Can Process Facilitation Improve Globally Distributed Collaboration? An Action Design Research

Distributed collaborators still face problems to organize, to coordinate, and to build consensus. Collaboration tools still have difficulty to configure, to use, and to help facilitate collaboration management. In this study, we conducted an action design research on Company A that relies on distributed collaboration for their business activities. Based on the design theory of collaboration engineering, we designed a process facilitation support application to address the problems identified from Company A with real organizational problems. After rounds of iteration, we proposed two artifacts including facilitated collaboration process and collaborative tools for applications of process guidance. Findings suggest the benefits of facilitated process guidance on globally distributed collaboration. The results of survey show consistently high satisfaction towards the tool and process guidance from the employees. Our research serves as an exploratory investigation in the field of distributed collaboration, and provides evidence regarding the organizational challenges in a business context

Evaluation of Action Design Research

Design science research (DSR) is a legitimate research paradigm in the discipline of information systems (IS). One prominent DSR method is Action Design Research (ADR). The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the ADR method based on empirical experiences from a research project. We have found that the ADR method is highly relevant to an applied discipline such as IS. It creates a bridge between the organisational perspective and the technical perspective of the IT artefact. Moreover, the ADR method supports the dual mission of developing theory and producing knowledge that supports IS practitioners. The findings also include empirical evidence pointing towards a lack of prescriptive guidance with respect to the challenges such as: how to identify appropriate evaluation strategies, how to identify the abstraction mechanisms required to move from the specific-and-unique to the generic-and-abstract, and how to formulate design principles. Although we found adequate support at the macro level, the ADR method needs more detailed support for operationalisation in practice. To address this issue, we propose a number of guidelines that either seek to improve the ADR method or support those who apply ADR