Contextuality and Information Systems: how the interplay between paradigms can help

Through this paper, we theorize on the meanings and roles of context in the study of information systems. The literatures of information systems and information science both explicitly conceptualize information systems (and there are multiple overlapping definitions). These literatures also grapple with the situated and generalizable natures of an information system. Given these shared interests and common concerns, this paper is used as a vehicle to explore the roles of context and suggests how multi-paradigmatic research ??? another shared feature of both information science and information systems scholarship ??? provides a means to carry forward more fruitful studies of information systems. We discuss the processes of reconstructed logic and logic-in-use in terms of studying information systems. We argue that what goes on in the practice of researchers, or the logic-in-practice, is typified by what we are calling the contextuality problem. In response, we envision a reconstructed logic, which is an idealization of academic practices regarding context. The logic-in-use of the field is then further explained based on two different views on context. The paper concludes by proposing a model for improving the logic-in-use for the study of information systems

Are Judges Motivated to Create Good Securities Fraud Doctrine?

‘How Do Judges Maximize? (The Same Way Everybody Else Does – Boundedly): Rules of Thumb in Securities Fraud Opinions’, by Stephen M. Bainbridge and G. Mitu Gulati, confronts the reader with a theory about judicial behavior in the face of complex, unexciting cases such as those involving securities fraud. The story is simple: few judges find any opportunity for personal satisfaction or enhanced reputation here, so they simply try to minimize cognitive effort, off-loading much of the work that has to be done to their clerks. The evidence that Bainbridge and Gulati offer is the creation of some ten or so heuristic legal doctrines in securities law marked by two essential features: (1) they rest on superficial, or at least not self-evidently accurate, empirical assumptions about marketplace behavior, and (2) they readily permit the summary dismissal of cases as a matter of law. The authors find no good explanation for these besides some form of cognitive sloth. This claim is bound to touch a sensitive nerve, especially among judges, former clerks, and academics who want to see much more going on in the case law than this. My hunch is that the authors have put their finger on something very important, but that they have oversimplified. I suspect that, on average, judges are more motivated than they suggest and try fairly hard to get their cases right. But severe constraints of time and lack of knowledge force them to rely more on intuition about the right result than careful inquiry. Intuitively, the heuristics identified by Bainbridge and Gulati appeal to the judges as substantively reasonable, in the sense that even if they are imperfect, they do more good than harm. The question this commentary explores is what makes judges think that. The answer is not likely to be simple

Open political science, methodological nationalism and European Union studies

The relationship between European integration and political science has always offered a very good case study of the intersection between novel developments in the ‘real world’ and the evolution of the academic study of politics. The area of political science now usually dubbed EU studies has, of course, been driven routinely by the unfolding story of the object it seeks to analyse. Put simply, without the EU there would be no EU studies. The emergence of integration theory in the 1950s and 1960s was a bold attempt to build a general comparative framework out of the inductive study of the European experience that commenced with the inauguration of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. Subsequent bursts of integrative activity such as the single market project of the mid 1980s and the progress towards monetary union and significant enlargement in the 1990s have provided cues for more analysts of politics to ply their trade (at least partly) in relation to the EU. The EU’s importance as a supplier of binding decisions and as perhaps the key agent for the governance of the European economy have demanded the study of the polity/governance system through which such authoritative outputs emerge. By any reckoning, the proliferation of specialist journals and the membership levels of relevant professional associations suggests a field in robust health, even if some sceptics openly question the overall quality or ‘scientific value’ of the aggregated output of EU studies