Abstract
Several frameworks have been proposed to define design science and design theory. For this reason, positioning a research stream within both paradigms has become a difficult exercise. In this paper, the Normalized Systems (NS) theory is positioned within design science and design theory, in particular the design theory framework formulated by Gregor & Jones (2007). Normalized Systems theory has been proposed as a way to cope with the ever increasingly agile environment to which organizations and their software applications need to adapt. The results of positioning NS within the presented framework for design theories show that NS almost fully incorporates all components of the design theory anatomy. The application of NS theory to other fields is also discussed. By positioning Normalized System theory within design science and design theory, we also believe to contribute to the definition of both fields in this paper.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Baldwin, C.Y., Clark, K.B.: Design Rules: The Power of Modularity. MIT Press, Cambridge (2000)
Baskerville, R.: What design science is not. European Journal of Information Systems 17, 441–443 (2008)
Boltzmann, L.: Lectures on Gas Theory. Dover Publications (1995)
Bubak, O.: Composing a course book for system and enterprise architecture education. In: Proceedings of the International Conference on System of Systems Engineering (2006)
Bunge, M.: Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Vol. 4: Ontology II: A World of Systems. Reidel, Boston (1979)
Cabigiosu, A., Camuffo, A.: Beyond the “mirroring” hypothesis: Product modularity and interorganizational relations in the air conditioning industry. Organization Science 23(3), 686–703 (2012)
Campagnolo, D., Camuffo, A.: The concept of modularity in management studies: A literature review. International Journal of Management Reviews 12(3), 259–283 (2010)
Shy, C.: Ontology and taxonomy of services in a service-oriented architecture. The Architecture Journal 11, 10 (2007)
De Bruyn, P.: Towards Designing Enterprises for Evolvability Based on Fundamental Engineering Concepts. In: Meersman, R., Dillon, T., Herrero, P. (eds.) OTM-WS 2011. LNCS, vol. 7046, pp. 11–20. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
De Bruyn, P., Huysmans, P., Oorts, G., Mannaert, H.: On the applicability of the notion of entropy for business process analysis. In: Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on Business Modeling and Software Design, BMSD 2012, pp. 128–137 (2012)
De Bruyn, P., Mannaert, H.: On the generalization of normalized systems concepts to the analysis and design of modules in systems and enterprise engineering. International Journal On Advances in Systems and Measurements 5(3 & 4) (2012) (in press)
Dietz, J.L.G.: Enterprise Ontology: Theory and Methodology. Springer (2006)
Dreyfus, D.: Information system architecture: Toward a distributed cognition perspective. In: Proceedings of ICIS 2007, paper 131 (2007)
Dubin, R.: Theory building. Revised edn. Free Press, London (1978)
Eisenhardt, K.M., Martin, J.A.: Dynamic capabilities: What are they? Strategic Management Journal 21(10/11), 1105–1121 (2000)
Erl, T.: SOA: Principles of Service Design. Prentice Hall Service-Oriented Computer Series. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River (2008)
Espinosa, J., Boh, W.F.: Coordination and governance in geographically distributed enterprise architecting: An empirical research design. In: Proceedings of the 42nd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS 2009), pp. 1–10 (2009)
Flores, F., Ludlow, J.: Doing and speaking in the office. In: Fick, G., Sprague, R.H. (eds.) Decision Support Systems: Issues and Challenges, pp. 95–118. Pergamon Press, New York (1980)
Gjerde, K.A.P., Slotnick, S.A., Sobel, M.J.: New product innovation with multiple features and technology constraints. Management Science 48(10), 1268–1284 (2002)
Goldkuhl, G., Lyytinen, K.: A language action view of information systems. In: Ross, C., Ginzberg, M. (eds.) Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 1982), Michigan, pp. 13–31 (1982)
Gregor, S.: The nature of theory in information systems. MIS Quarterly 30(3), 611–642 (2006)
Gregor, S., Hevner, A.: Positioning and presenting design cience research for maximum impact. MIS Quarterly, tbd, tbd (in press, 2013)
Gregor, S., Jones, D.: The anatomy of a design theory. Journal of the Association for Information systems 8(5), 312–335 (2007)
Habermas, J.: The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and Rationalization of Society, vol. 1. Beacon Press, Boston (1984)
Hevner, A., Chatterjee, S.: Design Research in Information Systems: Theory and Practice. Integrated Series in Information Systems, vol. 22. Springer (2010)
Hevner, A., March, S., Park, J., Ram, S.: Design science in information systems research. MIS Quarterly 28(1), 75–105 (2004)
Huysmans, P.: On the Feasibility of Normalized Enterprises: Applying Normalized Systems Theory to the High-Level Design of Enterprises. PhD thesis, University of Antwerp (2011)
Huysmans, P., Bellens, D., Van Nuffel, D., Ven, K.: Aligning the Constructs of Enterprise Ontology and Normalized Systems. In: Albani, A., Dietz, J.L.G. (eds.) CIAO! 2010. LNBIP, vol. 49, pp. 1–15. Springer, Heidelberg (2010)
Huysmans, P., Verelst, J.: Towards a normalized systems analysis method: a design science project incorporating empirical research methodologies. In: Proceedings of the 3rd European Design Science Symposium (EDSS 2012), Leixlip, Ireland (2012)
