Contributions published at Information Management (Gerhard Schwabe)

Trust is a crucial component for successful transactions regardless of whether they are executed in physical or virtual spaces. Blockchain technology is often discussed in the context of trust and referred to as a trust-free, trustless, or trustworthy technology. However, the question of how the trustworthiness of blockchain platforms should be demonstrated and proven to end users still remains open. While there may be some genuine trust in the blockchain technology itself, on an application level trust in an IT artifact needs to be established. In this study, we examine how trust-supporting design elements may be implemented to foster an end user’s trust in a blockchain platform. We follow the design science paradigm and suggest a practically useful set of design elements that can help designers of blockchain platforms to build more trustworthy systems.

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The blockchain technology challenges the view on established modes of governance by offering distributed authentication without the need for a central authority, which is well-exemplified by Bitcoin. While the governance of and through Bitcoin is well- accentuated in research, we spotlight impacts on governance which blockchain-based systems bring to inter-organizational settings as well as their purpose. To build our arguments, we explore those impacts on two contrasting cases from the domains of automotive and public administration and relate them to cryptocurrencies. Relying on interviews with experts from said organizations utilizing blockchain technology, and a content analysis of related grey literature, we discuss established forms of governance as well as platforms and infrastructures against the impacts which blockchain-based systems cause. After referring those to the concepts of markets, hierarchies, networks, and tribes, we critically reflect on their purpose by utilizing the notions of infrastructures and platforms, and conclude blockchain-based systems to possibly alter the way established modes of governance are enacted.

Recent research reports the need for consistent incentives in blockchain-based systems. In this study, we investigate how incentives for a blockchain-based inter-organizational network should be designed to ensure a high quality of data, exchanged and stored within the network. For this, we use two complementary methodological approaches: an Action Design Research approach in combination with agent-based modelling, and demonstrate, through the example of a real-world blockchain project, how such an incentive system may be modelled. The proposed incentive system features a rating mechanism influenced by measures of data correction. We evaluate the incentive system in a simulation to show how effective the system is in terms of sustaining a high quality of data. Thus, the paper contributes to our understanding of incentives in inter- organizational settings and, more broadly, to our understanding of incentive mechanisms in blockchain economy.

The growing usage of tokens in real-world blockchain projects – mostly visible in ICOs – has unveiled the need to understand what blockchain tokens in fact represent and how they relate to their underlying business model. Previous research has contributed to this gap but often lacks a comprehensive understanding of tokens and their design as well as of the growing and rapidly-changing complexity in token landscape. This has crucial implications for assessing tokens' value and utility. Applying a structured, scientific approach towards blockchain tokens, we provide a comprehensive token classification and a decision-aid on token design. This is based on a literature review and an empirical study to cover this research gap. Our work offers a novel contribution in an emerging field within the Blockchain research domain and proposes structured analytical tools which can be used by both practitioners and researchers.

Purpose This paper aims to explore the concept of early warning signs (EWSs) in offshore-outsourced software development (OOSD) projects at the team level. It also aims to identify the EWSs of failure in the onshore-offshore project context and understand how they are perceived by responsible managers. Design/methodology/approach A grounded theory approach is followed by gathering data from 19 failed OOSD projects using project managers from client and vendor sides as the key informants. Findings This study identified 13 EWSs of failure in five categories of trust and team cohesion, common project execution structures, awareness of shared work context, collaboration between teams and onshore-offshore team coordination capabilities. EWSs were found to comprise two components: early warning issues and early signals of failures. Research limitations/implications India-based vendors’ data in the study formed the primary weakness of the work regarding generalizability, even though it brought homogeneity to data. Lack of triangulation of failure data through client or vendor peers proved impossible in this research as failure remains a very sensitive topic. Dual composition of EWSs could be applied to institutionalize an early warning tool in projects. Originality/value The paper develops an exploratory model of EWSs of failure and project failure in the OOSD project context. The two-component framework of EWSs allows project managers to eliminate false positives while identifying EWSs. It contributes to the information system failure, risk management and information technology offshoring research streams.

