Information Systems Risk Paradigms: Towards a New Theory on Systems Risk

Systems risk is not dealt with sufficiently by current information system development methodologies. This paper seeks to identify new insights into systems risk using a case of IT failure in banking in the UK and Ireland. This paper uses Burnell and Morgan's (1979) paradigms of social and organisational theory: functionalism; interpretivism; radical humanism and radical structuralism as the lens through which the IT failure is examined. New theories around systems risk is an important ask for IFAC going forward and this paper provides a basis for a future study of the meta-theoretical assumptions underpinning systems risk.