chiesa. Una comunità sempre in cammino. Edizioni Paoline, 1991, pp.
115-137.)
6.11. On postmodernism from Norris 1990
6.11.1. From Norris, C. (1990). What's wrong with
postmodernism: Critical theory and the ends of philosophy . New York:
Harvester Wheatsheaf. (Esp. pp. 16-30, 77-133, 263-282.)
6.11.2. Page 131 Fish is certainly the cleverest
sophist around, or the thinker who has most successfully revived the
strain of all-purpose rhetorical professionalism that Socrates considered
such a scandalous affair. [ref. to Stanley Fish, Is there a text in this
class? The authority of interpretive communities. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1980].
6.11.3. (page 269-270) Ref. to de Man's account of Schiller
and his idea of 'aesthetic education' as a means of transcending the Kantian
disjunction between knowledge (or cognitive truth claims) on the one hand and
imagination (or the power of inward, sympathetic understanding) on the other.
Such would be the end-point of Schiller's redemptive project: 'A wisdom that
lies somehow beyond cognition and self-knowledge, yet can only be reached by
ways of the process it is said to overcome'.[ref. to Paul De Man, Aesthetic
formalization, in The Rhetoric of Romanticism. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1984, pp. 263-290, p. 265]. Aesthetics would thus become the natural home
ground for a different, altogether 'higher' mode of awareness [cf.
sense-making] that disowned the antinomies of Kantian critical reason
and claimed to effect a reconciliation of the various faculties whose separate
domains Kant had attempted to delimit. But the result...is a species of
"aesthetic formalisation" which collapses the difference between ethics
(practical reason) and phenomenal cognition, and thus makes reason entirely
subject to the laws or dictates of natural necessity. The "state" that is being
advocated [in Schiller's Letters on Aesthetic Education] is not just a
state of mind or of soul, but a principle of political value and authority that
has its own claims on the shape and the limits of our freedom [degrees of
freedom, freedom of action]. And these claims are by no means a mere
"aberration" or an isolated instance of aesthetic philosophy overstepping its
legitimate domain. On the contrary..."aesthetic education by no means fails; it
succeeds too well, to the point of hiding the violence that makes it
possible"... It is specifically Heidegger's reading of Kant - a reading that
elevates "productive imagination" to a status far beyond anything
envisaged by Kant himself - that this error takes hold of and opens the way to
all manner of aestheticist confusion.
6.12. On postmodernism from Norris 1994
6.12.1. Norris, C. (1994). Truth and the ethics of
criticism . Manchester: Manchester University Press, pp. 22-23, 102-103,
108-109, 125:
6.12.2. Quote #1. On the [neo-]pragmatist account there is
simply no difference – no difference that makes a difference –
between truth as construed in relation to current societal or cultural norms and
truth as the end-point of reasoned inquiry...It is within the reach of the
larger question...how far reason can legitimately claim to contest or to
criticize what is currently held as "good in the way of belief". Such criticism
may assume a variety of forms....What unites them...is an argued and principles
resistance to any version of the claim that truth comes down to a matter of
local knowledge, consensus values, or cultural forms of life....This
counter-argument can be set out very briefly as a series of propositions....from
which follows...that argument doesn't have an end point of acknowledging diverse
(incommensurable) language-games, paradigms, conceptual schemes, interpretive
horizons, or whatever.
6.12.3. Quote #2. Of course one may argue, like Stanley Fish,
that "theory" is an inconsequential activity; that it cannot do other than
rhetorically endorse the views of some more-or less widespread "interpretive
community"; and therefore that one might as well relinquish talk of reasons,
principles, validating grounds etc. and settle for a straightforward
[neo]-pragmatist appeal to what's good in the way of belief. [Cf. aesthetic
intuition]. But his position looks plausible only if one starts out from
something like the post-structuralist premise that discourse (or rhetoric) goes
"all the way down", with the consequence...that henceforth all truth claims and
subject-positions must be viewed as relative to the language-game in question,
and thus as mere products of suasive contrivance of localized cultural
consensus...Other philosophers...have likewise insisted on the close relation
between ethical theory and practice, and on the fallacy involved in any thinking
(like Hume's) that treats them as separate realms. For such thinking itself has
consequences...it produces a generalized scepticism with regard to theory in
whatever form, so that reason is regarded as a "slave of the passions", and
ethics reduces to a matter of moral sentiment without need for any further
(reasoned or principled) justification. One arrives at much the same position
– vide Rorty – by pushing the linguistic turn to a point where
high-toned talk about truth, justice, the "political responsibility of the
intellectuals", and so forth shows up as just another transient contender for
the role of "final vocabulary".
