ACTION DESIGN RESEARCH
Ola Henfridsson
Viktoria Institute & University of Oslo
(in collaboration with M. Sein, S. Purao, M. Rossi, and R. Lindgren)
What kind of research is this?
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Objective: to improve some kind of organizational capability
1+ year process study
Develops a new perspective on this organizational capability
Draws on contemporary theory
Design and release of multiple versions of a technology
Developing innovative features of a technology
Eventually causing a change in organizational strategy
Developing design principles for a particular type of information
system
Available approaches
Design Research
Action Research
Candidate 1: Design Research
• Fundamentally, develop prescriptive design
knowledge through building and evaluating IT
artifacts intended to solve an identified class of
problems
– Technical novelty
– Must be abstracted to develop knowledge
• Relevance of technology artifacts evaluated by utility
• DR separates evaluation from building, rarely
accomplishing it in authentic settings
• The problem of separation and sequencing
Candidate 2: Action Research
• Fundamentally, a study of change
– Central assumption: complex social processes are best studied by
introducing change into these processes and observing their effects
• Focus on practical problems with theoretical relevance
• Produces results relevant to the organization while
simultaneously informing theory
• Sees the technology artifact as a black box
• No clear emphasis on the technology artifact
What is an IT artifact?
• An Ensemble:
– The material and organizational features that are
socially recognized as bundles of hardware and/or
software (cf. Orlikowski and Iacono 2001)
• ”technology as structure”:
– Structures of the organizational domain are
inscribed into the artifact during its development
and use
What is an IT artifact? (2)
• An emergent thing:
– Neither fixed nor independent, instead, emerges from
ongoing social and economic practices (Orlikowski and
Iacono 2001)
• Where does emergence come from?
– Interaction between technology and an organizational
context (Truex et al. 1999)
– Shaped by the interests, values, and assumptions of a wide
variety of communities of developers, investors, users, etc.
(Orlikowski and Iacono 2001)
What is an IT artifact? (3)
• Many artifacts are only partly the work of the designer.
– Numerous local actions (e.g., use, interpretation, negotiation, and
redesign)
• Cannot be anticipated by reference to any a priori design
(Iivari 2003)
Considering the candidates
• DR and AR offer incomplete solutions for us
– DR supports abstraction and innovation but relegates authentic
intervention as secondary
– AR supports intervention and knowledge emergence in authentic
settings but innovation and abstraction are secondary goals
Our thesis
• To study ensemble artifacts, we need a
research method that can account for
– Both technological and organizational contexts
– Shaping of the artifact via design and use
– Influences of designers and users
Combining...
• AR and DR:
– Are similar (Järvinen 2007; Lee 2007; Figueiredo
and Cunha 2007)
– Should be kept apart (Iivari 2007)
– Have commonalities (Cole et al. 2005)
• Suggestions for combining
– Use the two in sequence (Iivari 2007)
– Interleave the processes (Lee 2007)
– Map commonalities (Cole et al. 2005)
Sequencing
Start a DRStart
process
a DR:process:
Identifying
a need
Building
Evaluating
Reflecting
Start
process:
Start
anan
ARAR
process
:
Theorizing
Interleaving
Start an AR process:
Diagnosing
a problem
Action
planning
Action taking
Start a DR process :
Evaluating, reflecting
Specifying learning
Build
A New DR Method: ADR
• Provides explicit guidance for accomodating building,
intervention, and evaluation in a concerted research effort
• An approach to produce knowledge by
– intervening in an organization
– through developing an innovative IT ensemble artifact
• Knowledge that
– adds to, refines, or generates theory or theories
– supports IS practitioners in solving immediate problems
ADR
Stage 1: Problem formulation
• An immediate or anticipated problem:
– perceived by organizational participants, and framed
by the researcher
• Identify the class of which the specific problem
is an instance
• Formulate initial research questions
• Identify contributing theoretical bases
• Identify prior technology advances
Stage 1: Problem formulation (2)
• Practice-inspired Research
– Field problems as knowledgecreation opportunities (rather
than theoretical puzzles)
• Theory-ingrained artifact
– Artifacts as carriers of theoretical
traces
– Iterations based on influences
from theory
Stage 2: Building, Intervention, and
Evaluation (BIE)
• BIE intends to support an iterative
process at the intersection of the IT
artifact and the organizational
environment
• Building, intervention, and
evaluation are interwoven
• Two forms of BIE:
– IT-dominant BIE
– Organization-dominant BIE
IT-Dominant BIE
Organization-Dominant BIE
Forms of BIE
1. IT-Dominant BIE
2. Organization-Dominant BIE
Stage 2: BIE Principles
• Reciprocal shaping
– Emphasizes the inseparable
influences from two domains: the IT
artifact and the organizational
context
• Mutually influential roles
– Mutual learning among participants
in an ADR project
• Authentic and concurrent
evaluation
– Formative evaluation
Stage 3: Reflection and Learning
• Analyze intervention results
• Articulate learning in terms of
theories selected
• Ongoing evaluation of adherence to
principles
Stage 3 principle: Guided Emergence
• Captures seemingly incongruent
perspectives
• Initial design by researchers, shaped by
ongoing organizational use and reflected in
redesign (Garud et al 2008; Iivari 2003)
• Combination of
– preliminary design of the artifact (Principle 2)
– refined by ongoing interactions among
perspectives and participants (Principles 3 and
4 respectively)
– outcomes of formative evaluation (Principle 5)
4. Formalization of Learning
• Abstract results to a class of field
problems
• Focused on transferability of
results and communication of
outcomes
• Outcomes specified as design
principles and contributions to
theory
Stage 4: Principle
• Generalized Outcomes:
– Generalizing the problem instance
– Generalizing the solution instance
– Deriving design principles from the design
research outcomes
• BIE is an inductive step that
connects design principles to a
class of solutions and a class of
problems
ADR
Comparing DR, AR, and ADR
Our contribution
• ADR: a customization of Design Research that
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Overcomes Stage-Gate Models for Design Research
Recognizes the inherently ensemble nature of IT artifacts
Captures innovativeness for both IT and org-dominant versions
Reconciles one-case Utility against abstraction to Design Principles
• As it
– Brings together technology and behavioral IS researchers
– Ensures relevance to build bridges with practice
What kind of research is this?
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Objective: to improve some kind of organizational capability
1+ year process study
Develops a new perspective on this organizational capability
Draws on contemporary theory
Design and release of multiple versions of the technology
Developing innovative features of the technology
Eventually causing a change in organizational strategy
Developing design principles for a particular type of information system
Many thanks for your attention!