The mind or the heart? it depends on the (definition of) situation
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Research article
The mind or the heart? it depends on the (definition of) situation Claudio Ciborra Department of Information Systems, LSE, IULM, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway Correspondence: Professor Leslie Willcocks, LSE, Houghton Street, London WC2 2AE. E-mail: [email protected]
Abstract This paper1 establishes the importance of situatedness of experience in Information Systems (IS) studies, but also critiques the limited notion of situatedness all too frequently employed. In the original language of phenomenology as used by Heidegger, ‘Befindlichkeit’ means not just ‘state of mind’ but also refers to disposition, mood, affectedness and emotion. The paper reviews the controversies in the literature generated by opponents to the situatedness literature and provides two case studies to show how current IS uses of the situatedness perspectives differ from the original one. From this discussion, the paper argues that the limited IS research agendas on situated action found in AI, cognitive and social sciences need to capture the inner life of the actor, mind and heart, through the scope of a renewed, authentic, phenomenological tradition. Journal of Information Technology (2006) 21, 129–139. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jit.2000062 Keywords: situated action; phenomenology; information systems; AI; Heidegger Dorabella: ‘Nel petto un Vesuvio d’avere mi par’ (In my breast is like having a Vesuvius) from Cosi’ Fan Tutte – Da Ponte – Mozart ‘The mob within the heart police cannot suppress.’ E. Dickinson ‘Unter jedem Gedanken steckt ein Affekt.’ (Under any thought hides an affect) F. Nietzsche ‘We must acknowledge drives (emotions) as the most primitive manifestations of the active principle by which we grasp knowledge and hold it.’ M. Polanyi
Introduction hese days the adjective ‘situated’, the noun ‘situation’, the Latin expression ‘in situ’, and the abstract concept of ‘situatedness’, are liberally employed by those researchers and scholars who want to take and articulate alternative approaches to the study of organizations, the analysis of knowledge and change, the design of sophisticated technical systems, and in general the understanding of the complex interactions between people and technologies. These alternative perspectives have been developed and deployed against the positivist paradigm in social and organizational inquiry (Burrell and Morgan, 1979) and the normative discourse in organization science aimed at finding law-like relationships among organizational facts,
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events and behaviours (Deetz, 1996). They support especially the interpretivist paradigm, but are also employed in other radical or critical discourses. A few examples taken from the recent organization theory and information systems literatures exemplify the ‘situated’ perspectives. In the theory of organizational change triggered by the introduction of technological innovations, Orlikowski (1996) contrasts ‘situated change’ to planned, determi
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