Abstract
Design science is an emerging research paradigm in the Information Systems area. A design science project typically includes the activities of problem analysis, requirements definition, artifact development, and evaluation. These activities are not to be seen as sequential but can be carried out in any order. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptualization and formalization of design science research that show the possible ways in which a design science project can be carried out. The proposal is based on the state oriented view on business processes and suggests that design science research can be viewed as movements in a space of situations, problems and solutions.
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Notes
- 1.
The problem can be defined in very broad terms, however, for all practical purposes only the intersection between the problem P and a set of situations reachable from s, R(s) is important for any given situation s.
- 2.
Π ⊂ P(S), where P(S) is the set of all subsets of set S.
- 3.
Obviously, the first sign of "justifiable" is being "reachable", i.e. s' ∈ R(s).
- 4.
Existence of a template presumes existence of an algorithm that generates all situations that belong to a given template t by assigning values to the variables of the template.
- 5.
Using templates, GS(t) has a problem GP if for each m ∈ M, t(m) ∈ GP.
- 6.
- 7.
Note that we can consider any individual situations s as a generic one GS, where set GS consists of one element only, GSÂ =Â {s}. In this case, the template for GS would not contain any variables. Such interpretation could reduce the number of SPS-spaces to consider from 2 to 1. Though this solution could be preferable from the pure mathematical point of view, we will not pursue it in this paper, as we consider the two spaces construction as being easier to explain and visualized.
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Bider, I., Johannesson, P., Perjons, E. (2013). Design Science Research as Movement Between Individual and Generic Situation-Problem–Solution Spaces. In: Baskerville, R., De Marco, M., Spagnoletti, P. (eds) Designing Organizational Systems. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol 1. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-33371-2_3
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