Posted by Luke in Recently I was handed what is probably the most disturbing news I have heard since someone I know died. You are ‘surplus to requirements’. Well, it’s not official yet … it may never be official. You see, I am part of a Business School that has no place for Information Systems people anymore. They have told us that they will be ‘discontinuing us’. Shoving us off, moving us away and so forth. Is it a crisis or an opportunity? A failure or the seeds of success? I can’t tell. What I do know is that I am thinking dark thoughts and reflecting on what is to date twelve years of my life (two more if you include the year I did at TAFE and in the other university up the road) in the discipline of information systems. IS is dead IS is DEAD LONG LIVE IS!
Instead of offering a scowl, which I am entitled, I felt I should reflect on the key thing that IS failed to do over the last decade. It failed to be what other people wanted it to be. It failed to present coherence because systems thinking is the search for comprehensiveness and complexity which the micro-managing dot finders in management schools are typically trying to find, is not coherent. This causes this, they say, that causes that they say. Bullshit, I cry, nevertheless it falls on the hardest of ears. The sound of my own voice reverberates back to me, ‘We can’t just analyse, we need to ‘synthesise’ because drilling down only works sometimes (Hat tip: Dewey and Rorty). Why do we need ‘systems’ anyway? Why do we need ‘systems’ thinking? What a steaming load, you say, that’s academery of the worst kind. Looking for comprehensive, complex explainations of things, instead of simple cause and effect (WMD). Honestly!
Instead of quoting an endless stream of scholars from Europe (Checkland, Ulrich, Jackson, Flood, Mingers, Stacey) and the United States (Ackoff, Churchman, Senge) I will say this: What a shame that Australia is still trying to be like everyone else and ignoring it’s own ecclectism. In essence these things are now: surplus to requirements. They don’t fit in the conception of business education anymore, even though I believe they should. No doubt, we will see the next edition of Harvard Business Review or MIT Sloan waxing lyrical about ‘mobile technologies’ or ‘complex problem solving’ but they won’t be from my neck of the woods because it’s being chopped down!
In ending this short reflection, I am reminded of my own position in the university system and my right to express my feelings about it. It’s failing. Badly. My parting shot is this: You cannot have business without an understanding of systems, and you cannot have systems without an understanding of business.
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