Possibilities for cross-fertilization between interpretive approaches and other methods for analyzing information systems

Abstract

This paper explores possibilities for cross-fertilization between interpretive approaches and other approaches for performing the initial analysis of an information system as part of an effort to redesign and improve it. The paper presents a hypothetical situation concerning the analysis of a loan approval system in a large bank. It assumes that ethnographers observed three systems analysis projects that applied different approaches in three identical banks. It uses hypothetical accounts of the three analysis efforts to propose likely differences in the process and in the results. These differences illustrate possible opportunities for cross-fertilization that might make each approach more powerful and reliable. The paper concludes that the most likely direction for cross-fertilization is from interpretive approaches to the other approaches. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the First International Workshop on Interpretive Approaches to Information Systems and Computing Research, SIG-IAM, Brunel University, July 25–27, 2002, to motivate discussion about the applications, strengths, and limitations of interpretive approaches and to help in the further development of systems analysis methods.

Keywords:

• systems analysis and design
• work system method
• interpretive workplace studies
• information system design

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Steven Alter

About the author

Steven Alter is Professor of Information Systems at the University of San Francisco. He earned a Ph.D. from MIT and extended his thesis into one of the first books on decision support systems. After teaching at the University of Southern California he served for eight years as Vice President of Consilium, a manufacturing software firm that went public in 1989 and was acquired by Applied Materials in 1998. His research for the last decade has concerned developing systems analysis concepts and methods that can be used by typical business professionals and can support communication with IT professionals. His textbook Information Systems: Foundation of E-business is in its fourth edition. His articles have been published in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, Interfaces, Communications of the ACM, Communications of the AIS, and CIO Insight.