In this introductory paper to the special issue of Systems Practice devoted to Interpretive Systemology, some of the conditions under which this trend in systems thinking has come to life are briefly depicted. For that purpose a "wider" and a "narrower" scene are presented. The "wider scene" presents the general questions and problems that are to be tackled by Interpretive Systemology, within a wide international perspective of systems thinking and practice. The narrower scene, which is related to more particular conditions, shows how some circumstances connected to the so-called "Third World" or "underdeveloped" countries have helped to trigger the launching of Interpretive Systemology. Finally, a brief outline of the research program for Interpretive Systemology is introduced.

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linked to the phenomenological perspective, are changing our understanding of systems, and organizations. In this chapter, we will introduce a new image of organizations as holistic practices -an image based on these developmentsand examine how this image may enrich Checkland's phenomenological design of information systemsThe application of a phenomenological approach to information systems design (ISD) is not a new idea. Boland (1985) and Checkland & Scholes (1990), among others, brought the attention of information systems designers to this fruitful approach years ago. To phenomenology, reality is socially constructed, the product of continuous social interaction. Sense-making becomes then the focus of the systems designer, rather than the positivistic search for the "true" organization and the "true" requirements of the system to be designed (usually the main concern of the classical systems expert in every study). In the phenomenological perspective, organizations are socially constructed. Such systems can be described in relation to different particular world views of the members of the organization (Checkland & Scholes, 1990) and their interpretations. Therefore, information is the meaning that results from an engagement with the different perspectives a human organization handles. In this connection, information systems have to be designed as

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