Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic SIGPhil's Philosophical dialogues

SIGPhil's Philosophical dialogues - the story behind the work

Today I talk with Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic, currently Emeritus Professor at University of New South Wales, Sydney. Dubravka started her academic career at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Sarajevo, ex-Yugoslavia, where she was elected a professor of Information Systems (IS) in 1990 in the Informatics Department. Since 1993 she has continued her academic career in Australia, first as professor of Information Systems at Griffith University, Brisbane, then at UWS, Sydney, before joining University of New South Wales in 2002. Among many roles she held, she served as the Head of School of Information Systems, Technology and Management and as the Presiding Member of the UNSW Business School. She has published in the top IS journals and conferences, co-edited special issues published in MIS Quarterly and Information System Journal. She is currently a Senior Editor of Journal of Association of Information Systems and Information and Organization.

Dubravka's intellectual journey, her research interests and publications reflect criticality, pluralism and concerns for social social implications of IT and IS. Her research has spanned a wide range from studies of social systems of information and government information systems, to ethnographies of digital work, collaboration and decision-making, to exploring electronic commerce and the transformative role of IS in economies in transition. Majority of these studies were informed by Critical Social Theory, involving fieldwork and theorizing grounded in empirical data, that led to theoretical and methodological contributions to the critical approach to IS research. More recently she has engaged in developing and applying a processual sociomaterial approach to understanding and researching IS and organizing, that overcomes the entrenched dichotomy between the technological and the social.

Today we talk about her philosophical pursuits that informed or underpinned her studies. I asked her how she chose particular approaches and philosophical foundations when studying different IS phenomena; how she recognized that different times and different phenomena require change to dominant understanding of reality. We also talk about core and boundaries of the IS discipline. We discuss examples how her PhD students relate sometimes abstract philosophical thought to empirical observations in order to provide better explanation and much more. And with this brief introduction I bring you prof. Dubravka Cecez-Kecmanovic.