Contributions published at Information Management (Gerhard Schwabe)

What if artificial intelligence (AI) machines became teammates rather than tools? This paper reports on an international initiative by 65 collaboration scientists to develop a research agenda for exploring the potential risks and benefits of machines as teammates (MaT). They generated 819 research questions. A subteam of 12 converged them to a research agenda comprising three design areas – Machine artifact, Collaboration, and Institution – and 17 dualities – significant effects with the potential for benefit or harm. The MaT research agenda offers a structure and archetypal research questions to organize early thought and research in this new area of study.

Car Dossier is a blockchain-based project being developed by a variety of stakeholders in the Swiss automotive ecosystem. Blockchain or DLT technology can facilitate solutions to improve transparency, trust, efficiency and scalability for stakeholder interactions, by reducing information asymmetries and ensuring that data is stored in a tamper-proof manner. This thesis focuses specifically visual information data such as images and videos. We employ design science research methodology, identifying use cases in which stakeholders could benefit from tamper-proof images stored on the Car Dossier ledger, and develop a technical prototype, which we ultimately evaluate with end users. The aim is to uncover new information and explore possible future solutions for image integration on the Car Dossier.

The customs clearance process for cars in Switzerland is characterised by complexity, redundant storage of data and media discontinuities. This thesis evaluates how Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) can be applied to improve this process and what merits and pitfalls can be observed. A detailed as-is analysis of the process is followed by a proposition of a to-be process. The to-be process envisions the digitisation of the test report form 13.20a and introduces a shared workflow management system based on DLT to automate formerly manual tasks. The process analysis is complemented by the implementation of a prototype to examine the viability of the to-be process. The prototype is based on the ongoing efforts of the Car Dossier project which aims to build a single source of truth for the history of a car. The findings of the process analysis and the development of the prototype are used to derive implications for the Car Dossier project and the partners involved in the customs clearance process.

Interdisciplinary pain-consultation sessions are carried out specifically for patients with oral or face pain at the Center for Dental Medicine. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to analyze and document this practice of orofacial pain counselling. For this purpose, about 11 hours of video material was provided by the Center for Dental Medicine, which contains recordings of the dental examinations as well as recordings of the offered relaxation therapy, which is led by pain psychologists. The focus of the analysis was on the use of materials and the challenges that arose during the consultations and had to be dealt by the specialist personnel. Based on these findings, an IT solution was developed in a further step to improve the quality of the pain-consultation. The created prototype, an administrative application for illustrative materi-als as well as documents that will be handed out to patients, has proven to be a solid basis on which to build. The further development into an operational application should be carried out in close cooperation with the Center for Dental Medicine team, so that it can be seamless inte-grated in the consultation sessions.

In this thesis potentials of the blockchain-based Car Dossier for used car dealers in Switzerland are examined. "Car Dossier" stands for a digital representation of a car's life cycle based on the Blockchain technology. For this purpose, ten mystery shoppings and ten interviews have been conducted which were then analysed with a qualitative content analysis. While several stakeholders of the Car Dossier have already been analysed, this thesis gives insight into the way the Car Dossier should be launched in the eyes of used car dealers for the first time. This thesis differentiates between two different types of used car sellers - brand -free dealers and brand representing dealers. Based on the findings, an actual state of the Swiss used car market was defined and possible application areas for both types of dealers were identified. For the identified application areas, three new use cases of the Car Dossier were then elaborated. The use cases were presented with narrative scenarios and graphical mockups.

The goal of this thesis is a study of the business lunch app market as well as a list of characteristics that are needed for a business-lunch app to be successful in such a marked. A prototype is made to test does characteristics. Furthermore, a business model for a start-up of such an app is made. In order to reach those goals a marked analysis and interviews are made. The prototype will be evaluated with user tests. Those tests will check the ease of use of the prototype. The results show that there are already business lunch apps on the marked. As the user tests show, the user-friendliness of the prototype which is made based on the interviews is satisfying.

