The scholarly influence of Heinz Klein: Ideational and social measures of his impact on IS research and IS scholars

Truex, Duane; Cuellar, Michael; Takeda, Hirotoshi; Vidgen, Richard

Abstract

Heinz Klein was a fine scholar and mentor whose work and life have inspired us to explore the notion of scholarly influence which we cast as ideational and social influence. We adopt a portfolio of measures approach, using the Hirsch family of statistics to assess ideational influence and Social Network Analysis centrality measures for social influence to profile Heinz Klein's contribution to information systems (IS) research. The results show that Heinz was highly influential in both ideational terms (a significant body of citations) and social terms (he is close to the heart of the IS research community). Reflecting on the major research themes and scholarly values espoused by Klein we define a Kleinian view of IS research, grounded in Habermas Theory of Communicative Action, and use that to frame four affirmative propositions to address what we observe to be a distortion and attenuation o f the academic discourse on the evaluation of scholarly production. This paper argues that focus should be shifted from the venue of publication of the research to the uptake of the ideas contained in it, thus increasing the openness of the discourse, participation in the discourse, truthfulness, and reduction of the inequities in power distribution within academia. © 2011 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved.

Citation

Truex, D., Cuellar, M., Takeda, H., & Vidgen, R. (2011). The scholarly influence of Heinz Klein: Ideational and social measures of his impact on IS research and IS scholars. European Journal of Information Systems, 20(4), 422-439. https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2011.16

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Mar 17, 2011
• Online Publication Date: Dec 19, 2017
• Publication Date: Jul 1, 2011
• Deposit Date: Nov 13, 2014
• Journal: European Journal Of Information Systems
• Print ISSN: 0960-085X
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 20
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 422-439
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/ejis.2011.16
• Keywords: Heinz Klein; Scholarly influence; Hirsch statistics; Social network analysis; Lexical analysis; Critical social theory; Ideational influence; Social influence
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/468443
• Publisher URL: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1057/ejis.2011.16
• Contract Date: Nov 13, 2014