The State of Design Science Research within the BISE Community: An Empirical Investigation

The Business & Information Systems Engineering (BISE) community in the Germanspeaking countries has a long track record of publishing papers using design science research (DSR). However, the state of recent DSR within the BISE community is not well documented and the lessons learned can be useful for other communities. This paper investigates the use of DSR methodology by examining articles published in the BISE community’s primary outlets. We focus on understanding the artifacts created, the foundations for building these artifacts, and the evaluation methods used. The results reveal a) a broad view of foundations for DSR by incorporating artifacts that are used in practice, b) the focus on the organization as the unit of analysis, c) a pluralism of research methods that cater to the timeliness of problems addressed, and d) low level of theoretical underpinnings, thus lacking in DSR rigor aspects.