6.12.4. Quote #3. We are now better placed to understand why
"theory" (or the version of it promoted by post-structuralists,
Foucauldians, New Historicists and others) has fallen in so readily with
this current of counter-enlightenment trend. By "decentering" [cf. "actor
network" and hybrid humans in ANT] the subject to the point of
non-existence – reducing it to a mere position within a discourse or a
figment of the humanist Imaginary – post-structuralism has removed the
very possibility of reasoned, reflective, and principled ethical choice. From
Foucault comes the Nietzsche-inspired (but ultimately Hobbesian) notion that
"subjectivity" and "subjection" are synonymous terms; that all truth-claims
– including ethico-political ideas of reason – are reducible to
effects of power/knowledge; and hence that we might as well abandon any hope
of achieving progress through the exercise of reason in its enlightened
(critical-emancipatory) role. New Historicism ends up advocating much the same
attitude, despite its methodological verve and its resourcefulness in conjuring
novel relations between literary texts (canonical or otherwise) and all manner
of so-called "extraneous" source material. Where it joins the current litany of
wanhope is in pushing this "strong" intertextualist argument to the point of
collapsing all generic distinctions between literary and other types of
discourse, whether historical, philosophical, anthropological, or whatever. This
way cultural solipsism lies.
6.12.5. Quote #4. [T]here remain some unresolved tensions in
Foucault's late move toward a partial rapprochement with Kant. Chief
among them is his desire – shared with postmodernists like Richard Rorty
– to aestheticize ethics by construing "autonomy" as a matter of
private self-fashioning [cf. "design by designer"], a project carried on
(or so it would seem) in virtual isolation from what Kant conceived as the
public realm of collectively articulated reasons, motives, and
interests.
6.13. On postmodernism from Honderich 1995
6.13.1. POSTMODERNISM from Honderich, T. (Ed.) (1995).
The Oxford companion to philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p.
708: In its broad usage, this is the "family resemblance" term deployed in a
variety of contexts (architecture, painting, music, poetry, fiction, etc.) for
things which seemed to be related – if at all – by a laid-back
pluralism of styles and a vague desire to have done with the pretensions of
high-modernist culture. In philosophical terms post-modernism shares something
with the critique of Enlightenment values and truth-claims mounted by thinkers
of a liberal-communitarian persuasion: also with neo-pragmatists like Richard
Rorty who welcome the end of philosophy's presumptive role as a privileged,
truth-telling discourse. There is another point of contact with post-modern
fiction and art in the current preoccupation, among some philosophers, with
themes of "self-reflexivity", or the puzzles induced by allowing language to
become the object of its own scrutiny in a kind of dizzying rhetorical regress.
To this extent post-modernism might seem as a ludic [cf. bricolage, my note]
development of the so-called "linguistic turn" that has characterized much
philosophical thinking of late.
6.14. Postmodern positivism and the "How" vs. "Why"
6.14.1. Case of "Churchman" as number of hits at web-page of
journals' publisher (vs Latour and Callon) vs. talk on meaning and
interpretation
6.14.2. "Statistical" peer-review (cf. counterpoint dissidence
vs. mainstream). Cf. Jung vs. Freud, Bach after Mendelsson
6.14.3. "What-How" rather than "Why" (equated with
causality)
