Systems Research and Behavioral Science Syst. Res.

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Research Paper

Role-Play in Inquiring Systems and Information Systems Development

Peter D. C. Bennetts,1* Stella Mills1 and A. Trevor Wood-Harper2
1

School of Business Computer Systems, Gloucestershire Business School, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, Cheltenham, UK 2 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Salford, UK and Department of Information Systems, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Churchman's framework for inquiring systems has been used by authors interested in taking more than just a positivistic approach to information systems development. This framework is used by Churchman to explore the nature of the design process and the philosophical implications arising. Inquiring systems are supported by a set of conditions and statements which define three generic roles played in the design and implementation of inquiring systems. These roles are compared with the generic roles of information systems development identified by Hirschheim and Klein. Churchman develops his ideas using the causeeffect model of physical science which supports the software engineering approach to information systems development. However, this does not support interpretative approaches to information systems development, such as Checkland's Soft Systems Methodology. Paradoxically, Checkland claims philosophical support from Singerian Inquiring Systems for his methodology. 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 spectrum of environments that information systems development takes place in, not all of which follow the cause effect paradigm. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Keywords inquiring systems; software engineering; interpretative approaches; Soft Systems Methodology 1. INTRODUCTION There has been a strong argument, for many years, by those concerned with the development of computer science (Boehm, 1976; Dijkstra, 1976; Gibbs, 1994; Hoare, 1982; Sommerville, 1989, for example) that the methods of information
* Correspondence to: Peter Bennetts, Senior Lecturer in Computing, Gloucestershire Business School, Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education, PO Box 220, The Park, Cheltenham, Glos, GL50 2QF.

systems development (ISD) should reflect the attitudes and approaches of science. From this viewpoint ISD should be seen as an applied science. Despite this, there has been a minority argument by those concerned with the development of business computer systems (Bostrom and Heinen, 1977; Earl and Hopwood, 1980; Lucas, 1981; Lyytinen, 1987, for example) which, while recognizing the advances made by computer science, also recognizes the effect of organizational and political issues on ISD.
Received 8 August 1997 Accepted 22 January 1999

