Revisiting the Nature of Information Systems: The Urgent Need for a Crisis in IS Theoretical Discourse

This paper suggests that the emergence of large scale integrated business and financial information systems is another aspect of the deconstruction of financial and business realities into a simulacrum. It draws largely upon Baudrillard’s theory of modern society and how this society processes and exploits information in an ever increasing vortex of non-information. IS and management literature argues that large scale information systems such as ERP systems and supply chain integration systems are an important step forward for financial information processing because they integrate the disparate units of business information into a coherent whole. However, whilst this is a very tantalising vision, the reality on the ground seems to be different. This paper posits a theoretical position which adopts neither the traditional positivist, decision theory approach nor the social constructivist theories in which the IS is seen as a primarily social system. Instead the work of French Deconstructivists is used to interpret empirical data gathered by the researcher in a new way suggesting radical new trajectories for information systems research.