An Analytic Framework for Design-Oriented Research Concepts

Over the last few decades, the field of information systems has shown a steadily increasing interest in design-oriented research. This is manifested through the emergence of different ontological and epistemological positions among IS researchers. Some challenges arise from this development, such as (a) a need to understand design-oriented IS research in relation to design-oriented approaches in other disciplines, and (b) a need for design theory representation that targets and is useful to stakeholders in both research and practice. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for understanding designoriented research, and its implications for research with a focus on meeting the two challenges mentioned above

Pragmatization of Conceptual Modelling

The aim of this paper is to show how speech act theory can be used in systems development as a theoretical foundation for conceptual modelling. With the traditional notion of the conceptual model as an image of reality, the predominant modelling problem is to analyse how the external reality should be mapped into, and represented in, the system in a ‘true’ way. In contrast to this, we maintain that the main modelling problem should be to analyse the communication acts performed by use of the system within its business context. This implies an integration of traditional conceptual modelling with action-oriented business modelling based on speech act theory. With such an approach it is possible to reconcile traditional conceptual modelling and the pragmatic aspects of language and computer use. It is argued that such reconciliation is essential to arrive at systems that provide relevant information to users and in which users can trace responsibilities for information, actions and commitments made

Usability in Social Action: Reinterpreting Effectiveness, Efficiency and Satisfaction

One of the most important qualities related to the use of information systems is arguably the usability achieved in actual use-situations. Three central criteria for usability as reflected in contemporary definitions are the effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction with which users can achieve specified goals. A problem with these criteria is that they are expressed in terms of achieving goals, which, at least tacitly, seem to be restricted to goals related to an instrumental view of information system use. In this paper, we discuss how the concept of usability can be understood and utilized within a social action context. Specifically, we address how communicative goals are related to the criteria of effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction. We argue that, in order to understand usability, we must consider both instrumental and communicative goals, since their combination constitutes a fundamental part of the social action context in which systems are used. Both instrumental and communicative goals affect the way systems and use-situations are designed and conceived

Five Principles for DSR Based Curriculum Development

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Not so shore anymore: the new imperatives when sourcing in the age of open

Software outsourcing has been the subject of much research in the past 25 years, largely because of potential cost savings envisaged through lower labour costs, ‘follow-the-sun’ development, access to skilled developers, and proximity to new markets. In recent years, the success of the open source phe-nomenon has inspired a number of new forms of sourcing that combine the potential of global sourcing with the elusive and much sought-after possibility of increased innovation. Three of these new forms of sourcing are opensourcing, innersourcing and crowdsourcing. Based on a comparative analysis of a number of case studies of these forms of sourcing, we illustrate how they differ in both significant and subtle ways from outsourcing. We conclude that these emerging sourcing approaches call for conceptual development and refocusing. Specifically, to understand software sourcing in the age of open, the important concept is no longer ‘shoring,’ but rather five identified imperatives (governance sharedness, unknownness, intrinsicness, innovativeness and co-opetitiveness) and their implications for the development situation at hand

Towards better understanding of agile values in global software development

Globally distributed software development (GSD) and agile methods are two current and important trends in software and systems engineering. While agile methods seem to cope well with increasingly changing business environments, it is far from obvious how these light-weight processes can best contribute to GSD. In this paper, method rationale is proposed as an analytical tool to understand the values that underpin agile methods and how these map to the GSD domain. Specifically, the paper presents an initial analysis of the values and goals embraced by the ‘agile manifesto’ and compares briefly with partial results from an ongoing study on the use of agile methods in GSD

Supporting global software development in open source ecosystems: a role for actability in the Pragmatic Web

New forms of collaboration between organizations based on open source principles are rapidly emerging. The collaboration is typically done in a spirit of co-opetition whereby companies, often SMEs, share cost and risk by developing software jointly and openly. The paper elaborates how this emerging phenomenon of open source ecosystems can be understood from the perspective of actability and the Pragmatic Web. The concept of open source ecosystems as a form of global software development is explored and actability is presented as a useful concept for articulating design criteria for the required collaborative tools. In doing so, a possible research agenda for pragmatic web research in this domain is outlined

Grounding through operationalization: constructing tangible theory in IS research

The research interests of information systems (IS) researchers often lead to a tension between theory development on the one hand and practical application, such as the implementation of computer applications or business processes, on the other. This tension is, for example, made manifest in the various action research approaches typically used in IS research. This paper presents an approach to IS research that aims to maintain a link between the abstract and the concrete in order to construct ‘tangible theory’. The approach is based on a perspective referred to as socio-instrumental pragmatism and on the concept of grounding knowledge in three different ways: internal grounding, external theoretical grounding, and empirical grounding. Specifically, the suggested approach puts forward the idea of operationalization of abstract knowledge into concrete forms that are more directly applicable in practice

Outsourcing to an Unknown Workforce: Exploring Opensourcing as a Global Sourcing Strategy

This paper presents a psychological contract perspective on the use of the open source development model as a global sourcing strategy—opensourcing, as we term it here—whereby commercial companies and open source communities collaborate on development of software of commercial interest to the company. Building on previous research on information systems outsourcing, a theoretical framework for exploring the opensourcing phenomenon is derived. The first phase of the research concerned qualitative case studies involving three commercial organizations (IONA Technologies, Philips Medical Systems, and Telefonica) that had “liberated” what had hitherto been proprietary software and sought to grow a global open source community around their product. We followed this with a large-scale survey involving additional exemplars of the phenomenon. The study identifies a number of symmetrical and complementary customer and community obligations that are associated with opensourcing success. We also identify a number of tension points on which customer and community perceptions tend to vary. Overall the key watchwords for opensourcing are openness, trust, tact, professionalism, transparency, and complementariness: The customer and community need to establish a trusted partnership of shared responsibility in building an overall opensourcing ecosystem. The study reveals an ongoing shift from OSS as a community of individual developers to OSS as a community of commercial organizations, primarily small to medium-sized enterprises. It also reveals that opensourcing provides ample opportunity for companies to headhunt top developers, hence moving from outsourcing to a largely unknown OSS workforce toward recruitment of developers from a global open source community whose talents have become known as a result of the opensourcing experience