Participation: ‘bounded freedom’ or hidden constraints on user involvement

Within information systems development, the notion of user participation has become institutionalised practice, almost to the extent that many believe that not involving the users precludes success. For those developers who focus upon technical elegance, there is acknowledgement that lack of acceptance by users will be as catastrophic for the information system as so-called ‘technical’ deficiency. Yet, despite increasing consideration of the human and social aspects of systems design, systems development is replete with failures and much has been written about the ‘software crisis’ (Brooks, 1987). Aside from a few notable exceptions, there is a dearth of literature that directly addresses the problem of recurring failures of information systems, despite engagement with user participation. In this paper we aim to shed some light on this ‘thorny problem’ by focussing specifically on the dissonance between espoused rationality and the lived experience of technology which is more typically characterised by power, politics, and conflict. Historically, the process of information systems development is characterised by rationality whereby actions are justified on rational grounds and the appropriate