Crisis and foundations: an inquiry into the nature and limits of models and methods in the information systems discipline

The reasons for the present success of our discipline are due to factors that are somehow extraneous to it, i.e, the Internet and the strategic use of information technology. Both innovations stem from initiatives that have grown outside academia, and especially outside the focus of academic teaching and research in information systems: methodologies for systems analysis, design and development. We need to go back to the world of practice to find the foundations of a new style of information systems teaching and research. Unfortunately, this is not what is happening now. Take, for example, the recent research programmes on strategic alignment or software quality methodologies. They are just new instances of how methods hide rather than open inquiry and discovery possibilities. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.