Reflections on the Practice of Design Science in Information Systems

Abstract

Design science research (DSR) now enjoys a degree of recognition in information systems, with special issues in journals, dedicated tracks in conferences and well-recognized guidelines for the conduct of DSR. A number of issues regarding DSR, however, are still the subject of debate. This essay addresses these issues, drawing on prior analytic work and personal experience and reviews of DSR in practice. Variation in the incidence of DSR publications amongst leading journals is shown. Other conclusions are that the need for inductive and abductive thinking in addition to deductive methods for knowledge generation is not as well accepted as it could be, that further work could be done on gathering evidence for the impact of DSR and that there is reason to think that work on the epistemology of DSR has value. Show more