Oliver Gaß

Design Principles for a Social Question and Answers Site: Enabling User-to-User Support in Organizations

The adoption of consumer technology in organizations, termed as IT consumerization, alters the IT infrastructure of many organizations. Letting employees decide which IT tools to use for their work increases the complexity of the organizational IT landscape and immediately raises the question how to provide adequate support given the multitude of technologies. Bring-Your-Own-Device advocates argue that employees can provide IT support on their own. An established concept to provide user-to-user support are social questions & answers sites (SQA). While such community sites are perfectly suited for exploratory problem solving, they lack however suitability to help solving specific problems subject to a specific organization. Moreover, receiving fast ad-hoc help in SQA is rather unlikely, as communication is always indirect and experts to solve the problem are unknown beforehand. The work presented in this paper explores key design characteristics of SQA sites in organizations that overcome the shortcoming of public SQA sites. Based on existing IS literature, we identify four kernel theories that are relevant for SQA sites in organizations and derive meta-requirements from them. In a next step, we analyze five public SQA sites to identify common design principles of SQA sites that are already applied. The main part of our analysis matches the identified design principles with the formulated meta-requirements to address potential gaps with respect to an enterprise environment. We conclude our research with the suggestion of additional design principles for SQA sites that account for their application in an organizational context.

Anatomy of knowledge bases used in design science research

Several papers have addressed the theory foundation of DSR. While researchers usually emphasize that the existence of such a knowledge base (KB) is essential for high quality design science research (DSR), opinions depart what kind of knowledge comprises such a knowledge base and which qualitative requirements apply regarding the knowledge leveraged. Some researchers demand that DSR is based on descriptive formal theories, while other scholars extend the width of the knowledge base also to unverified empirical evidence, conceptual knowledge and prescriptive knowledge. In order to provide some guidance for practical DSR, we apply literature review methodology on recent DSR articles to determine the common practice regarding the use and development of knowledge bases in previous projects. Based on this investigation, we discuss current issues, derive implications for future research and suggest measures to strengthen the role of the knowledge base in DSR.

Designing an artifact for the integration of ubiquitous information systems in an enterprise context

In the past most IT innovations were initially introduced inside organizations and it was there where individuals first came in contact with new technologies. Nowadays, also the private life has gained importance for the adoption of technologies. Not often, individuals acquire new IT innovations privately, before they realize their value for professional activities and start using them for work. Their employers, however, struggle to integrate those innovations into their already heterogeneous organizational landscapes. The result is often an overly insufficient and ineffective use of private IT in organizations. In fact, previous integration research has provided various concepts to abate such negative effects, integrating the data and functionality of a few more private systems seems not a big deal. However, if one looks closer, it becomes apparent that private IT is autonomous from organizational control, rendering many common approaches inapplicable. Our research addresses this problem. Using the scenario of self-employed insurance brokers, we identify several characteristics of private IT ecosystems, here conceptualized as ubiquitous information systems (UIS), which prevent its productive use for professional activities. Based on these findings we suggest and instantiate a solution design which solves many issues of heterogeneity, but also accounts for the autonomy and distribution of the private UIS and its sub-systems. We conclude our research with a discussion of six propositions about the expected impact of our solution on individual performance.

WeChange - Eine demografiesensible Supportplattform zur Wissensvernetzung im Unternehmen

Eine wichtige Herausforderung zur Erhaltung der Innovationsfahigkeit von Unternehmen ist die Gestaltung der organisationalen Informationstechnologien (IT). Der demografische Wandel geht einher mit Veranderungen im Nutzungsverhalten von IT. Allgemein ist die Bedeutung von IT im privaten Umfeld in den letzten Jahren stetig gewachsen. Die Vorlieben bezuglich der Technologienutzung unterscheiden sich dabei zum Teil erheblich und lassen sich nicht immer mit organisationalen Anforderungen in Einklang bringen. Die steigende Heterogenitat der Arbeitnehmer, unterstutzt durch demografische Entwicklungen, fuhrt inzwischen dazu, dass immer mehr verschiedene Hard- und Software in Unternehmen eingesetzt werden. Fur die IT-Abteilung wird es so zunehmend schwieriger, einen zentralen Support bereitzustellen. Zur gleichen Zeit sind Nutzer von Technologie inzwischen deutlich versierter in deren Umgang, so dass sie viele Probleme entweder selbst oder untereinander losen konnen. Hier setzt die Idee des dezentralen Supports an, in der sich Nutzer direkt miteinander vernetzen, um gegenseitig Supportanfragen zu losen. Im Forschungsprojekt WeChange wurde eine demografiesensible dezentrale Supportplattform entwickelt, die auf die Bedurfnisse der Unternehmen und Nutzer zugeschnitten ist. Kern der Plattform ist die dezentrale Interaktion zwischen Nutzern, die anstatt prozess-orientierten Strukturen zu folgen, die Vorteile sozialer Vernetzung nutzt.