A hermeneutic analysis of the Denver International Airport Baggage Handling System - Information Systems Foundations: Constructing and Criticising - page 61

6. A hermeneutic analysis of the
Denver International Airport Baggage
Handling System
Stasys Lukaitis, School of Information Systems, Deakin
University
Jacob Cybulski, School of Information Systems, Deakin
University
Abstract
This paper attempts to demonstrate the principles of hermeneutics in an effort to under-
stand factors affecting Information Systems (IS) projects. As hermeneutics provides a
systematic method of interpreting text from multiple information sources, thus, Inform-
ation Systems being prima facie defined and documented as text documents, are eminently
suited for this mode of investigation. In this paper, we illustrate hermeneutics by ana-
lysing a sample case study document describing the well-known Denver International
Airport (DIA) Automated Baggage Handling System project, which was extensively re-
ported in the IS and management press and studied by Montealegre and his colleagues.
As a result of the hermeneutic approach to the analysis of this document, a new 'flexib-
ility' factor has been discovered to play an important, yet unreported, role in the DIA
system demise. In the DIA case, the observed flexibility factor influenced the quality
of the interaction between the actors, the prevailing environment and the information
systems.
Introduction
Although there are several reports of information systems projects that have applied
hermeneutics (Boland, 1991; Klein and Myers, 1999; Myers, 1994a), there are very few
publications that explain the actual hermeneutic process taken by IS (and in fact, also
non-IS) researchers. What this paper strives to do is close the methodological gap and
to present one potential framework for the adoption of hermeneutics in the study of
information systems.
In addition, hermeneutics is often viewed as an 'obscure' tool in the IS community be-
cause it is perhaps not particularly well understood. To that end, this research also focuses
attention on making sense of hermeneutics and its philosophy.
Making sense of hermeneutics
The Oxford dictionary defines hermeneutics as 'of interpretation', taken from the original
Greek hermeneutikos (Turner, 1987, p. 284). Hermeneutics has been well documented as
a philosophy of enquiry, with its roots already evident in late antiquity where 'the
Greeks, the Jews and the Christians had been reading and re-reading their vital texts,
namely the Homeric epics, the Torah, Talmud and Midrashim, and the Holy Bible, re-