In a Swiss bank, a digital tool was developed to aid the customer consultants in their work. Since it is not used successfully the question was raised what the underlying reasons for this situation could be. To answer the question some real consultations were observed and the consultants were interviewed afterwards. With this approach, the weak points of the tool and the consultations should get uncovered. The goal of this Bachelor Thesis is to understand the usage and associated problems of this digital support tool, in order to propose some first suggestions for improvement. For the analysis, the focus laid on the customer consultant, as they need to use the tool in the end. The analysis of the collected information revealed that the consultants used a broad range of support tools during their consultations, which lead to a lot of media disruptions. Against expectations, the consultants thereby also draw upon many digital tools.

Organizations have increasingly turned to the use of virtual teams (VTs) to tackle the complex nature of today’s organizational issues. To address these practical needs, VTs researchers from different disciplines have begun to amass a large literature. However, the changing workplace that is becoming so reliant on VTs comes with its own set of management challenges, which are not sufficiently addressed by current research on VTs. Paradoxically, despite the challenges associated with technology in terms of its disruption to trust development in VTs, trust is one of the most promising solutions for overcoming myriad problems. Though the extant literature includes an abundance of studies on trust in VTs, a comprehensive multidisciplinary review and synthesis is lacking. Addressing this gap, we present a systematic theoretical review of 124 articles from the disparate, multidisciplinary literature on trust in VTs. We use the review to develop an integrated model of trust in VTs. Based on our review, we provide theoretical insights into the relationship between virtuality and team trust, and highlight several critical suggestions for moving this literature forward to meet the needs of workplaces of the future, namely: better insight into how trust evolves alongside the team’s evolution, clarity about how to adequately conceptualize and operationalize virtuality, and greater understanding about how trust might develop differently across diverse types of virtual contexts with various technology usages. We conclude with guidelines for managing VTs in the future workplace, which is increasingly driven and affected by changing technologies, and highlight important trends to consider.

Blockchain technology provides a distributed ledger and is based on a logic of peer to peer authentication. It gained prominence with the rise of cryptocurrencies but provides a much broader field of possible application, including – but not limited to – land and other registries, global trade systems. While it has been originally closely linked to a libertarian, anarchic agenda, recent developments of commercial applications have illustrated that it can been dissociated from a particular ideological framing. The purpose of our paper is to identify and classify core properties of blockchain as an organizational technology and related modes of blockchain governance. We do this by looking at a number of case studies which highlight a number of governance design issues as well as unintended effects of the technology and related design choices. We are exploring the linkages between blockchain application properties and related design options and choices.

Advisory services are a highly sensitive form of collaboration: they rely on a clear distribution of roles between human participants who act according to an implicit set of practices and scripts. As such, they do not offer a specific role to a virtual assistant. At the same time, the technological improvements make the promise that institutional settings may be soon complemented with technology that allows for asking questions using natural speech, understands the context, and provides answers based on online processing of data. This article explores challenges and potentials of virtual assistants in advisory services while analyzing data from interviews and a workshop with clients and advisors from financial advisory services. It links the insights from the field with the institutional talk perspective. The findings unveil, that the concerns and hopes of potential users relate to their position and an implicit understanding of what an advisory service is about. This calls for careful and attentive design approach towards virtual assistants in advisory services.

There is evidence for a correlation between effective physician–patient communication in consultations and improved adherence to treatment. Lack of time, limited communication training, growing administrative duties, and low recall of physicians’ information and recommendations by patients are antagonists to effective physician–patient communication. In interviews with physicians, therapists, and patients, we first identify problems of current consultation practices and condense them in a problem scenario. We then use interview results to explore potential solutions, applying modern information technology such as digital medical assistants. Lastly, those potential solutions are condensed in an activity scenario that can be used for further design science research activities. To effective physician–patient communication, such as lack of time [10, 15], limited communication training [16], growing administrative duties [15], and low recall by patients of physicians’ information and recommendations [20]. The aim of this study is to explore the short- and long-term potential for improving the physician–patient consultation and thus adherence to treatment with the help of information technology. The physician–patient consultation as well as its preparation and follow-up are examined. We intend to identify starting points for the design of technological solutions that can be investigated and validated in further research with the help of Design Science Research (DSR) [17, 26]. We use scenarios to make problems and their potential solutions visible and tangible [30].

