Authors:
José Cordeiro
1
and
Joaquim Filipe
2
Affiliations:
1
Polytechnic Institute of Setúbal / INSTICC, Portugal
;
2
Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Information systems, Information systems development approaches, Information Systems modelling, Human-centred information systems, Human relativism, Organisational semiotics, Theory of organized activity, Enterprise ontology, NOMIS.
Abstract:
Current approaches to information systems (IS) still ignore its human nature resulting too often in technical IS project failures. One of the reasons seems to be their scientific and technical bias following a philosophical objectivist stance. One way to overcome this narrow view is to use a paradigm that takes properly into account the human element, his behaviour and his distinct characteristics within organisational and business domains. This is the purpose of Human Relativism (HR) a new philosophical stance centred in the human element and focused in the externalisation of his behaviour namely human actions. In order to introduce, describe and propose a suitable approach to IS development following HR principles this paper introduces NOMIS, a normative modelling approach for IS. NOMIS integrates the key notions and
views of three IS socio-technical approaches, namely Organisational Semiotics, the Theory of Organised Activity and Enterprise Ontology in a coherent and consistent hu
man-centred modelling approach. The new vision provided by NOMIS is intended to furnish a more realistic, comprehensive, and concise modelling of IS reality. In this paper some examples of this vision expressed by NOMIS views and some of its specific representation diagrams will be shown applied to an empirical case study of a library system.
(More)