Information systems and systems thinking: Time to unite?

摘要

The notion of ‘information system’ is examined particularly from the perspective that those concerned with such ‘systems’ might learn something from the whole body of ideas concerned with the notion ‘system’. The first section examines briefly the possible approach to understanding information systems through the notion of information theory. The second section examines the fundamentals of systems thinking as developed in the 1950s and 1960s, and reviews new developments during the 1970s and 1980s, examining their application to information systems; the third section reviews the implications of these developments for work on information systems in the future.