Towards empathy: a human-centred analysis of rationality, ethics and praxis in systems development

Abstract

Functionalism has long been the dominant paradigm in systems development practice. However, functionalism promotes an innate and immutable instrumental rationality that is indifferent to human values, rights, society, culture and international stability. It, in essence, lacks empathy. Although alternative paradigms have been promoted for decades in the systems development literature to help address this deficit, functionalism remains dominant. This paper reiterates the call for a fundamental paradigm shift away from myopic functionalism and towards a more empathic and human-centred philosophy. It argues that the human-centred tradition offers a philosophically compatible and mature approach that can be practically harnessed for promoting empathy in systems development. The paper investigates the potential of systems development to become truly human-centred using data originally collected as part of a multi-method critical-interpretive study of privacy in information systems development. Multiple methods are used for the data analysis presented, including principal components analysis, hierarchical clustering, Q methodology, and descriptive statistics. The multi-method analysis demonstrates a marked discreetness exists between human-centred sentiments and instrumentally rational ones in systems development praxis. The paper concludes by presenting recommendations on how human-centred values can be practically fostered and engaged to enable greater empathy in contemporary system development and strengthen international stability.

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“…IS research has been dominated by the rational-cognitive approach [2] or instrumental rationality [4].…”

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“…Research has shown that engineers' pessimist beliefs about the feasibility of information privacy come with a decreased motivation to implement privacy mechanisms [28,29]. Carew and colleagues express even wider concerns by showing that in system development, interests in human, social, and moral issues are diametral to interests in technical issues and functionality [30]. Thus, a sustainable model of technology production, use, and interaction needs to conciliate technical values with individual, social, and environmental values.…”

Don't Waste a Good Disaster: A Systems Approach to an Ethics of International Institutional Failures

“…Schwartz's Universal Values Model utilises a form of principle components analysis to configure value patterns within complex organisational and social settings. Whilst this work remains in its infancy, Carew & Stapleton (2014) and Martin (2012) show how such an approach can provide extremely powerful lenses by which to access deep value patterns.…”

“…They too come laden with assumptions and limitations and good science will need to explicate these. Notwithstanding this, Carew & Stapleton (2014) and Schwartz (1992) have demonstrated the efficacy of these techniques in their models of human cultural value systems.…”