6.14.4. University courses' quality = enrollment
figures
6.14.5. Quality of department's home page = hits'
statistics
6.14.6. Authors' quality = citation index (e.g. in IS
Journal) = prospects for support for grant applications. Cf. case of citation of
H. Simon because of outrage at "man vs. ant"
6.14.7. Graduate course on technique of getting oneself
published
6.14.8. Career planning and alliances: winners vs.
losers
6.14.9. Experimentation instead of experiments: trial
and error, improvisation, shift and drift, bricolage, all equated to
"empiricism"
6.15. "Multiple interpretations" vs. commitment? Understanding and sense-making
(of "how" and of "multiple interpretations")
6.15.1. Cf. Noble and Winner on distance education and virtual universities:
6.15.1.1. Young, J. R. (2000). David Noble's battle to defend
the 'sacred space' of the classroom: Jeremiads against online education attract
followers; the critics say he's an ill-informed Luddite. The Chronicle of
Higher Education, (March 21),
(http://chronicle/com/free/v46/i30/30a00101.htm, with links to a colloquy live
of March 30 2000 at
http://chronicle/com/colloquylive/transcripts/2000/03/20000330noble.htm, and
Noble's articles on Digital Diploma Mills, Part I-IV at
http://www.communications.ucsd.edu/dl/ddm1.html - to ddm4.html. Accessed 31
March 2000.).
6.15.1.2. Cornford, J. (2000?). The virtual university
is...the university made concrete . (Manuscript p:\virtuni\papers\jcla8.doc,
available from james.cornford@ncl.ac.uk.).
6.15.1.3. Winner, L. (1997). Cyberlibertarian myths and the
prospects for community. Computers and Society - ACM SIGCAS, 27(3,
September), 14-19. (Special issue-section on Computer Ethics - Philosophical
Enquiry Conference CEPE'97.).
6.15.1.4. Winner, L. (1998). Meet the inventor! An
interview with L.C. Winner, CEO of EDU-SHAM Inc :
http://www.rpi.edu/~winner/wrpi1.html. (Radio interview broadcasted at 6:00 p.m.
April 1, 1998 on the 'Blinded Science' program of WRPI, Troy, New York.
Interview by Art Fricke, Rensselaer's dept. of science and technology
studies.)
6.15.2. Klein & Myers on interpretive field studies
6.15.2.1. Source: Klein, H. K., & Myers, M. D. (1999). A
set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretive field studies in
information systems. MIS Quarterly, 23(1), 67-93. (Pre-publication of the
paper found at http://www.auckland.ac.nz/msis/isworld/MMyers/Klein-Myers.html,
accessed 14 Dec. 1999.):
6.15.2.2. Orlikowski's (1991) research is concerned with "the
extent to which information technology deployed in work processes facilitates
changes in forms of control and organizational forms"
6.15.2.3. Klein & Myers (ibidem), What is at stake here is
not the truth or untruth of the claims but the world of social
relations between the planning staff and the other departments of city
government
6.16. The Sokal affair, 1996 and "Science Wars"
6.16.1. Bricmont, J., & Sokal, A. (1997). What is all the
fuss about? How French intellectuals have responded to accusations of
science-abuse. The Times Literary Supplement, (17 October), (Concerning
responses to the authors' book Impostures intellectuelles.)
6.16.2. Sokal, A., & Bricmont, J. (1998). Fashionable
nonsense . Picador.
6.16.3. The Economist. (1997). You can't follow the science
wars without a battle map. The Economist, (December 13th), 93-95.
6.17. Faster and faster
6.17.1. Obsolescence of research trends
(Marx->Habermas->Design & Reengineering->SAP &
Internet)
6.17.2. Situational flexibility and (theory of?)
improvisation
6.17.3. The impossible extrapolation (e.g. product cycle or
continuous education)
6.17.4. Sanne, C. (1995). Arbetets tid [Working hours in
the age of work: Working time reforms and consumption in the welfare state]
. Stockholm: Carlssons. (Doctoral diss. English summary and bibliography of
about 300 entries, pp. 275-341.)
6.17.5. Burenstam-Linder, S. (1969). Den rastlösa
välfärdsmänniskan: Tidsbrist i överflöd - en ekonomisk
studie . Stockholm: Bonniers.
6.17.6. Rifkin, J. (1987). Time wars: The primary conflict
in human history . New York: Simon & Schuster.
6.18. "Success": fads and the emperor's new designed clothes
6.18.1. Shapiro, E. (1995). Fad surfing in the boardroom:
Reclaiming the courage to manage in the age of instant answers . New York:
Addison-Wesley.
6.18.2. Shapiro, E. (1997). Managing the age of gurus: Book
review of John Micklethwait and Adrian Woolridge - The witch doctors: Making
sense of the management gurus. New York: Times Books, 1996. Harvard Business
Review, (March-April), 142-147.