We propose solution-based probing as an extension of action design research. The core idea is that researchers bring a prototype solution (probe) into one or more fields and explore to synthesize robust and generalizable design knowledge, along with knowledge of the phenomena and correlations we discover. We believe proposing solutions creates opportunities for researchers to innovate and to document the impact. In addition, solutions can be effective probes for advancing theory, in terms of design theories and in creating exploratory foundations for behavioral and causal theory. We illustrate solution-based probing with four exemplar studies in the areas governance of municipalities, police work in informing citizens, learning in public schools, and naval decision making. We identify critical activities for ideating and initiating solution-based probing and for deriving sustainable solutions and scholarly knowledge from such studies. Finally, we discuss future directions for improving researchers’ ability to conduct high-impact solution-based probing research.

The blockchain comes with the promise of being a disruptive technology with the potential for novel ways of interaction in a wide range of applications. Although scholarly interest in the technology is growing, a broad analysis of blockchain applications from a governance perspective lacks to date. This research pays special attention to the governance of blockchain systems and illustrates core governance decisions on 15 blockchain systems from four application domains. Based on academic literature, semi-structured interviews with representatives from those companies, and content analysis of grey literature, different blockchain governance decisions have been derived and their enactment described. The identification of them enriches the scarce body of knowledge on blockchain systems with a better understanding of how key governance decisions are enacted in practice.

The automotive market is in the top three markets with the least trust from consumers. In particular, in the second-hand car market, consumers suffer from such problems as the car being in worse condition than initially indicated, accident damage that is not disclosed, fraud, etc. Akerlof, described the market for used cars as an example of the problem of information asymmetries and resulting quality uncertainty. In order to cope with quality uncertainties, used car buyers actively engage themselves in information seeking. Blockchain technology promises to automatize the tracking of cars through their lifecycles and provide reliable information at any point in time it is needed. In our study, we investigate the problems car buyers face during information seeking and propose requirements for the design of a blockchain-based system to address these.

Blockchain is expected to create a variety of new opportunities for businesses. Yet, little is known about how companies can exploit business value from the technology. However, without a clear understanding of how, and corresponding adaption of business practices, the realization of value is doomed to failure. Hence, we contribute to this gap by analyzing and explicating the specificities of value creation from blockchain in the ecosystem of a car. In the course of an exploratory case analysis we conducted interviews and workshops with industry and blockchain experts from five diverse stakeholder groups. In brief, we provide early evidence that (1) blockchain enables value creation through: Distributed Product Innovation, Controlled Customer Intimacy and Shared Operational Efficiency. Further, (2) we derive guidelines and discuss learnings for other businesses aiming to leverage value from blockchain technology.

Advisory services are ritualized encounters between an expert and an advisee. Empathetic, high-touch relationship between those two parties was identified as the key aspect of a successful advisory encounter. To facilitate the high-touch interaction, advisors established rituals which stress the unique, individual character of each client and each single encounter. Simultaneously, organizations like banks or insurances rolled out tools and technologies for use in advisory services to offer a uniform experience and consistent quality across branches and advisors. As a consequence, advisors were caught between the high-touch and high-tech aspects of an advisory service. This manuscript presents a system that accommodates for high-touch rituals and practices and combines them with high-tech collaboration. The proposed solution augments pen-and-paper practices with digital content and affords new material performances coherent with the existing rituals. The evaluation in realistic mortgage advisory services unveils the potential of mixed reality approaches for application in professional, institutional settings. The blow-by-blow analysis of the conversations reveals how an advisory service can become equally high-tech and high-touch thanks to a careful ritual-oriented system design. As a consequence, this paper presents a solution to the tension between the high-touch and high-tech tendencies in advisory services.

