Abstract

Although we want to research, understand and teach about organisations as information systems, we find ourselves trapped within a framework of concepts focused on applying computers to organisational problems. A business game almost 50 years old did treat the organisation as the real information system and it succeeded didactically. Perhaps, with our modern technology, we could develop improved games for teaching IS rather than IT applications, especially if we build on a more rigorous treatment of information, the notion of at the centre of out discipline. This paper also argues that we should adopt a new, information field paradigm instead of the information flow paradigm imposed on users of UML and similar orthodox methods for requirements analysis and specification. It outlines methods of analysis and specification (well suited to business games) that treat organisations as systems of social norms that specify their functions and determine their information requirements.

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