Contributions published at Information Management (Gerhard Schwabe)

The second-hand automotive market is one with the least trust from consumers. Customers on the second-hand car market 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.

The used-car trade is characterized by information asymmetries between buyers and sellers leading to uncertainty and distrust,thus causing market inefficiencies. Prior research has shown that blockchain offers a solution: a transparent, trustworthy andverified car history that addresses these issues in the market for ‘lemons’. Yet, whether or not there really is a market for trustedcar data remains an open question. In particular, it is unclear if trusted car data increases transparency in the market for lemons andhow market participants value increased transparency. Hence, through a market game with 50 participants, we explored theeffects of trusted car data on the sales price of the cars, and the relative revenue of buyers and sellers. Additionally, we conductedinterviews with the participants to elicit the perceived customer value. The results show that blockchain enables an increase intransparency and creates value for both buyers and sellers.

The spread of the Internet has an influence on our communication methods and our consumer behaviour. This presents companies with new challenges in customer relationship management and has made online customer feedback management more crucial. Due to the increasing number of online feedbacks and the willingness to reply to these reviews and evaluate their text content, companies are becoming more dependent on IT support. AI-based technologies offer potential solutions for this, but their use leads to changes in the design of customer relationships and in the organisation of socio-technical processes within the company. Answering these reviews is a specific challenge in this regard. In this thesis a concept for intelligent answering of customer feedback is presented and evaluated. Reviewing text analysis and subsequent text generation of an answer, followed by human proofreading, has lead to a significant improvement in efficiency while maintaining the previous quality.

With the invention of the Blockchain, the creation of Blockchain-based cryptocurrencies became widely available. Cryptocurrencies often offer cheaper and more efficient transactions over traditional banking systems, especially for cross-border payments. The well-known social media company Facebook has founded the Libra Association together with other global companies. Under this organization, such a cryptocurrency called Libra is supposed to function as a global means of payment. Some parties do not like the fact that Facebook wants to launch a type of private issued money on the world market as a competing product to central bank-controlled money. Therefore, banks and governments are fighting Libra. They are discussing regulatory measures and some countries are taking steps to prevent the introduction of Libra. This is reflected in the statements found in newspaper articles between May and December 2019. 68.30% of the statements from public discourse were negative towards Libra most of which came from people holding positions in the government. This is mainly due to the potential threat that Libra could pose to the world's financial systems and the sovereignty of the states, as well as to the privacy of the users of its platform.

The waiting room is an often neglected area when studying patient behavior. Prior research has not paid much attention on the effect the wait can have on patients’ emotional states and their overall satisfaction with the care they receive. Measures curtailing the length of waits have showed to be as effective as filling the wait time. This study aims to identify how patients like to spend their wait in order to create a more effective wait experience. Also, the ways how patients’ satisfaction with the wait time can be increased is investigated. It both cases, technology is used as a main mediator to shape patients’ wait perception. By applying the design thinking approach, numerous prototypes were created and repeatedly tested with patients. The Waiting App was developed, a web application for waiting rooms that provides an interactive and tailored engagement to the patients. This study showed that patients wait experience can be shaped effectively, when their personal tendencies and interests are addressed. In this way, a more positive wait experience is created, which ultimately increases patients’ satisfaction.

Health care outcomes result from patients adherence to treatment. Effective patient-physician communication supported by modern in- formation systems are expected to enhance adherence to treatment. Including the concepts of patient empowerment and shared decision making, a conceptual design for the app Digital Companion was created. By analysing a dataset of 66 interview transcripts, the functional and non-functional requirements for the app were defined and a front- and back-end design was developed. In interviews with physicians and patients, the design idea was evaluated for further design science researches.

In recent years, an increasing number of blockchain consortia have emerged. However, little is known about how these consortia are developed and what tensions emerge in such collaborations. We describe the evolution of the cardossier blockchain consortium in Switzerland, which is building a system for managing car data and seeking to improve collaboration between players in the car-related ecosystem. From our involvement with the cardossier project, we have gained insights that will be valuable for enterprises considering whether to join a blockchain consortium.

