A Professional Quarrel
Dr Jannis Kallinikos
A Professional Quarrel
In 2006 the journal Information Technology and People, 19/1 published a special issue on Complexity and IT design and evolution edited by E. Jacucci, O. Hanseth and Lyytinen, K. I became involved in the special issue both as an Associate Editor, reviewer and finally also as author of an article. One of the drafts I reviewed has been a paper by Hind Benbya and Bill McKelvey. My report was quite critical but also generous in the sense of suggesting publication after some revisions. My critique was that despite its complexity science vocabulary (and McKelvey is a well known complexity theorist) the paper was predicated on a rather static and ultimately simple view of reality, was rationalistic in its orientation and did not do justice to the variety of ways by which information systems feed recursively back to reality. In these comments of mine I used much of Bateson's and Luhmann's ideas. In their response to the editors, the authors claimed that all my accusations were to them a source of pride and I was no more than a vague constructivist and postmodernist (they mixed the two together indiscriminately). I felt that they were using too many labels in their response avoiding the substantive issues. After consulting with the guest editors and the chief editors of the journal I suggested to them that if they really believed what they were writing then we should have a public debate on the matters of disagreement. They agreed on that. The rules were the following: I would write a two pages comment on their paper and perspective and they would subsequently respond to my comments. I dedicated a few days to compose my critique of their paper but when Benbya and McKelvey read my piece they withdrew without supplying any convincing answer. It really felt like a badly spent time. The guest editors did intervene and wrote a critical response to Benbya and McKelvey but this did not change the state of the art. My commentary did remain unpublished, for it didn't really make sense to publish it without Benbya and McKelvey's originally agreed contribution. I thought I would give it a chance to be read by visitors to my blog. Here is then my criticism of their paper which can be read in combination with their paper that appeared in Information Technology and People, 19/1 and also my own paper included in the special issue.
Read my comments on Benbya and McKelvey
A Professional Quarrel
In 2006 the journal Information Technology and People, 19/1 published a special issue on Complexity and IT design and evolution edited by E. Jacucci, O. Hanseth and Lyytinen, K. I became involved in the special issue both as an Associate Editor, reviewer and finally also as author of an article. One of the drafts I reviewed has been a paper by Hind Benbya and Bill McKelvey. My report was quite critical but also generous in the sense of suggesting publication after some revisions. My critique was that despite its complexity science vocabulary (and McKelvey is a well known complexity theorist) the paper was predicated on a rather static and ultimately simple view of reality, was rationalistic in its orientation and did not do justice to the variety of ways by which information systems feed recursively back to reality. In these comments of mine I used much of Bateson's and Luhmann's ideas. In their response to the editors, the authors claimed that all my accusations were to them a source of pride and I was no more than a vague constructivist and postmodernist (they mixed the two together indiscriminately). I felt that they were using too many labels in their response avoiding the substantive issues. After consulting with the guest editors and the chief editors of the journal I suggested to them that if they really believed what they were writing then we should have a public debate on the matters of disagreement. They agreed on that. The rules were the following: I would write a two pages comment on their paper and perspective and they would subsequently respond to my comments. I dedicated a few days to compose my critique of their paper but when Benbya and McKelvey read my piece they withdrew without supplying any convincing answer. It really felt like a badly spent time. The guest editors did intervene and wrote a critical response to Benbya and McKelvey but this did not change the state of the art. My commentary did remain unpublished, for it didn't really make sense to publish it without Benbya and McKelvey's originally agreed contribution. I thought I would give it a chance to be read by visitors to my blog. Here is then my criticism of their paper which can be read in combination with their paper that appeared in Information Technology and People, 19/1 and also my own paper included in the special issue.
Read my comments on Benbya and McKelvey
posted by Jannis Kallinikos at 10:23 AM
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