Governance, architecture and action: Claudio's Shih

Received: 8 August 2005 Revised: 26 September 2005 Accepted: 28 September 2005 Introduction I cannot start this brief essay without first remembering the persona of Claudio. Having known him initially as a great academic, he has had a major influence in the development of my scientific path, reasoning and analytical skills. His intolerance for stylised facts, his outstanding intellectual curiosity and capacity to experiment with ‘borderline’ concepts and ideas have earned him the solid reputation he has in the Information Systems community and Organisation Studies all over the world. From the outside, and by the majority of those who had the luck of meeting him, Claudio was certainly not known for his overwhelming aura of humility. Indeed, he was a man self-conscious of his capacities, taking any opportunity to demonstrate them by combining good humour, innocence and the alertness of a deceptively sharp intellect. In my experience as his student, friend and co-author of a paper on e-government initiatives in Jordan (Ciborra & Navarra, 2005), I had the fortune of experiencing the many facets of his articulated personality. Witty, light-hearted and profound, at once he introduced me to an alien discipline. He greatly changed me in a process, which – I remember him saying – changed him too. When we first met, he had little interest about issues of international development, my topic of study prior to information systems. Over time, his interest grew, thanks to our many discussions and conversations about the possible connections and intertwining between the two subjects. In such a process, we have both been able to learn from each other’s strengths, planting a tree, which, years on, is now a strongly developing object of study in the discipline. I still remember when I went to visit him after he moved to the hospital in Milan. Upon his request I drove his car from London, but at the hospital they would not let me in with it. Then, he came down with an energy unusual for a person who was suffering as he did and said ‘Look, that is how it’s done’ he showed the man at the gate his growing tumor and he let us both in. Shocked and staring at the wheel I could not believe what I saw. Noticing that probably I was a little confused about such endeavour he said ‘Remember when we were in Jordan? There, like I did here today, we could not hold onto a specific methodology but had to try and experiment ourselves and create a course of action with no prescribed guideliney this is the essence of Shih, Architecture and Action’. His words crystallised in my mind. Interestingly, these concepts can be used beyond Claudio’s original problematisation, namely the study of organisations operating in the private sector, but also to conceptualise the development of governance forms emerging in institutions of government as well as in those with a public/private mandate. Therefore, now I would like to take the reader by hand to explore this topic, which I believe is one of the most important messages of Claudio’s work and one that he has transferred to me. Nevertheless, his enduring humour and his lucidity even European Journal of Information Systems (2005) 14, 492–494 & 2005 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved 0960-085X/05 $30.00