Information Systems Design Knowledge for Sustainable Development Along a Social-Technical Continuum
- Achieving a more sustainable lifestyle is one of the most important challenges of the 21st century. Sustainable development, therefore, is one of the key objectives also for industrial nations such as Germany. Sustainable development is defined as the "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (WCED 1987, Chapter 2). This development, however, is not only based on environmental dimensions but also on economic and social dimensions. These are known as the three pillars of sustainability.
According to the Global Sustainable Development Report (Messerli et al. 2019), there are four levers of transformation being most important to achieve sustainable development, one of which is science and technology. Information systems (IS) research investigates the application of information technology in organizational settings (Hevner et al. 2004). IS research considers itself as a socio-technical disciplineAchieving a more sustainable lifestyle is one of the most important challenges of the 21st century. Sustainable development, therefore, is one of the key objectives also for industrial nations such as Germany. Sustainable development is defined as the "development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (WCED 1987, Chapter 2). This development, however, is not only based on environmental dimensions but also on economic and social dimensions. These are known as the three pillars of sustainability.
According to the Global Sustainable Development Report (Messerli et al. 2019), there are four levers of transformation being most important to achieve sustainable development, one of which is science and technology. Information systems (IS) research investigates the application of information technology in organizational settings (Hevner et al. 2004). IS research considers itself as a socio-technical discipline (Briggs et al. 2010), which should investigate IS-related issues along a social-technical continuum (Sarker et al. 2019). In recent times, the field is discussing more intensively the application of IS for sustainability purposes (e.g., Melville 2010; Watson et al. 2010; Henkel and Kranz 2018). However, IS scholars claim for more work to be done regarding sustainable development (Seidel et al. 2017; Gholami et al. 2016; Parmiggiani and Monteiro 2018) and to develop knowledge along the social-technical continuum (Sarker et al. 2019).
For this reason, the aim of this dissertation is to develop knowledge for IS to achieve sustainable development from different socio-technical perspectives. Therefore, this work applies pluralistic methodological approaches (qualitative methods, e.g., semi-structured interviews, and quantitative methods, e.g., data collection from a field study or online experiments). The theoretical contribution of this dissertation expands existing design knowledge in the field of IS for sustainability. Following Gregor and Hevner (2013), design knowledge can be grouped into two types: descriptive and prescriptive knowledge. On the one hand, descriptive knowledge contributes to the knowledge about natural phenomena and the sense-making relationships between phenomena (what). Descriptive knowledge provides the scientific base for the world we live in. On the other hand, prescriptive knowledge contributes to the knowledge about man-made artifacts to improve our world (how). Design theories are an abstract and coherent body of knowledge, which include both types of knowledge (Gregor and Hevner 2013). Overall, this work takes three different perspectives to develop both types of knowledge: the socio-technical perspective, the sociocentric perspective, and the technocentric perspective.
First, to contribute to the socio-technical perspective, this thesis presents new approaches to analyze and improve individual driving behavior in individual road traffic. Personal traffic accounts for approximately 11% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions globally (Andor et al. 2020). Environmental driving behavior, therein, has a significant impact on the fuel consumption of vehicles (Lárusdóttir and Ulfarsson 2014), and reductions of fuel consumption up to 30% are possible. One promising approach to improve individual driving behavior is the application of eco-feedback to the driver. Therefore, this thesis presents prescriptive knowledge in the form of design artifacts for mobile eco-driving feedback information systems (EDFIS), which results from justificatory knowledge, a prototypical instantiation of a mobile EDFIS, and its application within a field study. The results indicate that eco-feedback affects environmentally friendly driving behavior. However, eco-feedback seems not to address all aspects of eco-driving behavior. Nowadays, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has reached cars, and ever more embedded sensors allow for rich data analysis of individual driving behavior. Therefore, this thesis presents a factor model describing IoT-measured individual driving behavior to handle the resulting amount of IoT-data and analyzes the effect of eco-feedback on individual driving behavior.
Second, to contribute to the sociocentric perspective, this thesis presents design knowledge on how to design social media platforms in order to counteract so-called fake news. Such misleading information – which has always been a problem but has recently found nutritious ground in social media – poses a major threat. In recent times, fake news is spread to impact political decision-making and elections. However, fake news is not only a challenge for politics but also for ecologically and economically sustainable development. For instance, fake news is spread to influence financial markets in order to affect the financial value of stocks and options (Maasberg et al. 2018). Furthermore, fake news is a popular means to undermine climate change, which in reality requires significant changes in the individual and collective behavior of people (van der Linden et al. 2017). This thesis presents two new approaches to empower people individually to recognize and report misleading information to counteract the spread of fake news. Firstly, related articles are an appropriate tool to improve social media users' ability to recognize fake news as such. Especially, the application of controversial related articles shows the best results. Secondly, social norm messages are an appropriate tool to encourage social media users to report fake news. This allows social media providers to effectively identify and remove misleading and deceptive information from their platforms.
To contribute to the third and last, technocentric perspective, this thesis presents a new approach to analyze and design lean, digitally supported value creation processes in companies and organizations. In the light of ever more connected entities and the diffusion of digital technologies, innovative information flows enable various potentials in value creation processes and allow minimizing waste. For instance, rich information availability allows production with fewer resources or the more accurate usage of perishable materials. The presented Value Stream Modeling and Notation (VSMN) constitutes a domain-specific modeling language, which supports designers of economically sustainable value creation processes in times of digitalization. For evaluation purposes, we present, among others, the results of the application of VSMN while designing lean material logistics processes in hospitals. The results also constitute prescriptive knowledge for material logistic processes in hospitals, which are more efficient due to the targeted use of digital technologies.
To sum up, this dissertation presents design knowledge – including both types, descriptive and prescriptive knowledge – and contributes to the knowledge base about IS for sustainability (Gholami et al. 2016; Seidel et al. 2017; Parmiggiani and Monteiro 2018) and sustainable development (Messerli et al. 2019). In addition, the thesis develops design knowledge along the social-technical continuum (Sarker et al. 2019). Using methodological pluralistic (qualitative and quantitative) approaches allows an extension of the existing knowledge from different perspectives (Venkatesh et al. 2013). Overall, the results of this thesis contribute to overcoming one of the greatest challenges of mankind and the greatest challenge of the 21st century.…
