Contributions published at Information Management (Gerhard Schwabe)

The used car market is characterized by information asymmetries and mistrust. Key players in the car market of Switzerland are aiming to create a Blockchain-based car dossier platform. This platform offers great opportunities for increasing knowledge and restoring long-lost trust between buyers and sellers in the market. This thesis follows a design science research approach to construct a technical prototype that aims to reduce information asymmetries and enhance trust. For this purpose, the prototype utilizes foundations from trust and reputation systems theory in the context of Blockchain Technology. The prototype is evaluated in realistic car sale conversations between buyers and sellers. Based on the results, design principles for the reduction of information asymmetries and the enhancement of trust are given.

The used car market is dominated by asymmetric information between seller and buyer. In order to solve this issue, the blockchain-based Cardossier is to be introduced. Currently there is little experience with the blockchain technology, especially in the inter-company cooperation and the associated change of the business process landscape. On current actual processes, which prevail between the Cardossier project participants, possible target models are worked out. This will point out the effects and possibilities through the blockchain. The models are compared with the project partnersí ideas by means of the interview series "Business Models Evaluation". This thesis deals with the effects of the introduction of the Cardossier and the possible potentials and obstacles that the blockchain technology brings to the business process landscape.

The Car Dossier is a project of the University of Zurich with the goal to create a digital dossier based on the blockchain technology, on which all data regarding a vehicle as well as the history of those data can be tored. Not yet researched was, with the help of which components the trust of carbuyers as endusers in the platform can be strengthened and what are effective possibilities to inform enduser about its workings. To answer those question, in an iterative process I investigated different trust-enhancing components with the help of online-surveys, live feedbacks, the implementation of a Proof-of-Concept and qualitative interviews. The results show, that there are different components like FAQs, Comic-Videos and Checkboxes, that can deployed useful. Otherwise components are discussed like Chatbots and Labels, that do have the potential to enhance trust of, but that come with some challenges.

Blockchains serve as an immutable ledger which enable transactions to happen and stored in a decentralized manner. The immutability property of a blockchain guarantees the completeness and authenticity of the data. However, there exists a right to be forgot-ten defined in data protection laws, as the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) from the European Union. The right to be forgotten gives a data subject the right to de-mand the deletion of the personal data from a controller. As soon as a blockchain-based application processes personal data, the problem arises that the data technically canít be deleted. But to be legally compliant it is a requirement that the data must be deleted when a data subject requests it. In the scope of this master thesis this problem is tackled by searching and reviewing several solutions that demonstrate how blockchain-based ap-plications can comply with the right to be forgotten. The Car Dossier is a blockchain-based application from the University Zurich and several other partners, storing data from the vehicleís lifecycle which aims to enhance trust in the used car market. The so-lution Crypto Shredding to ensure regulatory compliance is used and worked out to a targeted solution according to the specific needs of the project. With this, it can be shown how a blockchain-based application can comply with the right to be forgotten.

Virtual, speech-based assistants are becoming increasingly popular and relevant. While they are more and more finding their way into private households, their potential for supporting business services is also recognized. In a more extensive project, the Information Management Research Group of the University of Zurich started to investigate the integration of virtual assistants in collaborative advisory service encounters. However, due to the novelty of this technology, there are still many unanswered questions in the research of its general use. Accordingly, this master thesis embodies a preliminary study. With an exploratory, inductive research approach, the nature of private virtual assistant use and the phenomena occurring therein are investigated. Employing a mixed methods approach, semi-structured interviews with regular users, as well as Wizard of Oz experiments, were conducted. These allowed to take the perspective of the individual user and to offer grounds for comprehensive analyses of found phenomena. Through a subsequent workshop, conclusions were drawn about an embedment of virtual assistants in face-to-face (financial) advisory service encounters. Ultimately, future challenges for virtual assistants and their integration in the professional advisory domain are defined. Accordingly, this work not only contributes to the current research of virtual assistants but also serves as a comprehensive guide for future research and practice.

The collection of personal data by companies, software providers and public authorities has taken on an immense scale in recent years. A solution in which the user has control over his data is more and more desired. One solution is known as self sovereign identity. The doctor's prescription on paper, as it is currently in use, involves numerous problems such as forgery and error, loss of risk and inefficiency. Initial attempts with digital pre-scriptions were unsuccessful in Switzerland. This is also due to the users who care about their data. In this work it is examined whether a complex use case like the prescription can be implemented with self sovereign identity on blockchain and whether the users would adopt this system.

