Rethinking the Meaning of Identifiers in Information Infrastructures

Identifiers — such as personal identification numbers, student numbers, and license numbers — are used for identifying individual objects and constitute an important part of the information infrastructures of organizations and society. The design, choice, assignment, withdrawal, and replacement of identifiers are significant economic and political issues with more profound consequences than are perhaps commonly perceived. Use of identifiers can result in significant costs because they may include descriptive information, because an inappropriate identifier may be chosen for the object in question, or because there may be a lack of institutional control of the identifier. The objective of this paper is to elaborate on these problems by explaining the identifier construct from a technical, institutional, ontological, and information infrastructural perspective. Based on this understanding, we provide guidelines for how identifiers should be designed, chosen, replaced, and controlled. Accordingly, we address the practical need for improved design principles relating to the increasingly important infrastructural character of computerized information systems that stems from the importance of appropriate identifiers for information infrastructures and society as a whole. In order to understand the role, function, and meaning of identifiers, it is important to acknowledge that the identifier is fundamentally a linguistic construct used when referring to socially constructed institutional objects. Institutional objects are symbolic entities that represent institutional and brute facts, which are the results of human actions

Socio-instrumental Design Patterns

This paper draws on pragmatic philosophy and design theory to propose the concept of the socio-instrumental design pattern. These patterns are design theories that acknowledge that solutions are to be found in the source social setting (where design takes place) and the target social setting (where the IT artefact will be embedded and put into action). Solutions may be discussed in terms of what to do and what to focus in the design process, not merely in terms of properties of the IT artefact. Besides introducing the concept, the paper proposes a way to structure socio-instrumental design patterns, and an example pattern is included to illustrate the approach. The example is grounded in empirical data from an ongoing action research project with an emphasis on socio-instrumental qualities of IT artefacts in their social context

Pragmatizing the Normative Artifact: Design Science Research in Scandinavia and Beyond

In this panel report, we analyze the discussion that unfolded during the “Design Science Research: A Scandinavian Approach?” panel held at the third Scandinavian Conference on Information Systems in Sigtuna, Sweden, in August, 2012. The second author of this paper chaired the panel, which also included Tone Bratteteig, Shirley Gregor, Ola Henfridsson, Alan Hevner, Jan Pries-Heje, and Tuure Tuunanen as panelists. Three themes that highlight how the design of artifacts contributes to knowledge production emerged during the panel. The first theme addresses our responsibility, as a research community, to come up not only with descriptions of the world but also to try to change things into preferable states. The second theme emphasizes that knowledge production also happens through the design of artifacts. The third theme identifies an apparent pragmatic turn in our discipline

On Usefulness in Mandatory Healthcare Settings

This paper explores usefulness in mandatory healthcare settings. Building on previous research and interviews with all categories of users of a Patient Data Management System (PDMS) designed to replace all paper documentation in an intensive care unit we suggest that it might be appropriate if questionnaire items concerning usefulness (a) not only measures benefits for the individual person and (b) are contextualized which would make it easier for staff to relate to the items

Conceptualizing Workarounds: Meanings and Manifestations in Information Systems Research

We reviewed papers in core IS outlets that defined the term workaround or presented an example of a workaround. In the analysis, we used Ogden and Richard’s triangle of reference as a theoretical framework to analyze the relationship between 1) the term workaround; 2) theories, definitions, and use of the term; and 3) their empirical basis and empirical workaround behavior that the papers describe. First, we summarize the existing theoretical insights regarding workarounds and investigate their validity. Second, we show that studies have defined and used the term workaround differently to the extent that they have not always applied it to the same empirical phenomena, which raises questions about some theoretical insights’ validity. Third, we suggest a definition for workarounds that we inductively derived from empirical accounts of workaround behavior and, therefore, that adequately describes how researchers commonly use the term and makes it possible to distinguish workarounds from other similar phenomena

Through the Printing Press: An Account of Open Practices in the Swedish Newspaper Industry

Organizational practices that foster a dialogic relationship between organizations and their constituent customers have created an arena for inbound and outbound innovation. At the nexus of this development occurring in the media industries, these flows are carried by various forms of digital, social media and an increasing digital presence in the form of dynamic websites with varying degrees of interactive capabilities. In this paper, we posit that the newspaper industry is torn between indifference and cautious apprehension caused by the difficulty in marrying the journalism profession’s carefully guarded gatekeeping practices with the revolving doors of open innovation. Gatekeeping has emerged as a fiercely defended cornerstone for the industry and the profession of journalism itself is not enough to distinguish amateurs from professionals; for the segregation between professionals and amateurs to carry weight rather than being reduced to a hollow title, the segregation needs a practice that explicitly enforces gatekeeping—where actions speak louder than titles. Against this backdrop, we pursue the following research question: Why has IT-enabled open innovation become such a contentious issue in the context of the newspaper industry? Combining contextual in-situ ethnographic interviews and observation with an industry-wide content analysis of Swedish newspaper websites, we present an in-depth view of what IT-enabled open innovation means in the context of the newspaper industry. Results show that the process of legitimization inscribed by a particularly charged information technology—the printing press—continues to exert great influence in what constitutes open practice in the newspaper industry

WORKAROUNDS IN INFORMATION SYSTEMS RESEARCH: A FIVE-YEAR UPDATE

This paper complements an earlier (2019) literature review on workarounds in information systems research by including research that has influenced or been published in core IS outlets during the last five years (2018–2022). Our study captures research that strengthened, widened, and challenged theoretical insights from the previous review. It also provides additional insights and develops seven themes of theoretical insight. The 31 new papers and our updated analysis are most evident in the three themes: Workarounds and power, Temporality of workarounds, and Managing workarounds. We also found additional studies using the term ‘workaround’ differently to the extent that they have not applied the term to the same empirical phenomena, which questions the validity of some theoretical claims. We also found significantly more studies that used quantitative data-collection methods than the previous review

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

DESIGNING CHATBOTS FOR HIGHER EDUCATION PRACTICE

In this research–in–progress paper, we employ design science research to articulate design knowledge for chatbots in higher education practice. We conducted a literature review to factor previous research into the design process. In addition, we performed a content analysis of student e-mails and forum posts from four instances of a basic Java programming course. Drawing from literature and data, we present a conceptual architecture for chatbots in higher education, discuss its rationale, and provide a proof-of-concept implementation. We conclude with a discussion including tentative design recommendations and a plan for continued research