A University of Cape Town (UCT) senior information systems (IS) lecturer Kosheek Sewchurran has been awarded the prestigious European Union Erasmus Mundus scholarship.
The scholarship is named after the Dutch philosopher Desiderius Erasmus (1467-1536), of Rotterdam, who was the most famous and influential humanist of the Northern Renaissance. Erasmus was a prolific writer and the first European intellectual to exploit the power of the printed word.
Sewchurran says the Erasmus Mundus Programme is oriented towards globalising European education and the award to UCT is a reflection of the need in Europe for “an infusion of African ideas”.
“I think the reason that an IS academic, me in particular, was given the award is a result of my research focus. The project management discipline deals practically with the complexity of everyday management of knowledge workers,” Sewchurran says.
He says only recently has the critical mass of certified project managers begun to accept that the best practice approach (mostly from construction management), as the skills-based view does not equip one to be successful in business projects.
“In fact, I argued in my thesis that it does not just equip you adequately, it marginalises your outlook to such an extent you are just not capable of appreciating the complexity you are dealing with,” he says.
Sewchurran was selected from a pool of more than 1 600 international applicants to lecture at three top European universities as part of the Erasmus Mundus Programme, aimed at improving the quality of higher education by encouraging trans-national co-operation between universities.
The universities Sewchurran will attend are Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK; Politecnico di Milano, in Italy; and Sweden's Umea University.
Sewchurran, 38, says information systems is an inter-disciplinary subject as it requires knowledge of the human sciences, mathematical sciences and technologies, and therefore, the products of IS projects are perhaps the most complex effects to plan for.
“Very often you are trying to affect the ways in which people work, socialise or interact, using technology and this affects the culture of an organisation and/or society,” he says.
Sewchurran says the goals of an IS project are conceptual and these remain fragile throughout the project.
“Hence they depend on communication, human interaction, negotiation. Unlike construction projects. The project in essence requires that people are orchestrated to achieve something.”
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