To successfully start cooperation with suppliers is challenging. This case study analyzes how a Germany-based IT client cooperates with its suppliers. Both the client and its suppliers are SMEs in IT outsourcing sector. The case explores (1) the role of supplier’s willingness in client’s supplier selection decision, (2) motivations of suppliers to join the client’s supplier development programs and (3) what activities are used in ITO sector to develop suppliers. The results show that besides supplier capabilities, supplier willingness also plays an important role in supplier selection. The selection is not a one-way decision from clients, but a negotiation between the client and suppliers. To come to the cooperation, both parties have to be aligned with their partner’s strategy, show the willingness to cooperate and the commitment on top management level. The motivations of suppliers to join the client are fourfold. They are because the suppliers (1) want to win the contract, (2) to improve their capabilities by learning new skills from the client, especially (3) when the cooperation is aligned with their development strategy and (4) when they realize the commitment and the potential of the client to cooperate and develop the suppliers. In ITO sector, a wide range of supplier development activities are implemented by clients and suppliers including direct supplier activities (finance and human) and indirect activities (incentive, evaluation, competitive pressure). However, it depends on (1) the perceived client-supplier relationship, (2) the supplier absorptive capacity and (3) the supplier developing capability of the client.

This thesis tries to answer the question, how to design a practice environment, so that students without technical background too can participate in applied exercises in the realm of informatics education. Several students who have visited the course Business Informatics 2 in 2017 were asked questions about the exercises. The interviews were interpreted, and the analyzed problems abstracted. Based on these abstract problems an artefact was created, the so-called Codelets. The Codelets were evaluated with a focus group and live in the course. The assessment of the evaluation showed that the Codelets succeeded in conveying missing knowledge to the students and supported them in solving the exercises.

The blockchain start-up scene is booming: dozens of new projects are created every day. However, only a fraction of the launched projects survive. The blockchain scene resembles a digital graveyard, where the raised hopes of both, investors and founders, are doomed to failure. Blockchain is certainly a promising technology and understanding the development process of blockchain projects as well as the risks for their successful implementation offers many opportunities for various business cases. The objective of this master thesis is to uncover the risks and impediments for a successful blockchain implementation and operationalization and to provide a consolidated risk analysis.

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As life insurance companies are struggling to keep up with a rapidly changing environment, they are looking into new technologies, markets and the digitalization of their sales process. This thesis is examining the problems and limitations of such a purely digital sales process and offering new insights into how conversational user interfaces address those problems. The basis of this thesis is formed by an in-depth analysis of an insurerís online sales journey, based on analytics data and interviews. As well as the development and testing of a chatbot prototype, addressing the limitations of the examined online journey. This thesis also offers an outline of what technology and design guidelines must be kept in mind, when developing a chatbot solution.

This bachelor thesis gives an overview of possible changes in the car sharing market due to the car dossier, which is based on blockchain. The current processes at Mobility were examined and tested for the use of Blockchain. New innovative models were developed and well-known models derived from the literature for Mobility. The bachelor thesis is based on interviews with Mobility customers and Mobility employees as well as on a market analysis of the car sharing market with a focus on business models and data handling.

The Car Dossier is a joint project of blockchain-based car dossier that keeps information on vehicles during their lifetime. The benefits of such a system for state organizations, in particular, the road traffic authority, have not been explored yet. In this master's thesis cockpits to the Car Dossier for both the road traffic authority and citizens are developed and evaluated. These cockpits are developed by requirements extracted from interviews and evaluated by their future users. Benefits of such a system are explored, along with constraints such as legal and ethical concerns.

Today, most people heard about Bitcoin in any shape of form, but next to this digital currency, there are many other blockchain projects, also called cryptocurrencies. The number of blockchain projects still increases, however, many of them are not useful and only a handful of the startups will survive in the future like in the dot-com bubble. In this young, yet unregulated market, it is difficult to identify trustworthy blockchain projects as an investor respectively as an entrepreneur, it is hard to present your own project properly. This thesis studies the characteristics of a trustworthy blockchain project. The indicators will be identified through literature and interviews from 10 people, who are experts and have invested in blockchain projects. Finally, the indicators are categorized in fundamentals and soft factors, this list of indicators is for the investor a check list, which the project has to fulfill to be trustworthy. It is also practical for blockchain entrepreneur, who wants to present their own blockchain project properly.

The «Agentur für Arbeit» is an agency for the unemployed, the agency contributes to the important task that everyone in the German populace can pursue a payed job and is insured. The counselling of unemployed people is, in this context, of fundamental importance. Previous research shows, that an appropriate IT-Support can be a major enhancement of the service in all sectors of counselling. The aim of this bachelor thesis is to show if a counselling session in the «Agentur für Arbeit» could benefit from those insights, what problems can be observed in today’s sessions and what future possibilities for an effective support through IT could be implemented. To reach this goal, counsellors and customers will be observed while attending a counselling session and interviewed after the session. Open questions will be addressed in team meetings, so that a higher quantity of counsellors can be reached.

