Opening up design science: The challenge of designing for reuse and joint development

The purpose of this paper is to advance design science by developing a framework for research on reuse and the relationship between external IT artifacts and their users. A design science approach to IS research needs to grapple with the fact that a number of relevant, economically attractive, external IT artifacts cannot be designed from scratch nor meaningfully evaluated based on the current state of development, and so design science research will struggle with incomplete cycles of design, relevance, and rigor. We suggest a strategic research agenda that integrates the design of the relationship between an external IT artifact and the user by considering the impact artifacts exert on users. Three dimensions derived from adaptive structuration theory inform our framework on three levels of design granularity (middle management, top management, and entrepreneur): agenda considers the dynamic properties of technological objects, adaptability refers to the functional affordance of external artifacts in development, and auspice captures the symbolic expression and scope for interpretation. We derive implications for research design.