Doctor of Philosophy, Heal Thyself

As doctors of philosophy who are specialists in information systems, we routinely perform diagnoses of, and write prescriptions for, individuals, groups, organizations, societies, and their artifacts. The proverb “physician, heal thyself” requires that we ourselves, along with our scholarly artifacts, societies, organizations, and groups, undergo the same manner of diagnosis to which we subject others, and that we have a taste of our own medicine. This essay uses three published papers of Working Group 8.2 of the International Federation for Information Processing—from the 1984 Manchester meeting, from the 1990 Copenhagen meeting, and from the 1997 Philadelphia meeting—as a source of rich material with which to illustrate the difference in our diagnoses and prescriptions if we were to do unto ourselves what we do unto others.