BUSS 951
Critical Issues in Information
Systems
Lecture 1
Overview
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Agenda
 Overview of the Subject
 Issues Selected
 Motivations
 Subject Outline
 Aim and Objectives
 Content and Method of Presentation
 Assessment
 Texts and Resources
 Schedules
 Safety Procedures
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Overview of the Subject
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Overview of the Subject
Conflict in IS Curricula
 a conflict exists within most Information
Systems curricula at tertiary levels in
North America, Australia, and New
Zealand.
 between preparing students for the demands
of their professional careers while
simultaneously
 empowering them with the skills to think
critically about the basis of their discipline,
and with a sufficiently broad training, to be
able to draw from other literatures and
traditions to form new theory, new method and
new insights.
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Overview of the Subject
IS Discipline is not what you think!
 need to demonstrate to students that the
bases of their discipline are not the only
ways of thinking about these issues
 that unorthodox knowledge may be
productively applied to the fundamental
interests of information systems: the
analysis, design and implementation of
systems in organisations
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Overview of the Subject
Conflict found in other Disciplines
 this conflict is faced by many new
disciplines in Universities which have until
recently only had a professional status
 most areas of Commerce, Law, Health Services
and the Caregiving Professions
 most noticable in those disciplines which have
strong professional certification criteria to
meet, such as Accountancy, where there has
been continuous pressure to extend
undergraduate courses from three to four
years
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Overview of the Subject
Student need exposure to other ideas
 students need exposure to ideas from
other disciplines which might be relevant
to systems development, but the IS discipline has not had the kind of
disciplinary mix which characterises other
social sciences
 while exceptions exist, for the most part
students enrolled in most North American,
Australian, and New Zealand information
systems curricula are fed an unrelenting diet
of hard systems thinking
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Overview of the Subject
Need to look at new IS Research
 even significant developments in theory
and practice from within the information
systems discipline are rarely discussed in
class
 an extreme example of this occurred when
visiting a North American University, where I
needed to explain to a Systems Analysis class
the existence of a distinctly 'human centred'
tradition in Scandinavia and of the existence of
‘soft systems’ thinking in the United Kingdom
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Overview of the Subject
Move beyond ‘hard systems’
 Most information systems curricula leave
students with an overwhelming view that
the design of systems is only possible by
deploying a small range of techniques…
 data oriented,
 process oriented,
 object oriented
 …all within the same theoretical
framework- ‘hard’ systems thinking
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Overview of the Subject
History of IS Discipline
 Most students are not even be aware that
the IS discipline arose out of a particular
set of historical, economic and social
circumstances
 Most students don't even view ‘theory’ as
having a place within their future
professional lives. Many students
incorrectly think that information systems
is theory-neutral, after all "... where just
trying to provide solutions to
organisational problems"!
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Overview of the Subject
‘Theory Neutral’ View in Methods
 this ‘theory neutral’ view is often implicitly
reinforced when students are exposed to a
range of systems development methodologies,
as for the most part, the same techniques reoccur across a broad range of different
methodologies, eg:
 Entity-Relationship-Attribute (ERA) analysis is found
in database methodologies, process methodologies,
and prototyping methodologies.
 the same with the large variety of Data Flow
Diagramming (DFD) techniques, where the
differences between them seem largely cosmetic
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Overview of the Subject
Need a Critical Reflective Practice
 Most IS students cannot understand that:
 the particular type of systems thinking found in the
information systems discipline is only one type of
systems thinking, or
 that it is possible to develop systems directly from
the language users employ in the workplace, or that
there exists a discipline called semiotics which
directly addresses meaning
 students are neither prepared for these ideas or
empowered with a critical reflective practice to
use them
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Issues Selected
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Issues Selected
Must satisfy the following Criteria
 Only issues which satisfied the following
criteria were considered for inclusion in this
subject:
 the issue had to have a considerable ‘folk wisdom’,
a ‘currency’ amongst practitioners and academics,
and therefore a wide circulation or high profile
within the information systems discipline
 the ‘issue’ must have theoretical, methodological,
and substantive significance for the information
systems discipline
 the ‘issue’ must be addressed by other ‘unorthodox’
literatures
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Issues Selected
Defining Unorthodox Literatures & Interests
 By ‘unorthodox literatures’ I mean those
disciplines and their literatures which
would not normally be associated with the
interests of the information systems
discipline
 I define the ‘interests’ of the information
systems discipline to mean the analysis,
design and implementation and use of
systems in organisations
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Issues Selected
Criteria for Inclusion and Exclusion
 Of particular interest are those ‘unorthodox’
literatures which are only rarely used in research
and teaching eg. cultural studies, critical theory,
science and technological studies, history and
philosophy of science, semiotics, linguistics,
anthropology and ethnography
 Excluded are those disciplines which on the
whole share related theoretical and
methodological frameworks, and so
management, accountancy, economics, and
industrial relations figure rarely if at all as an
‘unorthodox’
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Motivations
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Motivations (1)
 there is an enormous alternative literature
which has a direct bearing on the IS discipline
but which is only occasionally used in
research and rarely used in teaching
 to alert students to the fact that there are
‘traditions’ within the discipline which utilise these
literatures productively in the analysis and
re/design of organisations, and also in the
development of systems
 the application of unorthodox ideas should also
transform methodology and practice
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Motivations (2)
 these alternative literatures have the potential
for developing penetrating critiques of the
information systems discipline and its practice
 the need for developing these critiques is becoming
more obvious as the ground swell of discontent
about systems in organisations increases
 there are also a large number of studies which
indicate a lacklustre performance and a growing
indifference to claims made by information systems
professionals and academics
 new ways of thinking about information systems in
organisations are urgently needed
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Subject Outline
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Safety Procedures
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