Philosophical foundations of information systems: A review of the first 10 years

This paper updates and extends the work by Bunker, et al. (2004) that reviewed developments in the Philosophical Foundations of IS (PFIS) mini-track from 1996 through 2003. We first describe the history of the mini-track, concentrating on 1996, when C. West Churchman served on a PFIS panel and presented a luncheon address. His work on inquiring systems continues to be the basis for many of the papers in the mini-track. Papers in 2004 and 2005 are reviewed briefly and some trends and themes are noted. Unfortunately, one trend is a declining number of papers submitted. We discuss factors that may have led to this and hope that next year\u27s conference venue may lead to an increase in submissions. For convenience, the chronology published in Bunker, et al.\u27s 2004 paper is included as an appendix