Toward a Responsible Design Science Research Ecosystem for the Digital Age: A Critical Pragmatist Perspective

This dissertation is motivated by the need to find ways to responsibly navigate the complex landscape of the digital age, in which rapid advances in information technology (IT), particularly in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), present both unprecedented opportunities and potentially catastrophic risks to society. The starting point is the assumption that we need to focus on Responsible Innovation (RI) in order to reap the benefits of accelerating IT innovation while avoiding the most dangerous risks. The main goal of this dissertation is to initiate and support the development of a responsible design science research (DSR) ecosystem to align DSR with the imperatives of RI. To this end, it advocates a paradigm shift for Information Systems (IS) research and proposes responsible DSR as a ”supermethodology” to address the grand challenges of the digital age in a responsible and productive manner. This dissertation achieves this goal through three interrelated inquiries: 1. Ethical Foundations of IS Research: A comprehensive overview of ethics and its relationship to IS research, based on a panel discussion and literature review, highlights ethical considerations for responsible IS research in the digital age. This sets the stage for a conscious engagement with RI in IS research and DSR. 2. Conceptual Framework for Responsible DSR: The central part of the dissertation develops a multi-grounded theory supported by interviews with various members of the IS community and academic literature. The result is a holistic framework for responsible DSR that addresses fundamental paradigmatic challenges: ontological, epistemological, axiological, and methodological. The framework serves as an open and integrative conceptual foundation for a responsible DSR ecosystem. 3. Applied Responsible DSR Project: The dissertation concludes with a concrete responsible DSR project that not only contributes to addressing a relevant societal problem, but also serves as an example of what responsible DSR can look like in practice. Scenario development and system dynamic simulation experiments are used to examine the impact of digitalization on the resilience of the U.S. food sector in the face of catastrophic electricity loss. The study stimulates a critical discourse on the interplay between digital transformation and social resilience and provides insights for the responsible embedding of digital technologies. Taken together, these studies form the basis for a responsible DSR ecosystem. However, this dissertation recognizes the participatory and emergent nature of such development efforts and can therefore only serve as a starting point. Continued discourse and deliberate action are needed to advance responsible DSR and contribute to the flourishing of our societies in the digital age

A MULTI-PERSPECTIVE FRAMEWORK FOR THE INVESTIGATION OF TOOL SUPPORT FOR DESIGN SCIENCE RESEARCH

Tool support for design science research (DSR) is increasingly recognized by the DSR community as an important but neglected area of research. Extrapolating from the achievements of tool support for more established research approaches, tool support for DSR promises to lower the barriers for the delivery of more rigorous, comparable, and, thus, relevant DSR. However, to this date, little research has looked at the challenge of providing tool support for DSR systematically. As a first step to close this gap, prior research in the form of a workshop by the DESRIST community focused on identifying an initial understanding as well as set of requirements for tool support in DSR. This paper extends and complements this prior research with a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews (n=12) about the topic of tool support in DSR with a broad variety of design science researchers. The major contribu- tion of this work is that it goes beyond the mere collection of requirements and uses qualitative data analysis to dive deeper into the understanding of tool support in DSR as well as associated opportuni- ties and challenges. Based on this analysis, we developed a multi-perspective framework for the inves- tigation of tool support for DSR, which we position as a promising foundation for future research on the emerging topic of tool support for DSR

The paradigm of design science research: a tool-supported literature review

In this paper, a review of the state of the art of theory associated with the young and quickly evolving Design Science Research (DSR) paradigm is presented. The core of the review consists of a structured literature search covering the senior scholars’ basket of eight from 1977 until the end of 2016, which resulted in data set of 196 sources. An iterative, selective coding of the title and abstracts revealed four major grounded clusters (138 papers). Three clusters (93 papers) were selected for co-citation analysis and augmented with additional forward and backward searches. The co-citation analysis affords an objective look at the current state of theory use in DSR and allows for the systematic identification of research opportunities. Altogether, the paper presents a multi-grounded DSR approach to literature reviews and contributes a reliable platform for further analysis and development of the DSR paradigm

