On Thursday, 9 May 2024 at 17:30 SAST, Professor Seymour will deliver her lecture titled “Calling for a systems approach to technology in organisations”. The lecture will be held in the Seminar Room, Level 4, School of Economics Building, on middle campus.

Information systems research suffers from a lack of systems thinking. A core focus has been on how users and organisations adopt software and what variables improve this. This doesn’t explain why some software is successful or unsuccessful or what should be done about it. These are messy problems which systems thinking is good for.

In her inaugural lecture, Professor Seymour will show how systems thinking can explain challenges experienced when organisations implement enterprise software. Systems thinking can also help explain the associated coping mechanisms. She will also map a vision of how university courses can better prepare business analysts to help solve these challenges.

Professor Seymour, who is based in the Department of Information Systems at UCT, researches and teaches in the areas of business processes, enterprise systems and information systems education, with particular emphasis on regional development in Southern Africa. Her area includes studying how organisations, particularly within the small and medium enterprises (SME) and public sector in Africa, can derive benefit from their business processes and enterprise systems. She is also interested in solving educational challenges in this space and in working collaboratively on these challenges.

Her roles include serving as director of the Centre for IT and National Development in Africa, member of the executive of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists, principal researcher for Enterprise Systems Education for Africa and chair of the SAP African Academic Board.

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