The implementation of Health Information Systems (HIS) has been heralded as bringing numerous benefits to the healthcare sector. When implementing a HIS, the attitudes of the various users (nurses, doctors, admin people) towards the HIS can be influenced by a number of different factors. User sup- port has proved to be one of the most important ones. Most recently, Sundhedsplatformen, one of the largest public HIS in Denmark, is being implemented in 18 hospitals across Zealand. In this context, we conducted 21 interviews at one of the major hospitals, Rigshospitalet, and qualitatively coded them. This allowed us to explore three archetypical groups of user attitudes toward Sundhedsplatformen: ‘Dedicated’, ‘Frustrated’ and ‘Despondent’. Further, we identified manifestations of insufficient user support on different levels. We clustered these elements into three levels of support: ‘Individual’, ‘Technological’ and ‘Organisational’. Reflecting on the manifestations of insufficient user support enables us to achieve a nuanced and holistic understanding of user support as an important adoption factor and further how user attitudes can be addressed when implementing HIS. Keywords: HIS, user attitudes, user support, implementation, user resistance, health

Advisory service encounters evolve from providing expertise to joint problem-solving. Additionally, advisees depend on persuasion, which drives them to follow the advisor’s recommendations. However, advisors can be insufficiently equipped to persuade, resulting in advisees who are incapable of action or are unmotivated. Persuasive technology (PT) research proves that technology can motivate and enable people in single-user scenarios but pays limited attention to the natural realm of persuasion: the face-to-face conversation. This paper explores how persuasive technology transforms advice giving, a collaborative scenario involving an expert and a layperson. In such scenarios, IT does not act as a persuader but can provide affordances for persuasive practices, i.e., suggest new practices or enhance existing ones for convincing the advisee without deception or enforcement. We investigate the advisory practices in 24 real burglary prevention service encounters supported by IT. The paper shows the persuasive practices emerging through appropriation of the system, the tensions that govern the adoption or transformation of specific practices and routines and it confirms that studying the use and appropriation of technology uncovers organizational conflicts and tensions affecting such fundamental aspects as the advisor’s role and job description. Keywords Advisory practices Advisory services Appropriation Burglary Crime prevention Motivation and ability Persuasive practices Persuasive technology Practice theory

Recent progress in blockchain technology has brought about new developments with substantial implications to digital innovation. One of those has been the advent of cryptographic tokens. However, despite the growing number of Token Generation Events or Initial Coin Offerings ñ which tend to leverage tokens to secure platform scaling and funding ñ, comprehensive and scientifically-based contributions dissecting token complexity are still lacking. In the first part of our thesis we analyse existing literature as well as freshly gathered empirical data, and look at the different manifestations which tokens can exhibit in present-dayís blockchain application landscape. Based on our findings we are able to propose two analytical tools ñ a morphological box and a decision-tree ñ which assist in, respectively, understanding token attributes complexity and deciding on token applicability. This output is then put to the test in the second module of the thesis, where we apply our analytical tools to Car Dossier, an existing blockchain application in which a decision to implement tokens is currently pending. The findings validate our theoretical contribution and support the proposal of a proof-of-concept composed of a smart contract and a new target architecture encompassing a token implementation based on stakeholdersí feedback.

This thesis surveys the needs and problems of the buyers of used cars and the users of online platforms in order to analyse the current situation in the used car market. For this purpose, ten qualitative individual interviews and a quantitative survey with 564 participants were conducted. The respondents’ answers indicate that the main problem is the verification of information that can assure the quality of the used cars. The evaluations further demonstrate that the respondents trust blockchain technology. The characteristics of a blockchain are discussed to assess if this technology is suitable for the used car market. It is established that under certain conditions, information asymmetry and uncertainty can be reduced. It is also established that the quality of information can be increased through the application of blockchain.

Recent digital advancements, including social software, mobile technologies and augmented reality, offer promising opportunities to empower knowledge workers in their production environment by leveraging their knowledge processes, decision-making skills and social interaction practices. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for empowering workers in industrial production environments with digitally facilitated knowledge management processes. The framework explores four concrete facets of digital advancements that apply to a wide range of knowledge processes and production strategies in manufacturing companies. Each of these advancements are capable of supporting one specific facet of the individual knowledge management processes of workers; knowledge transfer, discovery, acquisition and sharing. The study contributes to the production research community by aligning emerging digital technologies and current trends in advanced manufacturing environments to benefit workers and improve job satisfaction, efficiency and productivity. The paper also contains suggestions about developing innovative solutions for production environments that support workers with digital technologies for flexible production.

The blockchain - the underlying technology of bitcoin has emerged as a disruptive technology with the potential to build a new way of interactions in a wide range of applications. Although scholarly interest in the technology is growing, a comprehensive analysis of blockchain applications from a governance perspective severely lacks to date. This thesis pays special attention to blockchain based decentralized governance and derives key blockchain governance characteristics and types among the four researched application domains. Additionally, the changes brought by the blockchain in terms of governance is also analyzed. Based on the academic literature, interviews with representatives from blockchain companies, analysis of blockchain open source code and content analysis of grey literature, different blockchain governance characteristics have been derived. From this, four blockchain governance types have emerged each of which is presented to allow substantive discussion of similarities and differences across types. The identification of these types provides an important foundation for future research, enabling in-depth research to be conducted that will outline the benefits, risks, and issues associated with each blockchain governance type.

