New Light Through Old Windows: The Interpretive Foundations of the CSF Concept and Method

Abstract

CSF are those few things that must go well for an individual or an organisation to ensure success in a business undertaking: consequently, they represent those organisational, managerial, or individual activities that must be afforded particular and continuous attention so as to achieve the level of performance necessary to achieve desired goals. Since John Rockart first introduced the concept in 1979, this simple concept has been applied in a variety of forms, by both practitioners and researchers, within the IS field. In recent years, however, the concept has fallen into disuse among the IS research community; indeed, a vox pop of IS academics revealed that the concept was considered ‘old hat’ as a research approach. There are many possible reasons for this. One explanation may be that it is, in essence, an interpretive rather than a functionalist/rationalist approach for research and praxis, as such, it would be fundamentally incompatible with the ontological perspectives of many researcher’s within the field. However, given that it was originally adopted for research purposes by adherents of the dominant functionalist paradigm within the IS field (see Burrell and Morgan, 1979, for an appreciation of this paradigmatic classification), it was only a matter of time before its basic ontological, epistemological and methodological foundations were altered.