The advancing digitisation does not stop at the doors of Germany's Fed-eral Employment Agency (Agentur für Arbeit). Technical devices can enhance customer service and may increase consultation quality in the employment service. In order to assess the present situation and to de-tect potential for improvement, first meetings between advisors and clients are observed and interviews conducted. The transcribed interviews and the field notes are analysed using a qualitative research approach. In doing so, consulting practices are examined and occurring difficulties identified. The analysis indicates that a personal client-advisor relationship forms the basis for successful consulting at the employment service. Based on these findings, IT-based improvement proposals are developed to strengthen this relationship. Moreover, these proposals should reduce or resolve the difficulties such that the advisors can counsel their clients more effectively and with higher quality.

With applications that use automated speech recognition and natural language processing technologies on the rise, industry and academic researchers face new challenges in developing and embedding speech interfaces into professional and collaborative settings. This thesis focuses on the potential of virtual assistants with speech interfaces in supporting face-to-face financial advisory encounters. Their potential is analyzed through the elicitation of roles that speech-based virtual assistants could play to address three problem areas in financial advisory encounters. In an iterative approach, a total of seven prototypes were designed, implemented and tested. The results show the potential of the different roles, point out existing limitations and propose a set of eleven Design Implications for future speech-based applications in this domain. A key finding is that there is often a discrepancy between the expectations of speech-based virtual assistants and their current capabilities.

The Information Management Research Group (IMRG) of the University of Zurich is researching how virtual assistants with speech recognition and speech synthesis can be integrated as supporting aids in advisory sessions. In this master thesis, a language-based prototype for counselling interviews with “state of the art” technology is developed. In the run-up, different speech recognition providers were compared based on their functionality. Suppliers of Swiss-German language software were also considered and included. Furthermore, three commercial providers were tested for the accuracy of the transcripts. Based on this evaluation, a software provider was selected and a modular, reusable prototype for advisory sessions was developed which uses its application programming interface. The final prototype was tested in two workshops in the area of mortgage advice with test customers and real bank advisors. At the end it is shown how a language-based, virtual assistant can be built up with regard to architecture and technologies, how the speech recognition of the developed prototype performs against the benchmark and how it can be used in advisory sessions in order not to cause negative behaviour.

Feedback is always seen as an essential part of the education process, intended to help students to understand their strengths and weaknesses and to improve their learning success. Until recently, feedbacks have usually been issued by teachers. Nowadays, because of the increasing number of students and the limited capacity of universities to provide individual feedbacks, a different solution is needed. One of the promising approaches to face this problem, especially in large-scaled classes, is the introduction of IT-based peer assessment into the learning process. However, in order to have a noticeably positive effect on the performance of the students, the quality of such feedback must be ensured. Since relatively little research has been done in this area so far, the characteristics of feedback texts, which can predict a good feedback quality as perceived by students, are still unclear. The main objective of this work is thus to investigate whether there are some text characteristics that can improve the feedback rating provided by the reviewed students and if this is the case, what are these features and how do they influence the results of feedback evaluation. In the framework of quasi experiment on IT-based peer feedback conducted at the University of St.Gallen a large sample of rated feedback texts has been collected. These data are used for the extensive qualitative and supporting quantitative analyses of this thesis. The results demonstrate that there are indeed several features of feedback text that can predict good quality. Their significance is validated by logical inference and statistical methods, and eventually verified by the predictive analysis.

In today's world feedback is omnipresent. Be it in the form of e.g. Customer feedback, employee feedback or for the improvement of university courses. However, just because feedback is given, does not mean that the feedback is also useful for the recipient. This begs the question: What are the attributes of a feedback that is useful? The starting point for the paper is a study done by the University of St. Gallen in which Student-to-Student feedback texts have been gathered for several years. This paper attempts to find out if it is possible to identify feedback attributes, that have a significant impact on the recipient. This is done in a technical analysis that uses machine learning techniques. The impact of a feedback text is measured by its rating as well as the resulting changes. The Models that resulted from this paper were able to partially predict the impact of a feedback text with a set of attributes.