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Hirschheim and Klein (1989) characterize a Universe of Discourse for ISD which covers all known and possible ISD methodologies. Churchman (1971), on the other hand, has developed a characterization of the design process (which implicitly includes implementation) from the same viewpoint as the computer scientists. Both characterizations involve the use of archetypal role modelling. In order to ascertain the degree to which Churchman's characterization can be used to support all approaches to ISD, the roles played in different contexts are correlated and issues which do not correlate are identified. The expectation is that this exercise will offer insight into the nature of an appropriate framework to support the roles of ISD. Performing this correlation will enable us to contribute to the issues highlighted by Le Moigne (1985) when he claims that `the contemporary lack of epistemological foundations of information processing science endangers the rigor and validity of its applications'. And again, `at present, we do not have an epistemologically validated theory of information processing systems'. This is supported by Checkland (1992) when he claims that the philosophical foundations of ISD are often not explicit. Churchman (1971) is used by Checkland (1981) to provide the required philosophical support for this Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). This paper examines the extent to which this is appropriate. This paper summarizes Churchman's (1971) approach to inquiring systems in the next section. That section also identifies why it is reasonable to relate the role-play identified by Churchman as being a necessary part of inquiring system usage with the role-play identified by Hirschheim and Klein (1989) in all the various forms of ISD. It is argued in this paper that the definition of an inquiring system is essentially arbitrary and the component elements of the generic inquiring systems defined by Churchman (1971) are described in section 4. This is followed by a summary of the relationships between the roleplayers in an inquiring system. These are quoted from Churchman (1971), who states them without developing supporting arguments. Some of these statements are seen by Churchman as necessary conditions, but he does not defend
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these assumptions. They are presented here as numbered statements. Following this is a section which summarizes the roles played in ISD, as seen by Hirschheim and Klein (1989). The discussion section attempts to find correspondences between these two sets of perceptions. Finally, the conclusions are identified. 2. INTRODUCTION TO INQUIRING SYSTEMS Churchman (1971) defines his inquiring systems in terms of general systems, which he describes (Churchman, 1971, p. 78) as an area of theory where those who examine systems characterize the essential aspects of all systems. These aspects are considered in this paper in the context of one particular class of system: information systems. Further, the `purpose of an inquiring system is to create knowledge which means creating the capability of choosing the right means for one's desired ends' (Churchman, 1971, p. 200). There are many approaches to knowledge within the Western intellectual tradition (Burrell and Morgan, 1979; Hirschheim, 1992). Churchman (1971) restricts himself to this tradition, although he points out elsewhere (Churchman, 1979) that other approaches are possible. Churchman is interested in `the meaning of a system from the designer's point of view, i.e. in the ``systems approach'' to social change' (Churchman, 1971, p. 63). Inquiring systems are embedded in the systems approach (Churchman, 1968); consequently any philosophy that supports the systems approach could be used to define an inquiring system. In particular, Churchman (1971) suggests that the work of Plato, Aristotle or St Thomas Aquinas could be used; while Churchman (1979) further accepts that the I Ching, the Upanishads and the Bhagavad-Gita could equally well have been used. In practice, then, Churchman (1971) makes a personal selection of various `classic or pure mode epistemologies' (Linstone and Turoff, 1975), represented by the work of the philosophers Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel and E. A. Singer. Locke and Leibniz, for example, were chosen on the basis that `everything [in the seventeenth century] was so open to speculation and imagination' (Churchman, 1971). Subsequently, Linstone (1984) and
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Scheele (1975) both introduce an inquiring system based on the work of Merleau-Ponty, Husserl and Heidegger, among others. Scheele (1975) suggests that this should be referred to as the Merleau-Ponty inquiring system. In practice, it is not `which philosophy is ``correct'' that is important, but `which philosophy is ``appropriate''' to the problem situation (Mitroff and Turoff, 1975; Scheele, 1975; van Gigch, 1978). The titles allocated to each inquiring system are to be considered indicative only, for `when we speak of a Leibnizian inquiring system, we do not mean that this system is an exact account of how Leibniz conceived the theory of knowledge; rather, it is a reconstruction of Leibnizian ideas in the language of the design of an inquiring
Table 1. Inquiring system Locke Alternative name Inductiveconsensual or consensus/deductive or data

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system' (Churchman, 1971, p. 18). Churchman does not give a rationale for choosing his particular selection of philosophers. His aim is to use those philosophers' ideas to elucidate what is meant by `design' as well as `system'. Churchman's framework is constructed by considering the simplest elements first. Problems are identified, the solution of which leads to rather more complex elements which themselves have problems. The process ends with the Singerian inquiring system subsuming all the previous inquiring systems. Table 1 offers a summary of the identification of these inquiring systems. Alternative names have been used by Iivari and Kerola (1983), Mitroff and Linstone (1993) and Wood-Harper (1989). The characterizing

Naming of inquiring systems Identifying questions Since data are always prior to the development of theory, how can one, independent of any formal technology assessment model, justify the assessment by means of some objective data or the consensus of some group of expert judges that bears on the assessment? What are the statistics? What is the probability you are wrong? Is that a good estimate? How can one, independent of any empirical considerations, give a rational justication of the assessment? What is the model you are using? How was the result deduced and is it precise and certain? Since data and theory always exist side by side, does there exist some combination of data or expert judgement plus underlying theoretical justication for the data that would justify the assessment? What alternative assessments exist? Which of these satises my objectives? Since every assessment is a reection of a more general theory or plan about the nature of the world as a whole system, i.e., a world view, does there exist some alternative sharply differing world view that would permit the serious consideration of a completely opposite assessment? What if the reverse happens and why wouldn't that be more reasonable? What is the shared reality? How does it facilitate the generation of policy options? How does the assessment create an impetus for desirable action? What kind of reality is most effectively negotiated by the parties at interest? Have we taken a broad enough perspective of the basic assessment? Would other perspectives help? Have we from the very beginning asked the right question? To what extent are the questions and models of each inquirer a reection of the unique personality of each inquirer as much as they are felt to be a `natural' characteristic or property of the `real' world?
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Leibniz

