Flipping the context: ICT4D, the next grand challenge for is research and practice

We often talk about a flipped classroom in online learning, which flips the traditional concept of learning on its head. As senior editors for this special issue on “Information and communication technology for development (ICT4D): the next grand challenge for information systems”, we asked ourselves: “What if we flipped the context of ICT4D research on its head? What if we reimagined ICT4D not simply as a niche area for IS, but as an opportunity for learning for mainstream IS?”. We sought not only to showcase high-quality ICT4D research but also to demonstrate that this area of research has come of age and can contribute to all IS research. Thus, this special issue focuses on 1) improving how we understand “development” as more than an arena for empirical research, and instead as a vehicle to substantively analyze how ICT can foster and 2) challenging authors to identify learning in their work in the ICT4D discipline that could inform and contribute to the evolution of the broader IS discipline. The first focus responds to various scholars’ calls (e.g., Orlikowski & Iacono, 2001; Davison & Martinsons, 2014) to be more precise about both the primary object and context of research in general. The second focus stands in stark contrast to earlier recommendations (Walsham, 2017) that the ICT4D discipline should engage with and learn from theoretical and methodological developments in mainstream IS. The emergence of “reverse innovations” from which mainstream IS can learn from ICT4D research not only reflects the steadily increasing maturity of the ICT4D discipline but also highlights the importance of development as a phenomenon, that concerns each and everyone in the world and not only those living in so-called “developing countries”. Thus, this special issue is timely given a global context that features great complexity, uncertainty, and new challenges (e.g., security, migration, and, climate change to name a few) and the IS discipline’s need to cumulatively evolve to better support these challenges. We hope we can inspire more IS researchers to consider this changing global context and join ICT4D researchers in a quest to achieve social impact beyond the traditional confines of IS research. By conveying this important message through this journal’s pages, we hope we can help to galvanize a larger community of researchers to contribute to both the research and practice of ICT4D. The paper proceeds as follows. In Section 2, we briefly trace the historical evolution of the two domains (ICT4D and mainstream IS), which, despite attempts to develop closer links between the two, many researchers see as following divergent paths. In Section 3, we argue that this is dichotomy is false and suggest that we adopt a more synergistic view that the IS research community take on ICT4D as a “grand challenge”. In Section 4, we describe the process of how this special issue came into being and introduce the four papers in the issue, which all focus on the conceptualization of development and the emerging reverse innovations. In Section 5, we discuss the systemic challenges that researchers in ICT4D experience and how we need to address them to make research contributions more relevant and insightful for the IS discipline as a whole

Designing an information system for updating land records in Bangladesh: action design ethnographic research (ADER)

Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Information Systems (IS) has developed through adapting, generating and applying diverse methodologies, methods, and techniques from reference disciplines. Further, Action Design Research (ADR) has recently developed as a broad research method that focuses on designing and redesigning IT and IS in organizational contexts. This paper reflects on applying ADR in a complex organizational context in a developing country. It shows that ADR requires additional lens for designing IS in such a complex organizational context. Through conducting ADR, it is seen that an ethnographic framework has potential complementarities for understanding complex contexts thereby enhancing the ADR processes. This paper argues that conducting ADR with an ethnographic approach enhances design of IS and organizational contexts. Finally, this paper aims presents a broader methodological framework, Action Design Ethnographic Research (ADER), for designing artefacts as well as IS. This is illustrated through the case of a land records updating service in Bangladesh

A conceptual model for action and design research

Organizational research has a pattern of special characteristics which make a clear distinction from other research paradigms. When using these approaches – based on Action and Design – the Interpretivist, Constructivist, and Participatory perspectives dominate. They have already proven to have strong foundations, which turn these paradigmatic approaches into effective ways for getting knowledge, doing things, and promoting change within organizational settings. It combines the traditional scientific, engineering, and organization development approaches, depicting how an organization can, simultaneously, solve multidimensional problems and produce actionable knowledge, effective change and useful artifacts. It has been developed using a Design Science Research approach, tested in a major organizational change program (Henriques, 2015; Henriques & ONeill, 2014), and successfully used to teach research methods essentials to Master and DBA students.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Understanding the everyday designer in organisations

This paper builds upon the existing concept of an everyday designer as a non-expert designer who carries out design activities using available resources in a given environment. It does so by examining the design activities undertaken by non-expert, informal, designers in organisations who make use of the formal and informal technology already in use in organisations while designing to direct, influence, change or transform the practices of people in the organisation. These people represent a cohort of designers who are given little attention in the literature on information systems, despite their central role in the formation of practice and enactment of technology in organisations. The paper describes the experiences of 18 everyday designers in an academic setting using three concepts: everyday designer in an organisation, empathy through design and experiencing an awareness gap. These concepts were constructed through the analysis of in-depth interviews with the participants. The paper concludes with a call for tool support for everyday designers in organisations to enable them to better understand the audience for whom they are designing and the role technology plays in the organisation

Requirements engineering for model-based enterprise architecture management with ArchiMate

