Power, politics, and MIS implementation
Communications of the ACM
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The majority of current information systems design methodologies imply an oversimplified consideration of organizational context. This suggests that it is unproblematical to requirements analysis. This paper argues that organizational contexts are complex situations and information systems design needs to deal with this at the requirements analysis stage. Also, the role of the designer as organizational change agent needs to be recognized as an addition to the role as information engineer. Methodologies for design can provide guidelines for such a recognition which allow for an improved management of the design process. In this paper, a case study is used to illustrate how soft systems methodology can be used for such. This use is then expanded to consider an addition which is the development of metaphor-based modelling. This was found to be helpful in dealing with an ill-defined and highly political organizational problem. The role of the information systems designer as change agent is reflected upon in the light of this study.