Global Perspectives on Design Science Research

Abstract

With four inspiring conferences that took place in Claremont, Pasadena, Atlanta and Philadelphia, the International Conference on Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology (DESRIST) has developed into a premier conference for design-oriented research in Information Systems. Becoming a truly global conference series, DESRIST was held in St.Gallen, Switzerland, in 2010. DESRIST 2010 brought together researchers and practitioners engaged in design science research from all over the world to provide global perspectives on both design science and design research in the broadest sense.The design science research paradigm has been discussed thoroughly in recent years and is now gaining ground for both building knowledge and improving practice in information systems and several related disciplines. As opposed to natural and social research, design research does not crave ultimate truths, grand theories or general laws, but seeks to identify and understand real-world problemsand propose appropriate, useful solutions. It is commonly believed that design research involves building, investigating and evaluating innovative artefacts such as constructs, frameworks, models, methods, and information system instantiations in order to solve practical problems. Moreover, the study of methods, behaviours, and best practices related to the problem analysis and artefact development process are encompassed commonly referred to as design science.An ongoing debate related to the nature, scope and dominant ideologies of design science research, however, shows that the paradigm is still emerging. Its core, its boundaries and its interplay with other research approaches are increasingly being revealed and defined.The topical theme of DESRIST 2010 is Global Perspectives on Design Science Research. Once more, the DESRIST conference successfully serves as a forum for raising and discussing new ideas in the area of design science research.Among others, the papers submitted to DESRIST 2010 contribute to a better understanding of the interplay between design and organisation, design and information, design and behaviour, and design and collaboration. A number of contributions present design research exemplars, while others illuminate design research techniques or design research organisation. All papers were reviewed by at least two reviewers and the selection process was competitive. In total, 80 papers were submitted, out of which 35 were selected as full research papers (acceptance rate of 44%). Furthermore, ten submissions were accepted as short papers and presented as posters. The submissions came from authors located in 29 different countries, geographically distributed as follows: 59% of the authors are located in Europe, 32.5% in the Americas and 4.25% each in Asia and Australia.In conjunction with the main conference, DESRIST 2010 hosted three workshops on design, enterprise architecture management, and enterprise engineering. Papers accepted for CIAO! (one of these workshops) have been published in a separate volume of Springer's Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing series.In addition, three invited keynoters and four panels stimulated the discussions on new and emerging issues in line with the conference topics. The panels addressed the following topics: innovation in design science research, design for use, publishing design science research, and organising design science research. We are thankful for the fruitful and inspiring discussions and the interesting impulses for future relevant work in the field of design science research. We wish to thank all the people who submitted papers to the DESRIST 2010 conference for having shared their work with us. We sincerely hope that you find the papers as interesting and inspiring as we did. Moreover, we owe special thanks to all members of the programme committee of DESRIST 2010 as well as all reviewers for their work. We are also very appreciative to the many people who were involved in the organisation of the DESRIST conference and its accompanying events. We believe that DESRIST 2010 provided detailed insights into the current state of the art, set directions for fruitful further research initiatives and truly contributed to the transfer of academic knowledge for practical problem-solving.