Organizations increasingly implement processes-oriented setups like value stream production. Whereas this transition may bring many advantages on an organizational level, related studies show that shop floor workers feel less able to maintain close contact with others and exchange awareness cues. Their diminished social connectedness has consequences on the personal (e.g., reduced satisfaction) and organizational (reduced efficiency) level. The current wave of digitization brings ample opportunities for companies to bring their employees closer together again. In order to identify such opportunities, we have studied the shop floor production practices of an automotive OEM (original equipment manufacturer) for nearly two years. Following a scenario-based action design science approach, we have developed problem and activity scenarios as well as a prototype that helps the workers to improve their social connectedness in three different scenarios. Eight weeks of use demonstrated the prototype’s positive impact on the employees’ social connectedness by allowing for social appraisal and by improving their sense of sharing and involvement. Our results show which information technology (IT) design elements can contribute to social connectedness on the shop floor.

The quality of advisory service encounters affects customer satisfaction and the customer’s overall impression of an organization. A high-quality advisory service encounter increases sales opportunities of the bank and enables the customer to make a well-founded decision for his investment. The present thesis examines the perceived service quality of mortgage advisory services based on two IT-systems and identifies the effect of the systems on the interaction between customer and advisor. Further objects of research are the correlations between advisory service quality, interaction and growth of knowledge. For this purpose, the theoretical concepts to the keywords are defined by studying relevant literature. The customer’s evaluation of the advisory service is being examined with a quantitative analysis of questionnaires. Additionally, 48 interviews with customers are being analyzed qualitatively. The findings show the potential of IT for better perceived service quality. Moreover, they point out the importance of an individual approach and a collaborative and confidential advisory service.

Blockchain technology is expected to create a variety of new opportunities for businesses. Yet, little is known about how the technology actually enables to create value and how companies will be able to exploit true business value. However, without a clear understanding of the value creation potential from the technology, and corresponding adaption of business practices, the realization of value is doomed to failure. Hence, we contribute to this gap by exploring and explicating the specificities of value creation from blockchain in the ecosystem of a car. In the course of an exploratory case study analysis, over a time period of 2 years, we conducted three iterations of 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, Shared Operational Efficiency, and Controlled Customer Intimacy. Furthermore, we discuss our learnings for businesses in other domains aiming to leverage value from blockchain technology. We do so, by deriving guidelines for each blockchain value discipline. Furthermore, we give recommendations on how blockchain projects in ecosystems should approach multiple blockchain value potentials.

The need for qualified people to manage the digital transformation in public administration is tremendous. University curricula require adjustments to qualify graduates adequately. Business and engineering departments run practice-oriented university courses to tackle real-world digitalization challenges. In doing so, they shaped digital transformation in many companies. While potentially effective, such approaches remain rare in public administration teaching. It is unclear how to combine a contemporary, practice-oriented training approach towards digitalization with the contents of public administration curricula. The paper outlines the structure and methods employed in a course offered to public administration students at a German University. The preliminary evidence shows that the course was successful among students and practice-partners. Overall, the paper illustrates how public administration universities can contribute towards digital transformation by collaborating with municipalities and by empowering students to manage and drive digital transformation in the public sector.

Conversational agents such as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa are becoming more and more prevalent. Almost every smart device comes equipped with such an agent. While on the one hand they can make menial everyday tasks a lot easier for people, there are also more sophisticated use cases in which conversational agents can be helpful. One of these use cases is tutoring in higher education. Several systems to support both formal and informal learning have been developed. There have been many studies about single characteristics of pedagogical conversational agents and how these influence learning outcomes. But what is still missing, is an overview and guideline for atomic design decisions that need to be taken into account when creating such a system. Based on a review of articles on pedagogical conversational agents, this paper provides an extension of existing classifications of characteristics as to include more fine-grained design aspects.

