Information Technology Reference
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Conclusions
This article has presented a case for the use of critical hermeneutics to the study of IS
development projects. In particular, we used the infamous case study of Denver Inter-
national Airport (DIA) and its Baggage Handling System to illustrate the hermeneutic
process, its numerous cycles of understanding and the insights gained and recorded as
new text that could be further analysed and reconciled.
The method demonstrated that the hermeneutic approach is eminently well suited to
the task of analysing IS processes, environment, actors and events - the truly factual
aspects of recorded project information. The example also showed that pre-existing text
can be screened for prejudices and biases, which may hide the richness of new insights
and information.
In the case of DIA, the hermeneutic approach led to the discovery of new factors, such
as those related to project inflexibility, which could explain the downfall of the DIA
development project, but which seem to have eluded the original project investigators,
either due to unintentional omission, educational objectives of the case, or possibly due
to the political pressures imposed on the authors by various project stakeholders.
On reflection, in the course of our study, we came to the conclusion that critical hermen-
eutics can be effectively employed in IS research to determine IS project characteristics,
to identify the associated project events and their actors. It is also a very useful approach
to assist IS researchers in sifting through the secondary data of possibly biased and
prejudiced project reports and in peeling off these biases to reveal and interpret the true
nature of project events.
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