Citation for the Stafford Beer Medal 2023
Tapani Rinta-Kahila, Ida Someh, Nicole Gillespie, Marta Indulska, Shirley Gregor
Algorithmic Decision-Making and System Destructiveness: A Case of Automatic Debt Recovery
The judges were impressed with the timeliness and pertinence of articles in the recent volume of EJIS under consideration for the Stafford Beer award, tackling issues such as fake online reviews, the risks of applying people analytics and automated algorithmic decision-making. This latter topic is addressed in the winning paper. The paper examines the negative unintended consequences of algorithmic decision-making using a case study of the Australian government’s “Robodebt” programme. The paper takes systems thinking and organisational limits perspectives to develop a set of generalisable mechanisms that can benefit investigations of the consequences of algorithmic decision-making. The judges were impressed with the article’s clear arguments, focus on a pressing real-world issue and contributions that have practical relevance to organisations worldwide.
European Journal of Information Systems Vol 31 (3), 313–338
https://doi.org/10.1080/0960085X.2021.1960905