Role-play in inquiring systems and information systems development

Churchman's framework for inquiring systems has been used by authors intere sted in taking more than just a positivistic approach to information system s development. This framework is used by Churchman to explore the nature of the design process and the philosophical implications arising. Inquiring s ystems are supported by a set of conditions and statements which define thr ee generic roles played in the design and implementation of inquiring syste ms. These roles are compared with the generic roles of information systems development identified by Hirschheim and Klein. Churchman develops his idea s using the cause-effect model of physical science which supports the softw are engineering approach to information systems development. However, this does not support interpretative approaches to information systems developme nt, such as Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology. Paradoxically, Checkland claims philosophical support from Singerian Inquiring Systems for his metho dology. The problems found are shown to relate, in part, to the measure of performance and how it is implemented. However, the main problem is the spe ctrum of environments that information systems development takes place in, not all of which follow the cause-effect paradigm. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.