Analyticdeductive or formal/deductive or models Multiplerealities or synthetic/representative or multiple models

Kant

Hegel

Dialectic or conicting

Merleau-Ponty

Group realities

Singer

Multiple viewpoints or pragmatic/ interdisciplinary

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questions are those offered by Linstone and Turoff (1975). In practice, at this level, inquiring systems can be recognized as supporting aspects of the most popular methodologies at least. Sometimes more than one inquiring system is pertinent. Methodologies such as Structured Systems Analysis and Design Method (SSADM) are supported by a Kantian inquiring system. This would be on the basis that there is essentially only one viewpoint of the situation elaborated, which is characterized in various options; i.e., we have the same data but various models. Further, any in-use computer system will incorporate an appropriate model and algorithm and so can be represented as a Leibnizian inquiring system. Checkland's SSM (Checkland, 1981; Checkland and Scholes, 1990) was identified through reflection about what actually took place during a series of interventions (Checkland, 1981). However, Checkland does recognize the theoretical support given by Churchman (1971). For example, the debate through the construction of images is seen as a Kantian or Hegelian structure. Further, SSM assumes that no study is ever finally complete, in that its stage 7 represents a redefinition and reflects one of the characteristics of a Singerian inquiring system. It is this system that Checkland recognizes as supporting SSM as a whole (Checkland, 1981). SSM can be seen as an example of a methodology that can only be used in a cooperative environment. Other examples are ETHICS, prototyping and the RAD-type approaches. This is not to suggest that SSADM users operate in an uncooperative environment. In practice, of course, many erstwhile users of SSADM resort to practical politics to make it work. However, within the description of SSADM itself the issues are purely technical. 3. ROLE-PLAY IN INQUIRING SYSTEMS For Churchman's inquiry into the nature of inquiring systems, there are three generic figures whose existence is necessary (Churchman, 1971, p. 43): the designer, the client and the decision maker. These figures are archetypes or idealized role models whose actions are described by
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Churchman (1971) through the following statements. Each archetype can be one person or many people or all three can be found in one person (Churchman, 1971, p. 48). Further, each archetype is assumed to have a recognized set of interests or values which are to be addressed by any inquiring system. (This will also be true of the archetypes used by Hirschheim and Klein). Statements 1 to 9, below, are seen by Churchman (1971) to be necessary conditions for `something S [to] be conceived as a system'. In this particular case Churchman implies S is an `inquiring system', as the purpose of that text is to develop the concept of inquiring systems to explore the nature of design. Each of the other numbered statements is extracted from Churchman's (1971) text, where they are statements about the nature of the role-play in inquiring systems. The necessary conditions (Churchman, 1971, p. 43): (1) `S is teleological' (i.e., defined within a causeeffect model of nature). (2) `S has a measure of performance' (a number; Churchman, 1971, p. 47). (3) `There exists a client whose interests (values) are served by S in such a manner that the higher the measure of performance, the better the interests are served, and more generally, the client is the standard of performance'. (4) `S has teleological components which coproduce the measure of performance of S'. (5) `S has an environment which also coproduces the measure of performance of S'. (6) `There exists a decision maker who via his resources can produce changes in the measures of performance of S's components and hence changes in the measure of performance of S'. (7) `There exists a designer, who conceptualizes the nature of S in such a manner that the designer's concepts potentially produce actions in the decision maker, and hence changes in the measures of performance of S's components, and hence changes in the measure of performance of S'. (8) `The designer's intention is to change S so as to maximize S's value to the client'.