The project Car Dossier at the University of Zurich deals with the use of a blockchain to improve the used car market. This new technology gives hope for improvement and more transparency in the market. The Car Dossier is intended to help defeat information asymmetries and adverse selection on both the buy side and the sellers. Central feature of the car market are so-called lemons. In this work, the Gooo platform, which is part of the project, is analyzed for game design and fairness. Through two rounds already played at the UZH and with the help of the associated interviews, first approaches to fairness are discussed in this bachelor thesis. In addition there are suggestions for improvements of the results and which conclusions one can draw from the rounds played for future simulations.

As ever more companies encourage employees to innovate, a surplus of ideas has become reality in many organizations – often exceeding the available resources to execute them. Building on insights from a literature review and a three-year collaboration with a banking software provider, this paper suggests a Digital Idea Screening Cockpit (DISC) to address this challenge. Following a design science research approach, we suggest a prescriptive design theory that provides practitioner-oriented guidance for implementing a DISC. Our study shows that, in order to facilitate the assessment, selection, and tracking of ideas for different stakeholders, such a system needs to play a dual role: It needs to structure decision criteria and at the same be flexible to allow for creative expression. Moreover, we make a case for scenario-based design theorizing by developing design knowledge via scenarios.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to reveal how information and communication technology (ICT) can empower shop floor workers in collaborative manufacturing environments. Design/methodology/approach – The authors gather data from a mobile maintenance department of a steel manufacturing company and apply the method of a scenario-based design. The authors use data from interviews, observations and company documents to create problem and activity scenarios. The authors also demonstrate the development of a worker-centric digital design inmultiple demonstration and evaluation cycles. Findings – The authors find that ICT can be used to ensure that empowerment is not only a concept, but can sustainably empower daily operations. Research limitations/implications – The authors contribute to theory by showing how structural empowerment can be used as a guiding theoretical lens to design ICT for shop floor workers in collaborative manufacturing work environments. These implications are limited to findings from a single case study. Practical implications – The results provide an overview of different empowerment dimensions, namely, the access to information, resources, support and opportunities, that can support employees in collaborative manufacturing environments. Originality/value – This paper is first in suggesting a framework of how ICT designs can be used to empower shop floor workers in collaborative manufacturing environments.

An advisory service encounter brings together a domain expert with a layperson in a complex life situation. Because of the different backgrounds and expertise levels, the interlocutors and meanings is an essential part of advisory services and, generally, of expert-layperson collaboration. Establishing and maintaining a common lexicon is a specific and, at the same type, frequent type of collaborative work. Nevertheless, it remains unclear what efforts this collaborative work involves and what role collaborative IT applications play in this regard. A collaborative application can well support the maintenance of a common lexicon by providing a way to externalize terms or definitions. Or it can generate additional work by providing further terms and definitions to be incorporated in the common lexicon. That puzzle gets reflected in specific design dilemmas: should the system use expert or conventional terms, what is the source of the adequate terminology, to what extent should the system adapt to the individual lexical choices, etc. This manuscript explores the work involved in establishing and maintaining a common lexicon in advisory services between an expert and a layperson. In particular, it demonstrates how external material, a dedicated collaborative application developed for supporting advisory services, impacts the maintenance of a common lexicon. First, the manuscript depicts practices involved in translation and adoption of terminology from the system into the conversation. Second, it characterizes the system’s impact on interlocutors’ vocabulary. Overall, the study contributes to the discourse on expert-layperson collaboration by characterizing an important type of work, the vocabulary work, and by depicting the role of collaborative applications for this type of work.