V. The Global Challenge: Enacting a Systems Perspective, an Action Perspective, a Community Research Perspective, and an Ethical Perspective for the Global Role of Information Technology

Not coincidentally, the first four challenges prepare me to frame the fifth and final challenge: the role of information technology in globalization.

First, a systems perspective will help us frame what globalization is in the first place.  Anthony Giddens, in his recent remarks on globalization (http://www.timesofindia.com/290399/29intw1.htm and http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_99/week1/week1.htm) reminds me that globalization is not just technological, but also economic, political, and cultural.  Giddens says that globalization "also means a whole series of other changes in the nature of governance, changes in the moral nature of the world community and changes in cultural communication. It also means to me changes at the level of everyday life and family. At its simplest, it is increased interdependence."  Now, what this means to me is that globalization is the systems approach "writ large."  We are already familiar with what the systems approach originally meant, and you heard me, just before, implore you about how we need to put the meaning of "systems" back into "information systems."  In operations research, the community of scholars forgot the systems approach, with the result that O.R. lost its prominence as a field or, as is stated in the title of one of Russell Ackoff's article, "The Future of Operations Research is Past."  In IS, the community of scholars forgot the systems approach, with the result that we have often been left with a technocentric view that paves the way for systems failure and oppressive uses of technology.  And now, when it comes to globalization, one challenge is whether we scholars will finally get the systems approach right this time around -- or will we again end up focusing again on just a subsystem, namely, the computer subsystem, and again, end up falling short of our promise?  Shifting our focus away from the technology alone, and broadening it to take a systems approach to the economic, the political, the cultural, the moral, the everyday, as well as the technological, will be a necessary condition for our efforts to be successful in understanding and properly studying globalization.

Second, an action perspective will help us frame why we are studying globalization in the first place.  Our obligation as scholars is not limited to observing, hypothesizing, and predicting what will happen with globalization, but also extends to enacting and creating how globalization can unfold.  Both good things and bad things are poised to happen in globalization - the future is not determinate, and we can influence it, not just sit back and observe it and offer predictions about it.  Giddens gives some interesting examples of the possible opposite impacts of globalization.  For instance, on the one hand, globalization can mean Americanization, as McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Microsoft become visible around the world; on the other hand, globalization can allow third-world in-roads into the Western world, as we see in the Latinization of Miami and Los Angeles and the Hong-Kong-ization of Vancouver and Toronto.  For another instance, on the one hand, globalization can mean that nations, states, and cities lose their independence and distinctiveness; on the other hand, globalization can accompany independence movements, as in Scotland and Quebec, and the creation of new independent states in Eastern Europe.  For the last instance I will mention, globalization can mean an integrated culture where, as Giddens notes, we all share values that make Nelson Mandela a global celebrity; on the other hand, globalization can also mean the isolation of individuals, where there are now some young people who prefer to relate to each other through electronic chat rooms, instead of communicating by telephone and face-to-face meetings.  As researchers and scholars, we need not and should not limit ourselves to observing and explaining objectively at a distance.  I believe that we can do our research so as to enact information technology to steer globalization to unfold in one direction or another.  This keynote address is not the place to outline how to do this, but the "Critical Social Theory" perspective, including the work of Jurgen Habermas, provides a framework that I believe is appropriate for IS researchers who seek to enact pro-social and emancipatory impacts of information technology in globalization.

Third, a Community Research Perspective can help us reflect on how we might organize ourselves as a scholarly community, to reflect and enact globalization.  The major task here pertains to the globalization of our research community - and I mean "research community" in the same way that I explained it earlier.  As the number of IS researchers around the world continues to increase - it will not be enough only for all of these researchers to learn research methodology, experimental design, participant observation, contextualization, and so forth.  We must do these things, but in addition, Thomas Kuhn, in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, explains that the development and acceptance of theory also depends on the social forces within the scientific community.  Therefore, as our research community becomes globalized, we must also tend deliberately to the matter of cultivating the social and political forces that bind us together as a research community.  Just because there are IS researchers around the globe does not mean that there is automatically a global IS research community - we must also do things to enact this global community.  MIS Quarterly has been slowly, but steadily, increasing the representation of non-North Americans on its editorial board.  ICIS is meeting more often outside of the United States.  IFIP Working Group 8.2 has been, in my opinion, quite successful in fostering a common research sensibility around the world.  And BITWorld is certainly playing a role in the needed global socialization of IS scholars.  And I don't see the globalization of our research community meaning the westernization of scholars from developing countries - I see that the West also stands to learn from the rest of the world.  For instance, I remember that the University of Minnesota used to take the position that the principles and theories of IS are invariant across cultures - but then, I recall IS research from Singapore pointing out how culture makes a difference to IS theory.  My main point is that we researchers must practice the golden rule when it comes to globalization: unless we accept the fact that we must first understand and integrate ourselves as our own global research community, we will hardly be in a position to understand globalization at large, much less the impacts that information technology and globalization can have on each other.

Fourth, an ethical perspective requires us, as scholars, to take a stand on information technology and globalization.  As for all ethical issues, I believe that I can prescribe only for myself, not for others.  An emerging mission, for myself, is to safeguard our existence as a scholarly community.  And if we cannot safeguard our own community, how can we pretend to safeguard, much less promote, the world at large?  What I'm specifically referring to is the precarious organizational position of IS in the university setting.  When I look around North America, I see some universities that have never granted tenure to their assistant professors in IS, or have not done so in over 10 or 15 years.  When I look around North America, I see some MBA programs that not only lack the option of an IS concentration - these MBA programs don't even have a required core course in IS!  It's no wonder, therefore, that we still have technology-illiterate managers like the ones in the Fortune 500 company rolling out ERP - which I mentioned earlier - who see an information system not as a system, but as an "appliance" to be plugged in, like a washing machine.  And in many North American universities, I see that there is no IS department - the IS professors are part of a larger group or area that includes accounting, or management, or marketing, or business law, and so forth - where the power to make decisions about hiring, promoting, and tenuring IS professors is in the hands of people who still think that our field is only about programming!  In North America, individual IS researchers have concentrated on their individual careers and research agendas.  This is only to be expected.  But the overall welfare of our IS research community in North America, and the global system that our teaching and research contribute to, could be greater than it is now, if only we scholars had also adopted a collective focus on safeguarding our well being not only as individuals, but also as a community.  As IS research rightly establishes itself in universities around the world, an ethical challenge is to take a position not only to do the research, but to take up the parallel work of establishing and safeguarding a global community of IS scholars – or else, how can we profess to have any expertise on enacting and safeguarding the global community at large?

SUMMARY

So let me sum up by returning to Andy Bytheway's words, which I quoted at the beginning.  If indeed the state of IS research in South Africa is embryonic (with one or two notable exceptions), then these five challenges should provide food for thought on how to truly move forward, rather than repeat the past.