There are many attempts to explain success and failure in information systems. Many of these refer to a purported sociotechnical gap. In this article we develop an alternative approach that does not impose such a strong dichotomy, but regards social and technical rather as dimensions along which to study workpractices. The developed theory involves not only the -social- and -technical- constructs, but also other generic ones, namely -instrumental,- -semiotic,- and -pragmatic.- We call this theory socio-instrumental pragmatism. To illustrate the theoretical concepts introduced, we use an example brought from an extensive action research study including the development of an information system in eldercare, developed through a participatory design approach. 

This dissertation is devoted to a perspective from which IT-based information systems are conceived as information technological artefacts intended for business action and communication. The perspective has been made concrete through the concept of information systems actability, which is the main concept under scrutiny. The research contributions of the dissertation exist at various levels of abstration. First of all, the dissertation contributes to the understanding of information systems from a social action perspective. Based on identified weaknesses in contemporary conceptualizations of information systems, the concept of information systems actability is developed. This contribution consists of a reconciliation of various views on information system usage quality with its roots in a linguistic tradition including elements from organizational semiotics and the language/action perspective. At a more concrete level, this understanding, and the concept as such, have consequences for the development and evaluation of information systems. Such consequences have been the foundation for a proposed information systems design method, which thus constitutes a further contribution. Another contribution is the outlining of an information systems actability. As a further means of obtaining empirical experience of working with this concept, a descriptive analytic framework has been developed, which constitutes yet another contribution. These three operationalizations, the design method, the evaluation method and the analytic framework, have been developed and empirically grounded through a qualitative case study appproach involving four cases of information systems requirements specification, four evaluations of existing information systems, and two cases of description and characterization of information systems related phenomena from the perspective of actability. The latter two cases imply how further contributions at an even more concrete level, constituted by characterizations of Internet-based information systems and the local electronic marketplace, seen in the light of information systems actability.

The paper discusses how theories from the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and the information system development fields can be combined in order to achieve more actable, and thus more usable, information systems. More specifically, one aim of this research is to create a reconciliation of the HCI perspectives of usability with the language action perspective into what we call actuability. The paper discusses advantages and limitations found in both the language action perspective and in prevalent HCI theories.

System development methods are often used as aids during the development of information systems. This paper examines the concept of method and other related notions in order to achieve a better understanding of their meaning and structure. The motivation for this paper is the emerging flora of different and related concepts and thus a need to sort things out. The main contribution of the paper is a conceptual model describing how the method concept and other related notions relate.