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(9) `There is a built-in guarantee that the designer's intentions [are realizable (eventually)]'. (Without this guarantee Churchman, 1971, considers that the system may be assumed to be largely meaningless to the designer (Churchman, 1971, p. 63). The designer: (10) The designer has to identify `the client and the decision maker' (Churchman, 1971, p. 48). (11) `The designer needs to have a theory about his role as well as a theory about the system'. The designer must `learn about the system' and understand the influence that he can and should have on the system changes that will be required (Churchman, 1971, p. 52). The designer and client: (12) The designer has a value structure identical to that of the client (Churchman, 1971, p. 47). (13) As an actor in this scenario, the client is `described only in terms of his value structure' (Churchman, 1971, p. 47). (14) The designer invokes a world in which the client could change whatever was wished `within the bounds of limited resources' (Churchman, 1971, p. 47). (15) The designer seeks to describe the underlying principles of the client's choices, using a `measure of performance' (Churchman, 1971, p. 47). (16) `The designer is successful to the extent that he can accurately measure the client's real preferences' (Churchman, 1971, p. 47). (17) The designer must analyse possible futures by designing and, in principle, implementing each of them. The measure of performance is used to `assign numerical values to these possible futures' and hence rank them against each other (Churchman, 1971, p. 47). (18) `The designer is moral if he serves a client who has a legal or moral right to expect that the system will serve his (the client's) interests and his interests are themselves legal or moral' (Churchman, 1971, p. 48).
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(19) If the decision maker's ideas about a system are not seen as `good' by the client, then `the designer's role [is to] try to change the decision maker's value structure' (Churchman, 1971, p. 48). The designer and decision maker: (20) The designer is expected to choose the decision maker in a way that will maximize the measure of performance (Churchman, 1971, p. 52). (21) The designer's ideas about a system are expected to produce changes in the actions of the decision maker and hence changes in the measure of performance (Churchman, 1971, p. 48). (22) `The decision maker coproduces the future along with the environment, which he does not control' (Churchman, 1971, p. 48). (23) The environment is defined by what is not changed by the decision maker. Decisions about what will be changed by a decision maker and what will not be changed depends on the decision maker (Churchman, 1971, p. 52). (24) The decision maker also has a value structure, but it is not necessarily the same as that of the other two actors (Churchman, 1971, p. 48). When we attempt to match these statements against the scenarios of ISD, we will assume that all but statements 8, 14, 15, 16, 18 and 20 can be satisfied, as the remaining statements have no impact on the role-play. This list of six statements defines the role-play between the archetypes and so the role-play within ISD can be used to reflect back on them. 4. ROLE-PLAY IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT The process of inquiry will encompass not only the analytic phase of deciding what needs to be done, the technical phase of deciding how it should be implemented and the building phase which makes it work, but also the in-use phase where new knowledge is found through the use of the information system.
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Within information systems development, Hirschheim and Klein (1989) have identified four distinct paradigms or `stories', each with their own set of actors which are described below, which together cover all known approaches. The four-way framework follows that of Burrell and Morgan (1979), which was originally set up to describe the `universe of discourse' for social science or sociology. The quadrants are defined by the intersection of two `dimensions' (defined by the ideal type at each end): subjectiveobjective and orderconflict. Hirschheim and Klein (1989) develop their ideas through the concept of four archetypal stories, one for each of Burrell and Morgan's quadrants. As archetypal stories they are slightly

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overstated. Each story is identified by a different metaphor for the analyst or systems developer. The story types are summarized in Table 2. The first story is developed from a large experiential base, as it is the orthodox or traditional approach to systems development. The other approaches are more recent, with fewer examples. The example projects of Table 2 are cited by Hirschheim and Klein (1989) as being presented by Bjerknes and Bratteteig (1984), Bodker et al. (1985), Ehn et al. (1983), Ehn and Sandberg (1983) and Howard (1985). In the first story the analyst is seen as a systems expert. Many successful systems have been developed using this approach (Hirschheim and Klein, 1989). There have also been

