Description

Researchers do not care about philosophy because it adds no value to their experiments. They just go out into the world and do their work. So say some if not many scientists, but Amir Haj-Bolouri disagrees. With him we discuss whether some questions of philosophy such as ontology and epistemology even matter to information systems research, which topics and questions lend themselves to philosophical reasoning, and whether we can disassociate philosophical ideas from the people that proposed them.

Episode Reading List

• Haj-Bolouri, A. (2021). Wickedness in Designing IT for Integration Work: A Phenomenological Account. Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, 33(1), 261-304.
• Ayer, A. J. (Ed.). (1996). Logical Positivism. Free Press.
• Walsham, G. (1995). The Emergence of Interpretivism in IS Research. Information Systems Research, 6(4), 376-394.
• Cockburn, A. (2001). Crystal Clear: A Human-Powered Software Development Methodology for Small Teams. Addison-Wesley.
• Riemer, K., & Johnston, R. B. (2017). Clarifying Ontological Inseparabiilty with Heidegger’s Analysis of Equipment. MIS Quarterly, 41(4), 1059-1081.
• King, J. L., & Lyytinen, K. (2004). Reach and Grasp. MIS Quarterly, 28(4), 539-551.
• Swanson, E. B., & Ramiller, N. C. (1997). The Organizing Vision in Information Systems Innovation. Organization Science, 8(5), 458–474.
• Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. Harper Collins.
• Rorty, R. M. (1999). Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Gardners Books.
• Berente, N., Gal, U., & Yoo, Y. (2010). Dressage, Control and Enterprise Systems: The Case of NASA’s Full Cost Initiative. European Journal of Information Systems, 19(1), 21-34.
• Archer, M. (1995). Realist Social Theory: The Morphogenetic Approach. Cambridge University Press.
• Hassan, N. R. (2017). Editorial: The History and Philosophy Department. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 41(15), 319-333.
• Stamper, R. K. (1973). Information in Business and Administrative Systems. John Wiley and Sons.
• Boell, S. (2017). Information: Fundamental Positions and their Implications for Information Systems Research, Education, and Practice. Information and Organization, 27(1), 1-16.
• Turkle, S. (2017). Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other (3rd ed.). Basic Books.
• Dahlbom, B., & Mathiassen, L. (1993). Computers in Context: The Philosophy and Practice of System Design. Wiley-Blackwell.
• Kallinikos, J. (2011). Governing through Technology: Information Artefacts and Social Practices. Palgrave Macmillan.
• Herwix, A., Haj-Bolouri, A., Rossi, M., Tremblay, M. C., Purao, S., & Gregor, S. (2022). Ethics in Information Systems and Design Science Research: Five Perspectives. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 50(34), 589-616.
• Boland, R. J. (2001). The Tyranny of Space in Organizational Analysis. Information and Organization, 11(1), 3-23.
• Boland, R. J. (1985). Phenomenology: A Preferred Approach to Research on Information Systems. In E. Mumford, R. Hirschheim, G. Fitzgerald, & A. T. Wood-Harper (Eds.), Research Methods in Information Systems (pp. 193-201). North Holland.
• Boland, R. J. (1987). The In-formation of Information Systems. In R. J. Boland & R. Hirschheim (Eds.), Critical Issues in Information Systems Research (pp. 363–394). John Wiley and Sons.
• Hassan, N. R., Mingers, J., & Stahl, B. C. (2018). Philosophy and Information Systems: Where are we and Where Should we go? European Journal of Information Systems, 27(3), 263-277.
• Winograd, T., & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding Computers and Cognition: A New Foundation for Design. Ablex Publication Corporation.
• Van Manen, M. (2014). Phenomenology of Practice Routledge.
• Niederman, F. (2022). The Philosopher’s Corner: An Idiosyncratic Reading of Reassembling the Social by Bruno Latour. Database for Advances in Information Systems, 53(2), 11-25.
• Santa, M. (2021). SIGPhil’s Philosophical Dialogues – the Story Behind the Work. SIGPhil Podcast, https://anchor.fm/mijalche-santa/.