Richard Kim

PhD Candidate (under examination)
Complex and Intelligent Systems Group,
School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering
The University of Queensland

Email: r.kim@uq.edu.au
Phone: 53417
Office: Rm 209, Management Information, Building 33, Union Rd

Richard is the IS Manager in UQ's Management Information section with responsibility for developing and maintaining the University's DataWarehouse. Richard has 18 years experience developing and implementing large-scale software systems, including 5 years as Senior Product Manager for a software development company based in Cambridge, England. Richard's doctoral thesis (currently under examination) seeks to understand the co-evolutionary dynamic of IS engagement and is, in no small part, an attempt to make sense of these experiences.

PhD
Awards
Papers, presentations
Brief Curriculum Vitae

PhD

Title: Interpreting Co-evolution and Information Systems Emergence.

Rather than approach the phenomenon of IS engagement from a strictly factors, process or politics perspective, this research seeks to understand (a) how software systems and organisations co-evolve in practice, and (b) the dynamics through which an IS emerges or fails to emerge in the overall environment.

There exists, by and large, an underlying assumption that regards implementation as an isolated feat and not as an ongoing achievement, thereby overlooking the contextual and mutually constitutive nature of systems and organisations. Furthermore there is a tendency to adopt either a stance of technological determinism, where outcomes are directly attributed to qualities inherent to the system, or sociological determinism, where outcomes are directly attributed to social orchestration. By doing so the co-evolutionary nature of IS engagement, in which the interplay between system and organisation unfolds in new and largely unanticipated directions, is ignored. In contrast, I regard engagement as a co-evolutionary process where the software system, the vendor, the organisation, and individual stakeholders are each forced to adapt continually to the changing context wrought by the movements of one another.

Even though the notion that organisations adapt and evolve has become so common that it has assumed the status of a self-evident fact, the drivers and mechanics have not been explored in practice. By using complex adaptive systems theory to study the motor of co-evolution coupled with the interpretive approach of actor-network theory to study form, we will gain an understanding of the deep phenomena at play as systems and organisations engage each other in practice, and an understanding of the dynamics through which an IS emerges or fails to emerge in the overall environment.

Awards

Best Reviewer, The 22nd Australasian Conference on Information Systems, Sydney, Australia, 29th November to 2nd December 2011.

Papers, presentations…

Kim, R.M. and Kaplan, S.M. (2011), "Toward a synthesis of complex adaptive systems and actor-network theory", Paper presented to The 22nd Australasian Conference on Information Systems, Sydney, Australia, 29th November to 2nd December 2011.
Kim, R.M. and Kaplan, S.M. (2010), "Preparing for Research Assessment: Co-evolution and gamesmanship", Paper presented to ACIS2010: The 21st Australasian Conference on Information Systems, Brisbane, Australia, 1-3 December 2010.
Kim, R.M. and Kaplan, S.M. (2006), "Interpreting socio-technical co-evolution: applying complex adaptive systems to IS engagement studies", Information Technology & People , Vol 19 No 1: Special issue on Complexity and IT design and evolution, pp. 35-54.
Kim, R.M. and Kaplan, S.M. (2006), "The Co-Evolutionary Dynamics of IS Engagement", Paper presented to ECIS2006: 14th European Conference on Information Systems, Goteburg, Sweden, 12-14 June 2006.
Kim, R.M. and Kaplan, S.M. (2005), "Adaptation on the Commons", in Khosla, R., Howlett, R.J. and Jain, L.C. (Eds), Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, Vol 3683, pp. 820-6.
Kim, R.M. (2005), "Interpreting co-evolution within IS engagements: On the synthesis of complex adaptive systems theory and actor-network theory", Paper presented to QualIT2005 Doctoral Consortium, Brisbane, Australia.
Kim, R.M. and Kaplan, S.M. (2005), "Co-evolution in Information Systems Engagement: exploration, ambiguity and the emergence of order", in Ågerfalk, P.J., Bannon, L. and Fitzgerald, B. (Eds), Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Action in Language, Organisations and Information Systems (ALOIS*2005), Limerick, Ireland, pp. 166-80.
Seebeck, L., Kim, R.M. and Kaplan, S. (2005), "Emergent Temporal Behaviour and Collaborative Work", in Gellersen, H., Schmidt, K., Beaudouin-Lafon, M. and Mackay, W. (Eds), ECSCW 2005: Proceedings of the Ninth European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Springer, Paris, France, pp. 123-42.

Brief CV

Education

23 Nov 2005

Doctoral Consortium - QualIT2005 Challenges for Qualitative Research

Feb 2003 +

Candidature for PhD, Complex and Intelligent Systems Group, ITEE, (Qld.)

Confirmation of candidature May 2004
High Distinction in Qualitative Business Research Methods

Nov 1992

BInfTech (Qld.)

Cumulative GPA of High Distinction (6.7 of a possible 7 in IT)
1992 Delta Technology Computer Graphics Prize

Work

August 2011 - Present	Manager (Information Systems), Management Information, The University of Queensland, Brisbane
Dec 2002 - July 2011	Senior Analyst, Management Information, The University of Queensland, Brisbane
Mar 1998 - Sept 2002	Senior Product Manager, Scientia, Cambridge, England
Feb 1996 - Mar 1998	Group Manager and Senior Software Engineer, Corporate Information Systems, Griffith University, Brisbane
Mar 1997 - Sept 1997	Project Manager, Timetabling Implementation, Student Administration, Griffith University, Brisbane
Jan 1993 - Feb 1996	Software Engineer, Corporate Information Systems, Griffith University, Brisbane

Last revised: Dec 2011.