The authors present the Context Engineering (CE) approach to Information Systems Development (ISD) as a framework to organise ideas about previous development experience and to guide future research on specific ISD methods and techniques. The goals of the CE approach are: to achieve an understanding of the ISD as sociotechnical phenomena within a cultural and historical envelope; to provide a framework of problems supported on the relation between context and mediators; and to use contextuality as a key to performing emancipatory movements. Fundamental concepts are the notions of context as figure-ground and as autopoietic flux, of human activity as unit of contextual analysis, of the pervasiveness of mediation in human activity, of sociotechnical networks as media and the hypothesis of a heterogeneous social engineering. A framework of development problems is presented along with a discussion of general and process related principles for the CE approach.
Keywords
Context Engineering, Information Systems Development, Sociotechnical Approach, Activity Theory, Actor-Network Theory
Subject
Information Systems Development
Conference
Action in Language, Organisations and Information Systems, ALOIS 2003, March 2003
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Cited by
Year 2010 : 1 citations
Mavetera, N., & Kroeze, J. (2010). Communications of the IBIMA.
Year 2006 : 3 citations
Goldkuhl, G., & Röstlinger, A. (2006). Context in focus: Transaction and infrastructure in workpractices. Information Systems (ALOIS), 1, 2.
Bækgaard, L. (2006). Interaction in Information Systems-Beyond Human Computer Interaction. In Conference on Action in Language, Action in Language, Organisations and Information Systems (ALOIS'06). Borås, Sweden.
Guiding Principles for Developing Adaptive Software Products, Nehemiah Mavetera and Jan Kroeze, Volume 2010 (2010), Article ID 340296, Communications of the IBIMA, 15 pages
DOI: 10.5171/2010.340296
