Requirements specification: learning object, process, and data methodologies
Communications of the ACM
Information systems development and communicative action theory
Information and Management
Cognitive bias in software engineering
Communications of the ACM
A speech-act-based office modeling approach
ACM Transactions on Information Systems (TOIS)
Translation between software designers and users
Communications of the ACM - Special issue Participatory Design
Proceedings of the IFIP TC8 WG 8.2 international conference on Information systems and qualitative research
Improving information requirements determination: a cognitive perspective
Information and Management
Effects of four modes of group communication on the outcomes of software requirements determination
Journal of Management Information Systems
Journal of Management Information Systems
Wikipedia, Critical Social Theory, and the Possibility of Rational Discourse
The Information Society
Building participatory HIS networks: A case study from Kerala, India
Information and Organization
Open and free deliberation: A prerequisite for positive design
Information and Organization
Crowdsourcing systems on the World-Wide Web
Communications of the ACM
An integrative semiotic framework for information systems: The social, personal and material worlds
Information and Organization
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Habermas' critical social theory has proven to be an important and useful lens in information systems research, especially in understanding the communicative potential of information systems and in conceiving alternative approaches to information systems development. As communication and engagement have become increasingly important in the context of today's information systems, his work has perhaps even greater applicability. However, concerns that it is too utopian to apply in organizational settings have led to skepticism regarding Habermas' work. Participation by all, the ''ideal speech situation'' and the consensus ideal are each Habermasian requirements that have sparked this criticism. However, Habermas' work has continued to grow and evolve since the Theory of Communicative Action, the basis of much IS research drawing on his work. His contributions in discourse ethics (1990, 1993) and deliberative democracy (1998) have offered us new and important theory, and have brought to light Habermas' own clarification and evolution of his original ideas. The intent of this paper is to reopen a communicative dialog about Habermas' work. After summarizing his critical social theory, we turn to addressing our two main objectives: first, to demonstrate that evolutions in Habermasian thought have renewed its empirical possibilities and, second, to show that this new understanding constructively informs future IS research. As an illustration, we sketch out the conditions for a Habermasian-inspired requirements process and show their application to a well-studied IS development model, ETHICS (Mumford, 1983). We conclude by suggesting that Habermas' theoretical ideas can no longer be dismissed as naive, but as a constant guide to critical action - as a reference point for opening up new possibilities for communicative action in IS research and activity.