ETHICS: The Past, Present and Future of Socio-Technical Systems Design - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 196

contributions to information science research. In 1999, she won a Leo lifetime
achievement award of the Association for Information Systems (The Guardian, 2006).
Enid Mumford made a major contribution to research in a number of areas, in the
authors opinion one of her key research findings was Mumford and Beekman (1994):
“If a technical system is created at the expense of a social system, the results
obtained will be sub-optimal.”
The other major contribution is that the findings that she made at the start of her re-
search in the 1970's are still current in the early part of the twenty first century. In
1974, she identified (Hedberg and Mumford, 1974):
Perhaps the strongest influence that changes the practice model held by the
systems designers will be when the users get up and shout “we are not as you
think we are”.
This statement is as relevant now as it was then, and demonstrates that Enid Mum-
ford's research will be applicable for many more decades to come.
References
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niques and Tool, 4th edn. McGraw-Hill Education, UK (2006)
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niques and Tools, 2nd edn. McGraw-Hill, UK (1995)
3. Davis, G.B., Lee, A.S., Nickles, K.R., Chatterjee, S., Hartung, R., Wu, Y.: Diagnosis of an
information systems failure: A framework and interpretative process. Information and
Management 23, 293-318 (1992)
4. Hedberg, B., Mumford, E.: The Design of Computer Systems. In: Proceedings of the IFIP
Conference on Human Choice and Computers, Vienna, Austria (1974)
5. Legge, K., Mumford, E.: Designing Organisations for satisfaction and Efficiency. Gower
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Management, UK (1969)
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Publishers, UK (1972), ISBN 0-582-45008-X
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lands (1981), ISBN 90-247-2562-3
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(1983b), ISBN 0-903808-285
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