Design Science: Valid Knowledge for Socio-technical System Design

Information systems are socio-technical systems, i.e. complex arrangements of hardware, software, procedures, data and people. The literature provides ample design science to support the design of the technical components but much less so for the social ones. Main stream social science does not produce much design science as research in these disciplines is dominated by the paradigm of the explanatory sciences for which physics is the role model. In these disciplines there is as yet very little research on the basis of the paradigm of design sciences like medicine and engineering. The reasons for this include a fundamental methodological problem, which emerges if one wants to develop design science for the social world and which is not present in engineering and largely absent in medicine. It’s cause is human agency. However, this problem can be solved. This article will show how one can develop design science, i.e. valid knowledge produced by rigorous research to support designing, for the social world. The nature of the aforementioned methodological problem will be discussed, followed by a presentation of a research strategy by which one can overcome this problem. This strategy, objective and systematic social experimental learning, will be discussed and will be illustrated by some examples from the field of organization and management. Finally some suggestions are given on the development of design science for the social components of information systems.