Information Systems Research and Social Responsibility

Now and then a research field needs to reflect on its own presuppositions and fundamental objectives. A good opportunity to do this opens up when the research field is evaluated or commented upon by someone from the outside. In the last number of SJIS two American researchers, David Hakken and Langdon Winner, gave their personal views on Scandinavian information systems (IS) research. They both commented upon the historical importance and the future prospects of Scandinavian IS research. Hakken and Winner asked important and, I believe, urgent questions of the Scandinavian IS research community. Hakken framed one of the problems he saw within Scandinavian IS research as related to a dual set of goals “a political agenda of social transformation along with a professional agenda to legitimate system development”. Hakken observes how these two goals interfere and create a problematic research arena, since IS researchers try to fulfil two different and in many respects contradictory research interests at the same time. Winner is more direct in his criticism when he asks explicit questions such as how it is possible that ideas similar to the ones stemming from the UTOPIA project, about the “friendly” user interface, also came out of “purely profit seeking capitalist firms” such as Apple and Microsoft. I interpret Winner’s overall question to be something like: We can see that Scandinavian IS research has influenced our understanding of the design process, but has this change lead to any significant changes in products and in society as a whole? Information Systems Research and Social Responsibility