More and more academic studies and practitioner reportsclaim that human work is increasingly disrupted or evendetermined by information and communication technology(ICT) (Cascio and Montealegre 2016). This will make aconsiderable share of jobs currently performed by humanssusceptible to automation (e.g., Frey and Osborne 2017;Manyika et al. 2017). These reports often sketch a pictureof ‘machines taking over’ traditional domains like manu-facturing, while ICT advances and capabilities seem todecide companies’ fate. Consequently, ICT is often put atthe core of innovative efforts. While this applies to nearlyall areas of workplace design, a recent popular example ofincreasing technology centricity is ‘Industry 4.0’, which isoften delineated as ‘machines talking to computers’.As objects in the physical environment increasinglyhouse advanced computing and communication capa-bilities, the resulting composite systems are oftenreferred to as cyber-physical systems (CPSs), as theybridge the digital and physical world (Rajkumar et al.2010). In other words, CPSs are an integration of com-putation and physical processes, which is why they serveas an illustrative example in Exhibit 1 and throughoutthe article. We discuss manufacturing as an a pplicationarea, because here digital transformation is happeningfirst and fast. We also observe similar transformations inother areas, such as agriculture, logistics, and crafts. Theproliferation of ICT in these environments is often ter-med ubiquitous computing and denotes a shift towardsembedded computing that is less perceptible to the enduser (Cascio and Montealegre 2016)

Despite the advent of a flurry of digital technologies, paper prevails on manufacturing shopfloors. To understand the roles and value of paper on the shopfloor, we have studied the manufacturing practices at two state-of-the-art automotive supplier facilities, applying ethnographic fieldwork, in-depth interviews, as well as photo and document analysis. We find that paper has unique affordances that today’s digital technologies cannot easily supplant on current shopfloors. More specifically, we find four paper practices: (1) creating and adapting individual information spaces, (2) reinterpreting information, (3) combining information handover with social interaction, and (4) visual cuing. We discuss these practices and the unique affordances of paper that currently support shopfloor workers and also consider the limitations of paper, which are becoming increasingly apparent, since more tasks increasingly depend on real-time information.

The blockchain, the ledger that underlies the famous cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has huge implications for many industries. There have been various papers dedicated to research how blockchain technology will transform businesses and industries. However, current research lacks an overview of what the blockchain implies for the biggest stakeholder of these businesses and industries: consumers. This paper aims to provide an overview of how the blockchain affects consumers. We conduct a systematic literature review and enrich it with interview-based knowledge from blockchain experts to show how blockchain technology changes business sectors, name affected consumers in these sectors, derive implications for these consumers and list existing as well as currently emerging blockchain-based products and services. Finally, we warn of the technical, institutional and human challenges and manifold pitfalls blockchain technology must overcome to gain widespread adaptation among consumers.

Humans will soon need to adapt to a collaborative setting in which technology becomes a smart collaboration partner that works with a group to achieve its goals. It is therefore time for collaboration researchers to explore the vast opportunities afforded by smart technology and to test its utility for enhancing team processes and outcomes. In this paper, we take a long view on the implications of smart technology for collaboration process design, and propose a research agenda for the next decade of collaboration research. We create a reference model to frame the research agenda.

Manufacturing companies have to meet a lot of challenges in continuing training for employees. Especially on the way towards industry 4.0 the workforce needs to be able to handle fast changing environments and ever-changing working contexts. Furthermore, they have to be familiar with constantly new technologies (e.g. complex user interfaces, mobile devices) that are introduced during the process of company development. Due to this, working people are facing a lifelong learning process and need to evolve to knowledge workers. To fulfill these requirements new concepts are necessary for human resources development directly at the workplace and therefore adequate artifact designs. In this paper we design a layered architecture for mobile learning at the workplace. This layered approach offers the possibility to educate employees with different qualifications and skills using an integrated solution. Further, we propose to implement appropriate components at each layer to support different kinds of learning.

The blockchain technology offers a novel mode of distributed authentication, which does not depend on a central authority. We consider this novelty against established governance modes. We illustrate our argument by paying special attention to blockchain-based authentication functions in the empirical domain of land registries across the world. Based on interviews with representatives from organizations deploying blockchain, and content analysis of related grey literature, we discuss established governance idealtypes against what the rivalry that cryptocurrencies and blockchains bring to digital settings. After referring to market, hierarchy, network, and bazaar, we conclude outlining the prospects of a different, blockchain-related governance mode called -˜tribal’ that better captures the -˜togetherness’ which rivalry originates.

The benefits of enterprise modeling (EM) and its contribution to organizational tasks are largely undisputed in business and information systems engineering. EM as a discipline has been around for several decades but is typically performed by a limited number of people in organizations with an affinity to modeling. What is captured in models is only a fragment of what ought to be captured. Thus, this research note argues that EM is far from its maximum potential. Many people develop some kind of model in their local practice without thinking about it consciously. Exploiting the potential of this “grass roots modeling” could lead to groundbreaking innovations. The aim is to investigate integration of the established practices of modeling with local practices of creating and using model-like artifacts of relevance for the overall organization. The paper develops a vision for extending the reach of EM, identifies research areas contributing to the vision and proposes elements of a future research agenda.