Krouwel, M.R., Op ’t Land, M.: Combining DEMO and Normalized Systems for Developing Agile Enterprise Information Systems. In: Albani, A., Dietz, J.L.G., Verelst, J. (eds.) EEWC 2011. LNBIP, vol. 79, pp. 31–45. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Langlois, R.N.: Modularity in technology and organization. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 49(1), 19–37 (2002)
Mannaert, H., De Bruyn, P., Verelst, J.: Exploring entropy in software systems: Towards a precise definition and design rules. In: Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Systems, ICONS (2012)
Mannaert, H., Verelst, J.: Normalized Systems: Re-creating Information Technology Based on Laws for Software Evolvability, Koppa (2009)
Mannaert, H., Verelst, J., Ven, K.: The transformation of requirements into software primitives: Studying evolvability based on systems theoretic stability. Science of Computer Programming 76(12), 1210–1222 (2011); Special Issue on Software Evolution, Adaptability and Variability
Mannaert, H., Verelst, J., Ven, K.: Towards evolvable software architectures based on systems theoretic stability. Software: Practice and Experience 42(1), 89–116 (2012)
March, S.T., Smith, G.F.: Design and natural science research on information technology. Decision Support Systems 15(4), 251–266 (1995)
Markus, M.L., Majchrzak, A., Gasser, L.: A design theory for systems that support emergent knowledge processes. MIS Quarterly 26(3), 179–212 (2002)
Nunamaker, J.J.F., Chen, M., Purdin, T.D.M.: Systems development in information systems research. J. Manage. Inf. Syst. 7(3), 89–106 (1990)
Op ’t Land, M., Krouwel, M.R., van Dipten, E., Verelst, J.: Exploring Normalized Systems Potential for Dutch MoD’s Agility. In: Harmsen, F., Grahlmann, K., Proper, E. (eds.) PRET 2011. LNBIP, vol. 89, pp. 110–121. Springer, Heidelberg (2011)
Papazoglou, M.P., Van Den Heuvel, W.-J.: Service-oriented design and development methodology. International Journal of Web Engineering and Technology 2(4), 412–442 (2006)
Parnas, D.L.: On the criteria to be used in decomposing systems into modules. Communications of the ACM 15(12), 1053–1058 (1972)
Salvador, F., Forza, C., Rungtusanatham, M.: Modularity, product variety, production volume, and component sourcing: theorizing beyond generic prescriptions. Journal of Operations Management 20(5), 549–575 (2002)
Sanchez, R., Mahoney, J.T.: Modularity, flexibility, and knowledge management in product and organization design. Strategic Management Journal 17, 63–76 (1996)
Schilling, M.A., Steensma, H.K.: The use of modular organizational forms: an industry-level analysis. Academy of Management Journal 44(6), 1149–1168 (2001)
Simon, H.: The Sciences of the Artificial, 3rd edn. MIT Press, Cambridge (1996)
Sosa, M.E., Eppinger, S.D., Rowles, C.M.: The misalignment of product architecture and organizational structure in complex product development. Management Science 50(12), 1674–1689 (2004)
Tarafdar, M., Qrunfleh, S.: It-business alignment: A two-level analysis. Information Systems Management 26(4), 338–349 (2009)
Tiwana, A.: Does interfirm modularity complement ignorance? a field study of software outsourcing alliances. Strategic Management Journal 29(11), 1241–1252 (2008)
Van Nuffel, D.: Towards Designing Modular and Evolvable Business Processes. PhD thesis, University of Antwerp (2011)
Venable, J.: The role of theory and theorizing in design science research. In: DESRIST Proceedings (2006)
Venable, J., Travis, J.: Using a group support system for the distributed application of soft systems methodology. In: Proceedings of the 10th Australasian Conference on Information Systems, Wellington, New Zealand, pp. 1105–1117 (1999)
Voss, C.A., Hsuan, J.: Service architecture and modularity. Decision Sciences 40(3), 541–569 (2009)
Walls, J., Widmeyer, G., El Saway, O.: Building an information system design theory for vigilant eis. information systems research. Information Systems Research 3(1), 36–59 (1992)
Walls, J.G., Widermeyer, G.R., El Sawy, O.A.: Assessing information system design theory in perspective: How useful was our, initial rendition? Journal of Information Technology Theory and Application (JITTA) 6(2), 43–58 (2004)
Winter, R., Albani, A.: Restructuring the design science research knowledge base. In: Baskerville, R., De Marco, M., Spagnoletti, P. (eds.) Designing Organizational Systems. Lecture Notes in Information Systems and Organisation, vol. 1, pp. 63–81. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)
Winter, R., Gericke, A., Bucher, T.: Method Versus Model – Two Sides of the Same Coin? In: Albani, A., Barjis, J., Dietz, J.L.G. (eds.) CIAO! 2009. LNBIP, vol. 34, pp. 1–15. Springer, Heidelberg (2009)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Huysmans, P., Oorts, G., De Bruyn, P., Mannaert, H., Verelst, J. (2013). Positioning the Normalized Systems Theory in a Design Theory Framework. In: Shishkov, B. (eds) Business Modeling and Software Design. BMSD 2012. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 142. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37478-4_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-37478-4_3
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-642-37477-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-642-37478-4
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)