The regional accumulation of blockchain startups around the world contrasts with the decentralized concept of blockchain technology. The question arises as to why blockchain startups are concentrated regionally, given that technological change is making virtual, social interactions and forms of work increasingly important. Therefore, there must be site-specific resources at the locations of blockchain startup concentrations, which make them attractive for blockchain startups. Since the literature does not yet contain comprehensive analyses of the individual blockchain startup concentrations, the aim of this study is therefore to examine the blockchain startup concentrations for similarities and differences by means of a comparative analysis of the blockchain startup concentrations, in order to draw conclusions, as to how these similarities and differences can be explained. Since there is no uniform consensus in literature on the definition of blockchain startup concentrations, in a first step blockchain startup concentrations were compared with related concepts of economical geography, in order to arrive at a suitable definition. In a further step a suitable framework was derived, which served as a basis for the qualitative comparative analysis. Next, the blockchain startup concentrations were identified and the three largest blockchain startup concentrations in Singapore, London and New York were used as objects of investigation for the comparative analysis. In a final step, the three locations were examined for their similarities and differences using a qualitative data analysis software and the reasons for the similarities and differences were discussed. It turned out that the locations have many similarities, which are conducive to the foundation and establishment of blockchain startups and this is also an important factor for these similarities. Differences between blockchain startup concentrations could hardly be found in Singapore, London and New York, suggesting that the advantages of the similarities outweigh the disadvantages and are important factors in the creation and economic growth of blockchain startup concentrations.

Modern information technology promises to improve service encounters through automated documentation or better decision traceability. At the same time, research suggests a negative impact of technology on human-to-human advisory services: including the possibility that computers might degrade the quality of interpersonal communication and reinforce unpleasant behaviors. Consequently, despite obvious improvements, information technology might have a negative impact on how the participants perceive the service. This might imply serious consequences for the service provider: dissatisfied clients, ineffective information exchange, and/or lack of transparency. This scenario slows down the diffusion of computers into advisory services in banks and insurance companies, and so designing systems for use in interpersonal services remains a challenge. This article provides evidence that LivePaper, a system designed alongside the material practices of a financial advisory encounter, helps to improve important service quality dimensions, making the services not only more pleasant for the participants, but also improving key marketing and business metrics of the service. In experimental advisory services, the sessions supported with LivePaper outperformed conventional services with regard to overall bank service quality and satisfaction, salesperson listening and interaction rating scores, as well as information transparency. This shows that a carefully designed system not only preserves the perceived quality of a service, but might improve it objectively, and has implications for the marketing and business value of the service.

The automotive market is in the top three markets with least trust from consumers (followed by banks, and telecommunications industry) (Lades 2017). In particular, in the used car market, consumers encounter such problems as: a car in a poorer condition than initially indicated, accident damage that was not previously disclosed, little or no documentation provided, and fraud. Nobel prize winner G.A. Akerlof described the market for used cars as an example of the problem of information asymmetries and resulting quality uncertainty (Akerlof 1970). In my dissertation, I look at how an application on top of blockchain technology, which is claimed to bring trust by design due to its inherent characteristics, may be designed as a novel solution to resolve problems in the ‘Market for Lemons’ and, thus, enhance trust between buyers and sellers. While there may be some genuine trust in blockchain technology itself, on an application level, trust in an IT artifact needs to be established. This need for trust establishment is at heart of this dissertation project. This cumulative dissertation is structured in three parts. In part I, I explore the characteristics of blockchain platforms and relevant aspects for their design (i.e., the data quality aspect and token design). In part II, I propose a design to address problems associated with a of lack of trust, caused by information asymmetries, between car buyers and car sellers with the help of an IT artifact: a blockchain-based cardossier. The cardossier application reflects a car’s history over its whole lifecycle (from production to utilization). The proposed design relates to the end-user-facing frontend application. In this part, I focus on the problems and needs of used car buyers, the requirements placed for the design of the application, the actual elements of the application design, and the effects of the application’s usage in the ‘Market for Lemons’. The results show that the problems buyers experience are a paradox of having a large variety of information sources available about brands, and the quality characteristics and performance of certain models; while information about a specific car is not transparent and often even hidden. Though providing more information about a used car leads to fewer information asymmetries in general, advanced information elements are beneficial in improving the situation further. As for trust, such a system enhances trust between buyers and sellers and, in general, makes the overall purchase process more trustworthy. However, to achieve these positive effects, the quality of the stored information should be guaranteed and properly communicated to the end-user. Additionally, exploring the use of the cardossier, embedded into an online used car sales platform, several groups of factors (technology-related, data-related, design-related, user-related) that play an important role in trust formation were revealed. Furthermore, through adopting the perspective of technology affordances, we identified blockchain platform affordances related to the trust in a blockchain platform. In part III, the transfer of a research project into practice, preparation for market entry, associated tensions the blockchain consortium had to face while implementing the platform are discussed along three themes: consortium management, business value, and governance. Altogether, the three parts of the dissertation provide better understanding of blockchain platforms, applications built on top of them and their usage in the ‘Market for Lemons’. Thus, this dissertation contributes to the body of knowledge on trust design in the context of blockchain technology and applications on top of it, and also to the broader literature on examining the ‘Market for Lemons’ and solutions to its problems. As blockchain applications are still being developed, and as we are just beginning to understand the potential of the blockchain technology, such research has scientific value in terms of design and organizational implications.

