Epistemological perspectives on IS-development - A consensus-oriented approach on conceptual modeling

Abstract

Within the information systems (IS) research discipline, conceptual modeling is widely discussed as a fundamental task for IS-development as it leads to shared domain knowledge between IS developers and business personnel. As well as IS-research modeling takes place within a multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural context. Thereby, the (mostly implicit) assumptions made by different researchers may vary fundamentally. As a result, it is important to expose epistemological assumptions which underlie the work of different participants. Thus, we provide a framework which questions help to analyze and systematize the epistemological assumptions underlying IS research. We demonstrate the application of the framework on a special concept (the consensus-orientated approach) of conceptual modeling. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.