Uchiyama, Ken

ucym@mx6.nisiq.net

Re-interpreting Soft Systems Methodology: introducing actuality into the field of management information studies

(1999)

This thesis has two aims. One is to propose a theoretical framework for a phenomenology-based information management centred on the notion of actuality as formulated by the eminent Japanese psychiatrist Bin Kimura. The other is to reinterpret Checkland's soft systems methodology (SSM) as a methodology to embody this phenomenology-based approach to information management.

This radical reorientation is in response to the conventional arguments that the introduction of the 'human element' into the information management field has been what is lacking - hence the failure of so many information system implementations. The thesis argues that the proposed theoretical framework, with actuality as its central concept, will provide the missing link to human experience.

The thesis presents an innovative interpretation, by means of the actuality concept, of the way in which Japanese people understand and make use of SSM. This interpretation, together with some detailed theoretical reflection on the work of Kimura, Viktor von Weizsäcker, Heidegger, Michel Henry and others, allows for a reinterpretation of SSM that results in a contextualised SSM (referred to as C-SSM).

The thesis then proceeds to evaluate C-SSM through a South African case study in which trust relationships at the actuality level are explored. The thesis goes on to discuss C-SSM's fundamental implications for the fields of management and information systems (IS) studies when the concept of language/ information, central to these fields, becomes articulated as the medium between 'actuality' and 'reality'. From this, a new paradigmatic model for understanding IS use is proposed.

With the models and understanding brought about by the use of C-SSM many perplexing issues can be reconsidered - issues such as the reconciliation between reality and actuality, the global and the local, technology and humans. In a similar way, the two modes of information system thought, that is, the 'design mode' and the 'use mode', can be combined as a complementary relationship using C-SSM. The fundamental reorientation provided by the thesis will allow for a whole host of new ways of understanding many of the problems that continue to limit the potential of management and information systems thinking in contributing to practice.

Kenici Uchiyama is currently Associate Professor in the Department of Management System Development at the Daito Bunka University in Tokyo.

Supervisor: Tony Cornford, PhD

This thesis has now been published with by a foreword by Peter Checkland and an introduction by Lucas Introna as The Theory and Practice of Actuality: reinterpreting soft systems methodology from the Japanese point of view and its implications for management and information systems studies, Institute of Business Research, Daito Bunka University, Tokyo, 2003.

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