Table 2. Characteristics of developer archetypes (after Hirschheim and Klein, 1989) Paradigm Developer archetype Expert or platonic philosopher king Systems development proceeds . . . . . . from without, by application of formal concepts through planned intervention with rationalistic tools and methods . . . from within, by improving subjective understanding and cultural sensitivity through adapting to internal forces of evolutionary social change . . . from without, by raising ideological conscience and consciousness through organized political action and adaptation of tools and methods to different social class interests . . . from within, by improving human understanding and the rationality of human action through emancipation of suppressed interests and liberation from unwarranted natural and social constraints The elements used in dening information systems are . . . . . . people, hardware, software, rules (organizational procedures) as physical or formal objective entities . . . subjectivity of meanings, symbolic structures affecting evolution of sense-making and sharing of meanings, metaphors . . . people, hardware, software, rules (organizational procedures) as physical or formal objective entities put in the service of economic class interests Examples

Functionalism

Structured analysis, information engineering

Social relativism Catalyst or facilitator

Ethnographic approaches, FLORENCE project

Radical structuralism

Warrior for social progress or partisan

Trade union-led approaches, UTOPIA and DEMOS projects

Neohumanism

Emancipator or social therapist

Critical social . . . people, hardware, theory, SAMPO software, rules (organizational procedures) project as physical or formal objective entities for the TKI; subjectivity of meanings and intersubjectivity of language use in other knowledge interests
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spectacular failures, such as the London Ambulance System. Management are given the role of defining the aims of the system. It is assumed that the specification is as objective as possible. The primary role of the analyst is to be the expert in technology, tools and methods of system design and project management. Politics is seen as irrational. Formality is emphasized, putting less reliance on intuition and judgement. It is assumed that there is one, measurable reality which is the same for everybody. System design is effectively a technical process. These assumptions give rise to some problems for ISD, as is well recognized in the literature, and will not be rehearsed here. The key actors in this first story are managers (to identify the system objectives), system developers (to construct and implement the system) and users (who operate the system to achieve their work objectives). Information systems are developed to support rational organizational operation and effective and efficient project management. Reality consists of objects, properties and processes that are directly observable in the organization and the correctness of the system specifications and models can be checked against this. In this story, an organization's primary goal is to maximize shareholders' wealth and management is the only group empowered to decide how this should happen. In Hirschheim and Klein's second story the analyst is seen as a facilitator. This approach has emerged only recently, partly in response to the shortcomings of the first approach, but is in many ways its opposite. It recognizes that knowledge about human means and ends is not easily obtained because in reality it is exceedingly complex and elusive. Business does not deal with an objective economic reality, but one that evolves with social laws, conventions, attitudes. No one has a privileged source of knowledge, each individual sees different aspects. The role of people in shaping reality is not clear. For management, information systems are a part of the continually changing social environment. The distinction between ends and means is fluid and reversible. The role of the system developer is to interact with management to find out what type of system makes sense.
