Textbook
Information, Systems and Information Systems: Making Sense of the FieldISBN: 978-0-471-95820-8
Hardcover
200 pages
December 1997, ©1998
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Science-based technology helps to shape our lives, and no
technology is more powerful in this respect than that associated
with information. But the emerging linked fields of information
systems and information technology are still in a very confused
state. There is a torrent of technical developments but the
concepts which bring structure to the field and make sense of it
lag behind. This book seeks to dispel that confusion, and aims to
make sense of IS and IT as a whole. Conventional theory bears
little relation to the experience most people have with
computer-based systems in organizations. Based on real-world
experiences in both the private and public sectors, this book from
Peter Checkland and Sue Holwell tackles the subject afresh.
Information, Systems and Information Systems provides a
practice-based approach to the thinking needed to underpin
provision of information support in organizations. Starting from
fundamentals, the book develops a coherent account of the field.
The book is thus a work of conceptual cleansing. It presents a
well-argued and tested account of IS and IT which is both holistic
and coherent. The sense-making models which emerge can encompass
any particular assumptions about the nature of organizational
reality and management, whether 'hard' functionalist or 'soft'
interpretive ones, though the authors' sympathies are with the
latter.