The systems approach to design, and inquiring information systems: Scandinavian experiences and proposed research program

This paper starts with a short history of the application of dialectical social systems approach in Sweden in the sixties, and emphasizes its later application to the field of information or inquiring systems. This is followed by a reflection on the meeting between the systems approach and some other approaches mainly in Scandinavia and Europe, notably the postmodern aestheticist trends of the eighties which grew further in the nineties and note apparently dominate the stage of many computer applications in multimedia and virtual reality: The paper concludes with some reflections on the possible causes and import of these trends and possible shortcomings of the systems approach itself which make it difficult to offer the necessary resistance, requiring the future energetic work of systems researchers and educators in a proposed research program.