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There are no objective criteria to distinguish good or bad systems. Any system that has the approval of the stockholders is legitimate. Systems emerge through social interaction. It should be noted here, immediately, that this story type, therefore, fails Churchman's proposition 1, as business organizations are not entirely teleological. Churchman has a background in OR and systems engineering. These subject areas are inherently quantitative, but they fail to encompass the intrinsic qualitative aspects of ISD (Rosenhead, 1989). Checkland (1981) notices that Churchman's writing is based implicitly on hard systems thinking. Further, Checkland (1981) characterizes this approach as goal-oriented (based on the optimization paradigm). Vickers (1965) argues that this paradigm is `. . . totally inadequate' to explain what happens in an organization. However, this `totally inadequate' paradigm represents Hirschheim and Klein's (1989) story type 1 or the traditional approach. However, in this story type it was recognized that users tended to be ignored. In this second story the key actors are users (those organizational agents who interpret and make sense of their surroundings) and the systems developer (the change agent who helps users make sense of the new system and its environment). In this context, ISD creates new meaning. Its effectiveness lies in its ability to improve users' understanding of current conventions and meanings. ISD proceeds through the application of symbolic interactionism (organizational actors interpret system objectives and specifications and act according to the meaning their interpretation provides for them). The social environment is under continuous evolution no particular rational explanation clarifies organizational reality. Consequently, the philosophical assumptions are an anti-positivist epistemology (which considers that the search for causal empirical explanations for social phenomena is misguided and should be replaced by sense-making) and a nominalist ontology (which suggests that reality is not a `given', but is socially constructed and consequently uses social relativism as its paradigm). Thus, in this second story, the business world is explained from the viewpoint of organizational
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agents who take part in the social process of reality construction. In the third story the analyst is seen as a labour partisan. This is a recent reaction to the first story and the main interest in it is in Scandinavia. It differs from the second by suggesting that a fundamental social conflict is endemic to society. It agrees with the first story that there is an objective reality. Economic reality is considered to be the historical result of the conflict between shareholders and labour. The developer chooses whether to act as agent for one of these two sides. In this third story the key actors are identified as being the owners ( plus managers acting as their agents), labour (the workforce) and the systems developer. In this environment, information systems are developed to support managerial control (and hence owners' interests) at the expense of labour. The underlying hypothesis is Hegel's Dialectic Materialism. Essentially, the perception is that economic evolution takes the route from feudalism to a capitalist market economy and then to a collectively planned and managed economy. For this third story, the philosophical assumptions are a positivist epistemology (to generate a materialist view of history and society) and a realist ontology (which assumes that there is a preexisting empirical reality). In the final story the analyst is seen as an emancipator or social therapist. The story is a reaction to the previous three. It is largely hypothetical. Society is assumed to be organized around concepts of work, mutual understanding and emancipation. ISD evolves around the realm of work through the uses of language to achieve mutual understanding. There is a belief that humans seek knowledge to exercise better control of nature and people and thereby rationalize work. Habermas calls this the technical knowledge interface (TKI). Here the key actors are the stakeholders (who include customers, labour, representatives, management and owners) and the system developer, who acts as a social therapist in an attempt to derive consensus from the stakeholders. In this story information systems are developed to remove the distorting influences from rational discourse. The process terminates
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when the ideal of emancipation is achieved. The philosophical assumptions are that there is a composite epistemology (which uses positivism for technical knowledge and anti-positivism for mutual understanding and emancipation) and a composite ontology (which uses realism for technical knowledge and nominalism for mutual understanding and emancipation). 5. IDENTIFYING THE CORRELATION The two frameworks which are ostensibly describing the same thing (the various forms of ISD) make different assumptions. It is the interaction of these assumptions which are of interest. To recapitulate: Churchman (1971) recognizes three generic figures: the decision maker (dm in Figure 1); the designer (d) and the client (c). Statement 12 declares that the designer

Figure 1.

