Deny all knowledge? examining the epistemological assumptions of anti-foundationalist information systems design methodologies

Francis Wilson

Debra Howcroft

pp. 181-196

in: Trevor Wood Harper, Nimal Jayaratna, Bob Wood (eds), Methodologies for developing and managing emerging technology based information systems, Berlin, Springer, 1999

Abstract

This paper identifies the interest of information systems theoreticians and practitioners in research and methodological design as a conceptual analytic enterprise that transcends the assumption that its principles are founded upon scientifically derived formalisms. The antifoundationalist model of information system research and methodological design is one in which questions of validity can neither be posed nor answered in reference to a scientific, extracontextual reality but are intelligible and debatable only within the precincts of the contexts or situations in which they are derived. This paper debates whether anti-foundationalism in information system design as a model of epistemology provides practitioners and researchers with directions for achieving the epistemological state it describes and whether, if practitioners and researchers are able to learn and adhere to the principles of anti-foundationalism, this will provide an improved methodology for information system project development.