Evaluating Evolutionary Information Systems: A Post-Modernist Perspective

Abstract

Until the beginning of the 1990s, information systems (IS) were generally viewed as largely a support for business activity and were justified using cost accounting techniques. A proposed system would be developed if it could be shown that it would reduce operating costs or result in other productivity increases. No consideration was given to other benefits of an intangible or even strategic nature. As the deployment of information technology (IT) spread from operational to tactical support, the need to assess or evaluate its contribution to organisational performance and organisational reconfiguration attracted researchers’ interests. Yet the same genre of cost accounting based evaluation techniques were used.