Roode gets roar of approval with LEO award

Singular honour: Prof Dewald Roode has won the Lyons Electronic Office Lifetime Achievement Award, considered the highest international recognition for information systems professionals

Professor Dewald Roode, seen by many as the father of Information Systems in South Africa, has won the Lyons Electronic Office (LEO) Lifetime Achievement Award, considered the highest international recognition for information systems professionals.

It was presented at the International Conference on Information Systems in Paris. Among his many other roles, Roode is a visiting professor in the Department of Information Systems in the Faculty of Commerce.

The LEO award is named after one of the world's first commercial applications of computing and recognises "outstanding individuals in the information systems community who have made exceptional contributions to research in and practice of Information Systems".

Roode is the first recipient from Africa to win this award. He was nominated by a large number of people from around the globe, including Professor Mikko Korpela of the University of Kuopio, Finland.

Korpela said: " ... his most outstanding achievements include three things. Firstly, he has championed the interpretive research approach in Africa as an alternative to barren mainstream positivist research. Secondly, he has raised a full generation of 30 new PhD degree holders who are spread throughout South Africa and abroad. And thirdly, he has been active as one of the key drivers of the world IT forum."

In Roode's acceptance speech, read in Paris on his behalf, he said: "It is a great honour to receive the LEO award, and I humbly would like to accept this on behalf of the South African information systems community. I would also like to acknowledge all who have made it possible for me to achieve my objectives during my academic career: my family - in particular, Annemarie, my dear wife of 45 years, my South African academic colleagues, and, especially, my students."