Claudio Ciborra and the information systems field: legacy and development
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Editorial
Claudio Ciborra and the information systems field: legacy and development Journal of Information Technology (2006) 21, 127–128. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jit.2000061
Special Issue Editorial September 2006 he recent untimely death of Professor Claudio Ciborra in February 2005 raises the question: how can his major contribution to the Information Systems (IS) field be consolidated, celebrated and progressed? His passing was honoured with many personal reminiscences and assessments of his contribution in a special issue of The European Journal of Information Systems (Volume 14 No. 5, 2005). In planning the present Special Issue we intended to take this further, and to consolidate and progress Claudio’s contribution by commissioning detailed research papers influenced by but developing further his work. In ideas and research Claudio was a polymath but also worked in a mainstream European philosophical tradition. At home in the world of Husserl and Heidegger, he could trade ideas with anyone, and could embrace Williamson’s work on Transaction Cost Economics as equally well as the work of Polanyi and Nietzche. Improvisation, innovation and critique were words he frequently used. His book The Labyrinths of Information shows the breadth and depth of the ideas he drew upon. A critique of the IS field, it is organised around Krisis, Bricolage, Gestell, Derive, Xenia, Shi, Kairos and Affectio. His work and interests are also well represented in three collected volumes: Teams Markets and Systems (Cambridge: CUP 1993), From Control To Drift: The Dynamics of Corporate Infrastructures (Oxford: OUP 2001), and The Social Study Of Information and Communication Technologies (Oxford: OUP 2004) Claudio built up a formidable legacy in a field somewhat short of new ideas, methods and directions, let alone philosophical underpinnings. For this special issue we offer a new, unpublished work by him in the form of the first paper The Mind or The Heart: It Depends on (The Definition Of) Situation. This work captures the essential thrust of Claudio’s intent – challenging, thoughtful, well researched, embracing ideas, critical and seeking to move the IS field on, into new territory and new understandings. In this he set a benchmark for our choice of papers. We received twenty submissions, each of which had three referees, and in the end, after a series of paper revisions and difficult choices, we narrowed it down to seven further publishable papers. Some other papers that could not be made ready in time against the tight deadline for this Special Issue would be considered for a more extensive book we are scheduling, and indeed we would like to take this opportunity to invite further contributions to that volume. Interested parties should contact one of the Special Issue editors as listed below, in the first instance.
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In this present issue two papers elaborate on Ciborra’s phenomenological perspective of IS and its explanatory strengths
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