The Internet offers unprecedented opportunities to collect large amounts of personal data at low cost. Typically, it is not only the data collection process but also their further use which is opaque to the individuals. Blockchain technology promises to return Internet users control over their personal data. In this chapter we present and discuss Wibson, a decentralized data marketplace based on the blockchain that provides a way for individuals to control and monetize their personal information in a trusted environment. By using a token and blockchain-enabled smart contracts Wibson allows data sellers and buyers to interact while allowing them to keep their desired level of anonymity. This chapter is based on qualitative interviews and the thorough analysis of the technical documentation. We describe the underlying rationale and functioning of Wibson and provide suggestions for future research at the intersection of blockchain and privacy.

This chapter steps back from specific empirical cases and discusses alternative theoretical lenses that can be used to study if and how blockchain-based registries in Africa will be affecting organizations and society. Those lenses are: Neoinstitutionalism, Structuration theory, and Actor-Network theory. Each of them is adopted to outline aspects of blockchain first, then to highlight specificities in Ghana, finally to suggest research lines. This plurality of theoretical lenses encourages to foster a more nuanced understanding of unconventional contexts of technology in use, thus to derive better recommendations than those based on reductionist frameworks, which often overlook specificities of developing countries.

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 applications. While it has been originally closely linked to a libertarian agenda rejecting organizations, its developments have illustrated that this ideological framing is being reversed in practice. Based on contrastive empirical cases, the purpose of our paper is to discuss blockchain as an organizational technology. Its peculiar mode of governance, which we name ‘Hanseatic’, needs to mediate between the fluidity typical of Free and Open Source Software development and the immutability that use organizations adopt blockchain for.

Blockchain technologies enable new forms of data sharing in platforms. This raises questions around how they are jointly developed and managed in blockchain consortia and what role public agencies play in those efforts. Based on an analysis of prior work on data sharing in public-private partnerships and other blockchain projects, we analyze the case of the Cardossier. The Cardossier project and (later) association develops a platform to link the public and private actors in the Swiss car ecosystem. The participating car registration authority has the roles of an actor in interorganizational processes, supplier of data, source of trust, guarantor of data quality, user of data, and incentive for making goods public. We conclude that the public agencies have a very important role in blockchain consortia and propose that they should use this role actively as part of their efforts to create public value.

In literature non-blockchain related collaboration is covered and one finds what leads to success or failure. But it is unclear if this is also applicable for blockchain consortia. This is the aim of this master thesis and further also to learn more about what specifically leads to success and failure in blockchain consortia. For this a literature search and a qualitative study with interviews was conducted. The interviews were presented as single case, cross case comparison and a qualitative content analysis. Many aspects seen in the results align with the already existing literature. But in certain topics the traditional literature lacks on specific guidelines with regards to blockchain and its disruptive character.