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Making Sense of Design Science in Information Systems Research: Insights from a Systematic Literature Review

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Designing for a Digital and Globalized World (DESRIST 2018)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 10844))

Abstract

This study presents insights from a systematic literature review of design science in IS. A lack of agreement on how to classify and demarcate design science from behavioral science research led to the iterative development of a theoretically-grounded, encompassing framework of knowledge contributions in the larger context of general scientific inquiry as well as associated coding schemata. The results of the systematic literature review support our framework and the idea that paradigmatic boundaries (e.g., design science versus behavioral science research) are difficult to uphold for contemporary information systems research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    We group these related frameworks under the label of dualities of goals and scope frameworks.

  2. 2.

    Knowledge concerned with the bringing into being of something based on the ancient greek notion of technê.

  3. 3.

    Universally discoverable knowledge of how things are based on the ancient greek notion of epistêmê.

  4. 4.

    The exact date of the search was the 2nd of November, 2017.

  5. 5.

    We decided to use idiographic/nomothetic rather than situational/abstract to describe the different scopes of knowledge as it seems plausible to have abstract representations of situational knowledge, which might lead to unnecessary confusion.

  6. 6.

    We chose the label behavior rather than science as we argue that design also applies to science.

  7. 7.

    Here we build on and extend Iivari's [40] notion of research strategies in DSR. The basic idea is to identify research strategies by examining in what order idiographic or nomothetic inquiries are executed. For example, research developing a nomothetic methodology and then testing it in a case study would be classified as Top-Down; design action research engaging in a practical problem and distilling nomothetic insights from it would be classified as Bottom-Up; Mixed is used to classify research which exhibits elements of both strategies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cologne, 50969, Cologne, Germany

    Alexander Herwix & Christoph Rosenkranz

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  1. Alexander Herwix
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  2. Christoph Rosenkranz
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Correspondence to Alexander Herwix .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Information Systems and Technology, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, California, USA

    Samir Chatterjee

  2. Muma College of Business, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA

    Kaushik Dutta

  3. Department of Management Studies, IIT Madras, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

    Rangaraja P. Sundarraj

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Herwix, A., Rosenkranz, C. (2018). Making Sense of Design Science in Information Systems Research: Insights from a Systematic Literature Review. In: Chatterjee, S., Dutta, K., Sundarraj, R. (eds) Designing for a Digital and Globalized World. DESRIST 2018. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10844. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91800-6_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91800-6_4

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