The mapping of inquiring systems roles onto ISD

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and the client have the same interests. Further, statement 24 declares that the interests (or values) of the decision maker are not necessarily the same as those of the other two actors. In Figure 1, the decision maker's value set is denoted by V*, the other actors' value set by V. Hirschheim and Klein (1989) have identified a different set of generic figures for each story type: managers (m, in Figure 1), system developers (sd) and users (u) for story 1; system developers (sd) and users (u) for story 2; owners and managers (om), the workforce (w) and a system developer (sd) for story 3 and stakeholders (s) and a system developer (sd) for story 4. These actors also have value sets, although their identification is less clear cut than for Churchman. However, as these story types are rooted in the real world, it is possible to make some delineations. For story 1, it is usual for the project manager to be in the same department as the system developers. It is therefore assumed that, at a generic level, they have the same viewpoints or the same interests or values. This set of interests is represented by v* in Figure 1. The users' viewpoint is assumed to be different and is represented by v. The essence of story type 2 is cooperation and communication, so that we can assume that the system developer is fully aware of the users' value set (v) and uses it to control the development of the system. For story type 3 the owners and managers are recognized as having different aims and objectives (represented in Figure 1 by v and v*, respectively). The system developer can choose which value set they follow in this case v*. For story type 4, the process continues until the ideal of emancipation is achieved. It is therefore assumed that all stakeholders have the same value set (v*) and that this is used by the system developer. The aim now is to find a plausible set of correspondences between these actors and their various viewpoints. Churchman's propositions are then considered in that context, to see if they are all still true. In order to discern correspondences between these sets of archetypes, we need to assume that if two archetypal roles are combined in one person, both roles have the same value set or set of interests. This might not be entirely accurate in that, in practice, a role
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player may act differently in the two roles. Conversely, one archetypal role may be played, in practice, by a series of different people. In particular, system development is likely to be carried out by a sequence of experts. As departmental `team players' they are assumed to have the same interests. For story type 1, if we compare the roles played by the archetypes, then we could identify a correspondence where the manager is seen as the decision maker; the analyst is recognized as the designer and the user is seen as the client. This is identified as `Solution A'. This might be seen as a natural set of correspondences, but there are some difficulties arising unless we make further assumptions. Churchman assumes that the decision maker holds one set of values and that the designer and client both have the same set of values, which is distinct from that of the decision maker. However, in Hirschheim and Klein's story type 1, the manager and the systems developer have the same set of values and the users have another. As Mumford (1995) points out, in this traditional approach the values of the information systems developers and managers were to look for efficiency gains by reducing staff numbers and imposing tighter financial and organizational controls. If we take the client to be the staff who will be using the new system, the neglect of the client's attitudes can cause problems when the system is implemented (Mumford, 1995). Another way of looking at this form of ISD is to consider that experience has indicated that the successful designer takes account of office politics (Boland and Day, 1989). Indeed, it is difficult to see how the designer could evaluate the client's value system without considering organizational politics, or taking an interpretative approach which could be outside the assumed philosophical framework. In this environment, the decision maker, as resource provider, has the role of describing what is required of the system. There is certainly no guarantee that the user's values or requirements are going to be considered. Consequently, we argue that the client may have a minimal role in the decision making, and
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hence statement 14 can only hold if it were to refer to the decision maker's world. In solution A, the designer's intention is to maximize the value of the system to the decision maker, so statement 8 will not hold. As we have shown earlier in this scenario, the user tended to be ignored. Statements 15 and 16 also need `client' replaced by `decision maker'. Most significantly, the designer will not be serving the client's interests and so will not be behaving morally, according to statement 18. Finally, statement 20 fails as the designer does not nominate the decision maker. Despite all the above argument, we note that these statements could all be satisfied within this solution A, if the decision maker had the same set of values as the designer and the client, and the users had the same set of values as the manager and analyst. However, if this were true, it would no longer be story type 1 but story type 2. An alternative solution (solution B) for the traditional scenario would recognize the systems developer as designer, as before, and the decision maker and the client as aspects of the manager. That is, the manager as decision maker decides what the client or user wants. This would require the role players here to have the same value set. However, and most importantly, the users have been excluded, which potentially causes the problems discussed below. Ignoring the users is clearly an unsatisfactory solution, although anecdotal evidence shows it does sometimes occur. Such systems which do not have user support have the potential to be undermined by those users (Zuboff, 1988). Further, this is precisely one of the reasons that alternative approaches are suggested by Hirschheim and Klein (1989). On the other hand, this actually fits in with the reality described by story type 1. The users are not made an element of a composite decision maker as their value system is assumed to be different from the manager's, which was precisely why the manager took this initiative. This situation is likely to occur whenever a new information system is to be introduced in order to facilitate downsizing, for example. For this solution, with the decision maker, designer and client not having the same set of values, statements 8, 14, 15 and 16 are not satisfied.