6.18.3. Cf. the latest business TV-gurus as showmen (local
versions of Bill Gates)
6.18.4. Superficial views of "success" when it is proper to
use the frame of randomness (Churchman's Design of Inquiring Systems, chap. 10,
Carneadean imagery of probability)
6.19. Unconscious second-hand philosophy
6.19.1. Heidegger->Winograd &
Flores->Ehn->Graduate students
6.19.2. Same for Nietzschean perspectives, Kantian aesthetic
& romantic design, Heideggerian pre-Socratics
6.19.3. The superficiality of action-research and the failed
dialectic between science and politics (control group for effects of
participatory systems development?). Cf. Hannah Arendt on Labor,
Work, and Action in Lilla, M. (1999). Ménage à
trois. The New York Review of Books, (March 9), (Review of Briefe 1925
bis 1975 und andere Zeugnisse, by Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, edited by
Ursula Ludz, publ. by Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Also at Also at
http://www. nybooks.com/nyrev, accessed 3 March 2000.)
6.20. Unconscious first-hand philosophy?
6.20.1. The case with "also" Heidegger?
6.20.1.1. From Jung, C. G. (1953-1979). On the nature of the
psyche. In Collected Works - Vol. 8 (pp. 159-234). Princeton: Princeton
University Press. (R.F.C. Hull, trans. Orig. published in 1946.)
6.20.1.2. §358...[With the discovery of a possible
unconscious psychic realm] the validity of conscious knowledge was questioned
in an altogether different and more menacing way than it had ever been by the
critical procedures of epistemology. The latter put certain bounds to human
knowledge in general, from which post-Kantian German Idealism struggled to
emancipate itself; but natural science and common sense accommodated themselves
to it without much difficulty, if they condescended to notice it at all.
Philosophy fought against it in the interest of an antiquated pretension of the
human mind to be able to pull itself up by its own bootstraps and know things
that were outside the range of human understanding. /The victory of Hegel over
Kant dealt the gravest blow to reason to reason and to the further development
of the German and, ultimately, of the European mind, all the more dangerous as
Hegel was a psychologist in disguise who projected great truths out of the
subjective sphere into a cosmos he himself had created. We know how far Hegel's
influence extends today. The forces compensating this calamitous development
personified themselves partly in the later Schelling, partly in Schopenhauer and
Carus, while on the other hand the unbridled "bacchantic God" whom Hegel had
already scented in nature finally burst upon us in Nietzsche.
6.20.1.3. §359 Carus' hypothesis of the unconscious was
bound to hit the then prevailing trend of German philosophy all the harder, as
the latter had apparently just got the better of Kantian criticism and had
restored, or rather reinstated, the well-nigh godlike sovereignty of the human
spirit--Spirit with a capital S. The spirit of medieval man was, in good and bad
alike, still the spirit of the God whom he served. Epistemological criticism was
on the one hand an expression of the modesty of medieval man, and on the other a
renunciation of, or abdication from, the spirit of God, and consequently a
modern extension and reinforcement of human consciousness within the limits of
reason. Wherever the spirit of God is extruded from our human calculations, an
unconscious substitute takes its place. In Schopenhauer we find the unconscious
Will and the new definition of God, in Carus the unconscious, and in Hegel
identification and inflation, the practical equation of philosophical reason
with Spirit, thus making possible that intellectual juggling with the object
which achieved such a horrid brilliance in his philosophy of the State. Hegel
offered a solution of the problem raised by epistemological criticism in that he
gave ideas a chance to prove their unknown power of autonomy. They induced that
hubris of reason which led to Nietzsche's superman and hence to the catastrophe
that bears the name of Germany. Not only artists, but philosophers too, are
sometimes prophets.
6.20.1.4. § 360 I think that it is obvious that all
philosophical statements which transgress the bounds of reason are
anthropomorphic and have no validity beyond that which befalls to psychically
conditioned statements. A philosophy like Hegel's is a self-revelation of the
psychic background and, philosophically, a presumption. Psychologically, it
amounts to an invasion by the unconscious. The peculiar high-flown language
Hegel uses bears out this view: it is reminiscent of the megalomanic language of
schizophrenics, who use terrific spellbinding words to reduce the transcendent
to subjective form, to give banalities the charm or novelty, or pass off
commonplaces as searching wisdom. So bombastic a terminology is a symptom of
weakness, ineptitude, and lack of substance. But that does not prevent the
latest [publication date 1946] German philosophy from using the same crackpot
power-words and pretending that it is not unintentional psychology.
