Robert Johnston

Biography

Robert joined the University of Sydney in January 2014. He was formerly the John Sharkey Chair of Information Systems and Organisation at University College Dublin and has also held positions at the University of Melbourne and Monash University. He completed his PhD at Monash University in 1999. Before becoming and academic Robert had a career in IT for 13 years as a programmer, analyst, project leader and as an independent consultant. Robert's Research specialties include: Practice theoretical approaches to IT in organising, ICT-enabled organisational innovation, IT appropriation, Electronic Commerce, Operations Management, Supply Chain Management, Lean Management, and Theoretical Foundations of IS. Robert has raised in excess of $1,500,000 of grant funding including 3 ARC discovery grants, 3 ARC linkage grants, and 1 nationally competitive Irish grant. He has extensive academic administration experience including Head of Department, Head of Research Centre, Research Chair, Member of School Executive. He has extensive research mentoring experience, both informal and formal. He has supervised 11 completed PhD by Dissertation candidates, 6 Masters by Thesis candidates, and many Honours and minor theses. Robert has been an Associate Editor for MIS Quarterly and the European Journal of Information Systems. He has over 150 refereed publications, many in leading international journals, including MIS Quarterly, Information Systems Research, Management Science, European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Journal of the Operational Research Society, International Journal of Production Economics and OMEGA.

Research Interest

Robert’s research interests have clustered around the following three themes: Theoretical Foundations of Information and Organisation: A major theme of Robert’s research has been the role of ICT in organisational innovation. Where conventional theories of technology management tend to evaluate the innovative potential of ICT as a pre-specified component of top-down management plans, over a period of 25 years Robert has developed an alternative perspective that emphasises the socially interpreted and emergent nature of technology appropriation. Theoretically, this work draws on process philosophical and practice theoretical works of Heidegger, Giddens, Bourdieu, Gibson, Rorty, Gadamer and others, and empirically on interpretive qualitative data analysis methods. Inter-organisational Information Systems and Information Infrastructures: Beyond the organisational context, Robert has researched and published widely on the implementation of ICT-based initiatives for aligning operations across organisational boundaries for supply chain management, electronic commerce and lean production, in the retail, pharmaceutical and automotive industries. These projects have used data from major Australian and Multi-national firms such as Unilever, Coles, Ford, Toyota and many smaller organisations in their supply chains, and has involved collaboration with researchers from Monash, Melbourne, ANU, Aachen, Muenster, Tsinghua, Cambridge and UCD. Information Systems for Routine Operations: Routine action in operational settings (manufacturing, hospital wards, emergency despatch) poses significant challenges for the development of effective computer support systems. Action choices in these environments are often incorrectly treated as decisions, despite extensive evidence from cognitive, behavioural and neuro-sciences that this is not the case. Over a 20 year period Robert has studied the efficacy of certain entrenched manual IS to develop an alternative to the Decision Support System paradigm, called Situated Choice Support Systems, applicable to routine action choices. This work won the Stafford Beer Medal of the OR Society in 2012.