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This is because the decision maker and designer do not necessarily want the same things as the client. Again, statement 18 will not be satisfied in this situation and so the designer will not be behaving ethically according to Churchman or according to, for example, the BCS code of conduct (Rackley et al., 1996) as the users' rights have not been taken into account. (The BCS code of conduct requires members to `. . . have due regard to the legitimate rights of third parties'). The designer still has no choice about the decision maker so statement 20 still fails. The other three story types have the following straightforward correspondences. For story 2, solution C requires that the designer corresponds to the systems developer and the decision maker and client combine in the form of a consensual user. This situation occurs when the users, as clients, are able to take the initiative and control the project. This will imply that the decision maker and client will have the same value set. For story 3, solutions D and E require that the decision maker represents the owners and managers, and the designer corresponds with the systems developer. Hirschheim and Klein portray the systems developer in this situation as a traitor to the workers if he supports the owners' and managers' values and a labour partisan if he propagates the workers' set of values. In the first case, solution D, the client will be the owners and managers and the workers are ignored, as happens in solution B to story 1. The second case, solution E, will follow Churchman's ideal where the systems developer tries to change the owners' and managers' set of values. The client in this case is the workforce. Finally, for story 4 (solution F) we can assume that in this scenario all value sets are essentially equivalent. In this case, the designer corresponds to the system developer and the other two roles are combined in the stakeholders. Consequently, we have correspondences for story types 2, 3 and 4 if assumptions about value sets are correct. If they are, then all of the Churchman's statements except 1 and 20 are valid. (Businesses are not teleological and the designer is chosen by the decision maker, not the other way around). The correspondences identified above are summarized in Figure 1.
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6. CONCLUSION The first major problem found was highlighted in the section introducing Hirschheim and Klein's story types. The problem was that as human institutions business organizations are not always rational. To put it another way, organizations do not follow the causeeffect model of nature. Therefore, statement 1 had to be ignored in later discussion of story type 2. It is not entirely clear whether the assumptions of story types 3 and 4 will allow this statement. A second major problem area found in the statements was the nature of the measure of performance. Attempting to use a measure of performance to define a successful system needs a novel approach to software quality, although this would be recommended by computer scientists. A common definition of a successful system would be one that is in use and achieves its objectives (Lucas, 1981, for example), but the issues here are qualitative. However, Churchman's (1971) use of measures of performance means alternative criteria are required for example, increased market share. If this were to be adopted then the organization itself would be acting as an inquiring system. Refining a measure within that, which satisfies Churchman's definition for an individual information system, is a major problem. If we consider all those statements which were shown to be false in a given context, it will be noticed that most of these problems arise through inappropriate attempts to measure and optimize. These difficulties can be overcome if the measurement of qualitative information is included. Information systems can then be considered to make things `better' for a group of stakeholders without necessarily being too specific about what is being made better, or in what way or by how much. In our experience very few business information systems are set up to achieve a specific efficiency gain, despite the requests of software engineers. Overall, this analysis emphasizes the need to recognize users as equal stakeholders to achieve a successful information system. The primary conclusion is, therefore, that Churchman's framework of inquiring systems
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covers a spectrum of environments, which have different, and sometimes contradictory, epistemologies and ontologies. The conditions that Churchman finds necessary for something to be identified as an inquiring system do not reflect the variability of the resulting environments. We further conclude that Churchman's preconceptions on the nature of inquiring systems need to be adjusted to reflect the realities of ISD. One specific adjustment concerns Churchman's assumption that our world is inherently quantitative and rational. At the current stage of understanding, it would seem that not all the qualitative issues involved can be subjected to such an approach. In particular, statement 20 can be seen as a consequence of this assumption of Churchman. On the other hand, looking at ISD from the perspective of inquiring systems, approaches which are supported by Singerian inquiring systems have the advantage that, at a given level in an organization, all perspectives are taken into account. Systems resulting from these approaches are therefore seen as having increased relevance to all the stakeholders. REFERENCES
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