6.21. Unconscious economics
6.21.1. Cf. the "Quality of growth" and "Productivity"
debates: relevance for poverty and development (and the issue of "IT for
underdeveloped countries" as well as underdeveloped institutions in "developed"
countries, such as old age care, hospitals, and disadvantaged:
6.21.2.
http://www.worldbank.org/devforum/forum/qog_qog.html
6.21.3. http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/
6.21.4. http://www.worldbank.org/wbi/governance/
6.21.5. http://www.globkom.net/
6.21.6. Brynjolfson, E. (1993). The productivity paradox of
information technology. Communications of the ACM, 36(12),
67-77
6.21.7. Anonymous. (1999). The new economy: Work in progress.
On the surface, America's economy is changing dramatically, that much is plain.
But just how deep the changes go, and what they imply for the country's growth
in the long term, remains an open question. The Economist, (July 24th),
19-21. (See also the editorial in the same issue: "How real is the new economy?"
pp.15-16.) Registered readers can also retrieve the article on the new economy
assigned to the date 23 September 2000,
http://www.economist.com/editorial/freeforall/20000923/index_survey.html
6.22. Questioning definitions, reality, and truth
6.22.1. Plato's struggle with the sophists
6.22.2. The body and the "edutainment" experiencing-industry.
Cf. Plato's struggle with pleasure vs reason, today ignored or neglected
as much as the role of the ethical will. Cf. below on the "philosophy in
the flesh" and the encyclical Veritatis Splendor.
6.22.3. Cf. the seriousness of "error" in Clarence Lewis and
in Ernst Mach
6.22.4. The neglect of essence and form (relevant for
virtuality and imagery). Cf. Aveling, F. (1909). Essence and existence. In
Catholic Encyclopedia: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05543b.htm,
accessed 21 Nov. 2000
6.22.5. The new definitions of truth: compare to the old quest
on error, accuracy and precision, or, reliability and validity. Cf.
credibility=reliability+validity with reliability as "extent to which
observations by multiple researchers studying the same phenomenon with similar
purposes will yield approximately the same results" and validity "involves
checking the credibility of knowledge claims". Cf. also "Criteria for
convincing texts" (e.g. Walsham's ref. to Golden-Bidlle & Locke in
Organization Science, No.. 4, 1993): Authenticity (the ability of the
text to convey the vitality of everyday life as encountered in the field
setting), plausibility (the ability of the text to connect to the
personal and professional experience of the reader, and criticality (the
ability of the text to actively press readers to consider their
taken-for-granted ideas and beliefs)
6.23. The problems of empiricism and its practice
6.23.1. No less problems than classical idealism but more
natural in the tradition of Anglo-Saxon Lockean culture: new forms of postmodern
(e.g. ANT) or interpretivistic or ethnographic empiricism (Walsham, G.,1993,
Interpreting information systems in organizations . Chichester: Wiley),
as well as aestheticizing body-mysticism (as in Lakoff, G., & Johnson,
M.,1999, Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to
Western thought , New York: Basic Books). New forms of empiricism appeal to
formalists or empiricists, mathematicians or experimental psychologists who feel
an existential disappointment or disgust with the experienced barredness of
their early training and commitments (scientific analog of ideological
"new-age")
6.23.2. The burden of proof as instance of the demeaning of
tradition at the same time as "new traditions" are recurrently announced as
Klein & Myers on Walsham (1993 or 1995) and interpretive approaches to IS,
or ANT, etc. Forgetting that "fact-nets" are as important as supposed
(subjective) facts in that relations to and explanations or implications of old
facts and others' facts (like those of tradition and love, or religious
experience) also constitute the factuality and value of facts
6.23.3. The pressures exerted by the poorly financed expansion
of universities and colleges, in that students and faculty, while motivated to
free themselves from organizational bonds, are expected to show that they are
"doing" something, and preferably for industry and commerce, or at legitimating
personnel savings in public service by suggesting that the same amount or
quality of service to citizens is attainable with less personnel (and more
technical equipment). St