Context in Design Science Research: Taxonomy and Framework

One of the open methodological concerns for design science research (DSR) in information systems is how to think about and deal with the notion of context. This paper takes an important step toward clarifying the notion of context and elaborates how it can be dealt with from a DSR perspective. In particular, we present a coherent theoretical account of context grounded in Pragmatism. Moreover, we also reify this understanding into a Context Taxonomy and Context Framework for DSR. Altogether, we intend to provide a sound foundation and a fruitful platform for DSR that is more attuned to the particularities of context

Tool Support for Design Science Research—Towards a Software Ecosystem: A Report from a DESRIST 2017 Workshop

The information systems (IS) field contains a rich body of knowledge on approaches, methods, and frameworks that supports researchers in conducting design science research (DSR). It also contains some consensus about the key elements of DSR projects—such as problem identification, design, implementation, evaluation, and abstraction of design knowledge. Still, we lack any commonly accepted tools that address the needs of DSR scholars who seek to structure, manage, and present their projects. Indeed, DSR endeavors, which are often complex and multi-faceted in nature and involve various stakeholders (e.g., researchers, developers, practitioners, and others), require the support that such tools provide. Thus, to investigate the tools that DSR scholars actually need to effectively and efficiently perform their work, we conducted an open workshop with DSR scholars at the 2017 DESRIST conference in Karlsruhe, Germany, to debate 1) the general requirement categories of DSR tool support and 2) the more specific requirements. This paper reports on the results from this workshop. Specifically, we identify nine categories of requirements that fall into the three broad phases (pre-design, design, and post design) and that contribute to a software ecosystem for supporting DSR endeavors

TOWARDS A PANORAMA OF SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS: EXPLORING A GLOBAL LEARNING PARTNERSHIP FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The support and scaling up of successful sustainable development and nature conservation practices is a major challenge that needs to be addressed to support a smoother transition to a more sustainable society. In this paper, we present an exploratory case study of the global learning partnership “PANORAMA – Solutions for a Healthy Planet”, which develops and maintains a digital platform that aims to support this transformation by facilitating bottom-up learning from successful practitioner initiatives. We investigate how to leverage the developmental potential of digital platforms such as PANORAMA in an effort to shed a light on digital platforms in a heretofore underexplored context. We find that PANORAMA use of a layered governance model enables it to better align its platform offering with the goals and needs of stakeholders. Moreover, we find that PANORAMA’s method for facilitating bottomup learning from successful practitioner initiatives produces artefacts that are perceived to be useful by a variety of stakeholders and, thus, are another ingredient that helps PANORAMA leverage its developmental potential. Our work contributes a relevant problem class in the context of global development as well as an associated framework for its study that can inform a systematic program of future research. In addition, we contribute first insights that can inform the design of such systems

The Paradigm of Design Science Research: A Tool-Supported Literature Review

In this paper, a review of the state of the art of theory associated with the young and quickly evolving Design Science Research (DSR) paradigm is presented. The core of the review consists of a structured literature search covering the senior scholars’ basket of eight from 1977 until the end of 2016, which resulted in data set of 196 sources. An iterative, selective coding of the title and abstracts revealed four major grounded clusters (138 papers). Three clusters (93 papers) were selected for co-citation analysis and augmented with additional forward and backward searches. The co-citation analysis affords an objective look at the current state of theory use in DSR and allows for the systematic identification of research opportunities. Altogether, the paper presents a multi-grounded DSR approach to literature reviews and contributes a reliable platform for further analysis and development of the DSR paradigm

A Multi-Perspective Framework for the Investigation of Tool Support for Design Science Research (Online Appendix)

Online appendix for the paper: A Multi-Perspective Framework for the Investigation of Tool Support for Design Science Research

References

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