Abstract
A Delphi study reported in Business Information System Engineering (BISE) in 2015 identified “rethink the theoretical foundations of the IS discipline” as a grand challenge for the discipline. Pursuit of that challenge calls for developing a framework for describing a theoretical perspective (an FDTP) because a coherent theoretical foundation ideally should be based on a well-articulated theoretical perspective. This paper defines theoretical perspective and presents a proposed FDTP that consists of 25 topics divided into 7 categories. It illustrates the use of the FDTP by applying it to the Bunge-Wand-Weber (BWW) ontology and to general systems theory (GST), two sets of ideas that could be related to a theoretical foundation for IS. Application of the FDTP reveals topic areas that the BWW ontology and GST cover and others that they do not cover. Subsequent sections explain how the FDTP was produced and suggest follow-on research.
Recommended Citation
Alter, Steven, "Framework for Describing a Theoretical Perspective: Application to the Bunge-Wand-Weber Ontology and General Systems Theory" (2021). ACIS 2021 Proceedings. 16.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/acis2021/16