The role of information systems (IS) evolved from supporting basic business functions to complex integrated enterprise platforms and ecosystems. As a result, enterprises increasingly adopt enterprise architecture (EA) as a means to manage complexity and support the ability to change. We initiated a study that investigates the pivotal role of enterprise architecture management (EAM) as an essential strategy to manage enterprise change and within this larger context, specifically how the ArchiMate modeling language can be enhanced with capabilities that support EAM. This paper reports on the evaluation of an EA modeling tool (TEAM) which has been enhanced with EAM capabilities. The evaluation was performed by a focus group of enterprise architects that attended a workshop and applied the tool to an EAM case study. The evaluation results, requirements as well as a conceptualization for further development are presented and are of value for both, enterprise architecture researchers and enterprise architects.Published in: Enterprise and Organizational Modeling and Simulation, 14th International Workshop, EOMAS 2018, Held at CAiSE 2018, Tallinn, Estonia, June 11–12, 2018, Selected Papers.Part of this research has been funded through the South Africa / Austria Joint Scientific and Technological Cooperation program with the project number ZA 11/2017.http://www.springer.com/series/79112019-06-11hj2018Informatic

Computer-aided DSM-IV-diagnostics – acceptance, use and perceived usefulness in relation to users' learning styles

BACKGROUND: CDSS (computerized decision support system) for medical diagnostics have been studied for long. This study was undertaken to investigate how different preferences of Learning Styles (LS) of psychiatrists might affect acceptance, use and perceived usefulness of a CDSS for diagnostics in psychiatry. METHODS: 49 psychiatrists (specialists and non-specialists) from 3 different clinics volunteered to participate in this study and to use the CDSS to diagnose a paper-based case (based on a real patient). LS, attitudes to CDSS and complementary data were obtained via questionnaires and interviews. To facilitate the study, a special version of the CDSS was created, which automatically could log interaction details. RESULTS: The LS preferences (according to Kolb) of the 49 physicians turned out as follows: 37% were Assimilating, 31% Converging, 27% Accommodating and 6% Diverging. The CDSS under study seemed to favor psychiatrists with abstract conceptualization information perceiving mode (Assimilating and Converging learning styles). A correlation between learning styles preferences and computer skill was found. Positive attitude to computer-aided diagnostics and learning styles preferences was also found to correlate. Using the CDSS, the specialists produced only 1 correct diagnosis and the non-specialists 2 correct diagnoses (median values) as compared to the three predetermined correct diagnoses of the actual case. Only 10% had all three diagnoses correct, 41 % two correct, 47 % one correct and 2 % had no correct diagnose at all. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that the use of CDSS does not guarantee correct diagnosis and that LS might influence the results. Future research should focus on the possibility to create systems open to individuals with different LS preferences and possibility to create CDSS adapted to the level of expertise of the user

Designing visualizations for workplace stress management: Results of a pilot study at a Swiss municipality

Job absenteeism and health problems are frequently caused by elevated exposure to work-related stress. The public sector is particularly affected by this development. Nevertheless, public sector organizations seem to have issues to reliably detect stress or to discuss about this topic in an objective and factual manner. Data visualizations have been found to be a powerful boundary object for sense-making and for unraveling issues that lie under the surface. Based on a pilot study at a medium-sized municipality in Switzerland, we thus developed, tested, and discussed various alternative visual representations for creating awareness about occupational stress. The results of this study showcase the hidden potential and perils of analyzing physiolytics data on aggregate level

A Return on Our Experience of Modeling a Service-oriented Organization in a Service Cartography

We present a longitudinal project using action design research, which is a four-year collaboration between two EPFL entities: The research Laboratory for Systemic Modeling (LAMS) and EPFL’s IT department, called the VPSI. During that time the VPSI was going through a transformation into a service-oriented organization. The research project began as an open-ended modeling of some of the VPSI processes. It slowly matured into the design and development of a visualization tool we call service cartography. During this research, we learned that, to successfully apply service-orientation, focusing purely on IT architecture and end-customer value is not enough. Attention must be given to the exchange of internal services between the service organization members and their alignment with the services expected by the external stakeholders. In this paper we present the evolution of (1) our understanding of what services are, and (2) our conceptualization of how the service cartography facilitates the service-oriented thinking

How to Exploit the Digitalization Potential of Business Processes

Process improvement is the most value-adding activity in the business process management (BPM) lifecycle. Despite mature knowledge, many approaches have been criticized to lack guidance on how to put process improvement into practice. Given the variety of emerging digital technologies, organizations not only face a process improvement black box, but also high uncertainty regarding digital technologies. This paper thus proposes a method that supports organizations in exploiting the digitalization potential of their business processes. To achieve this, action design research and situational method engineering were adopted. Two design cycles involving practitioners (i.e., managers and BPM experts) and end-users (i.e., process owners and participants) were conducted. In the first cycle, the method’s alpha version was evaluated by interviewing practitioners from five organizations. In the second cycle, the beta version was evaluated via real-world case studies. In this paper, detailed results of one case study, which was conducted at a semiconductor manufacturer, are included