Abstract
The term smart is often used carelessly in relation to systems, devices, and other entities such as cities that capture or otherwise process or use information. This exploratory paper takes the idea of smartness seriously as a way to reveal basic issues related to IS engineering and its possibilities and limitations. This paper defines work system, cyber-human system, digital agent, smartness of systems and devices, and IS engineering. It links those ideas to IS engineering challenges related to cyber-human systems. Those challenges call for applying ideas that are not applied often in IS engineering, such as facets of work, roles and responsibilities of digital agents, patterns of interaction between people and digital agents, knowledge objects, and a range of criteria for evaluating cyber-human systems and digital agents. In combination, those ideas point to new possibilities for expanding IS engineering to reflect emerging challenges related to making cyber-human systems smarter.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bostrom, R.P., Heinen, J.S.: MIS problems and failures: a socio-technical perspective, part II: the application of socio-technical theory. MIS Q. 1(1), 11–28 (1977)
Alter, S.: Work system theory: overview of core concepts, extensions, and challenges for the future. J. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 14(2), 72–121 (2013)
Reijers, H.A., Mansar, S.L.: Best practices in business process redesign: an overview and qualitative evaluation of successful redesign heuristics. Omega 33(4), 283–306 (2005)
Gross, S., et al.: The business process design space for exploring process redesign alternatives. Bus. Process. Manag. J. 27(8), 25–56 (2021)
Alter, S.: Defining information systems as work systems: implications for the IS field. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 17(5), 448–469 (2008)
Boell, S.K., Cecez-Kecmanovic, D.: What is an information system? In: Proceedings of HICSS (2015)
Alter, S.: Theory of workarounds. Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 34(55), 1041–1066 (2014)
Röder, N., Wiesche, M., Schermann, M., Krcmar, H.: Why managers tolerate workarounds–the role of information systems. In: Proceedings of AMCIS (2104)
Alter, S.: A workaround design system for anticipating, designing, and/or preventing workarounds. In: Gaaloul, K., Schmidt, R., Nurcan, S., Guerreiro, S., Ma, Q. (eds.) CAISE 2015. LNBIP, vol. 214, pp. 489–498. Springer, Cham (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19237-6_31
Beerepoot, I., Van De Weerd, I.: Prevent, redesign, adopt or ignore: improving healthcare using knowledge of workarounds. In: Proceedings of ECIS (2018)
Alter, S.: Beneficial noncompliance and detrimental compliance: expected paths to unintended consequences. In: Proceedings of AMCIS (2015)
Mertens, W., Recker, J., Kohlborn, T., Kummer, T.: A framework for the study of positive deviance in organizations. Deviant Behav. 37(11), 1288–1307 (2016)
Outmazgin, N., Soffer, P.: Business process workarounds: what can and cannot be detected by process mining. In: Nurcan, S., et al. (eds.) BPMDS/EMMSAD -2013. LNBIP, vol. 147, pp. 48–62. Springer, Heidelberg (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38484-4_5
Wijnhoven, F., Hoffmann, P., Bemthuis, R., Boksebeld, J.: Using process mining for workarounds analysis in context: Learning from a small and medium-sized company case. Int. J. Inf. Manag. Data Insights 3(1), 1–15 (2023)
Clark, E., et al.: Creative writing with a machine in the loop: case studies on slogans and stories. In: Proceedings of 23rd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, pp. 329–340 (2018)
Munir, S., et al.: Cyber physical system challenges for human-in-the-loop control. In: 8th International Workshop on Feedback Computing (2013)
Smith, A., et al.: Closing the loop: user-centered design and evaluation of a human-in-the-loop topic modeling system. In: 23rd International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, pp. 293–304 (2018)
Alter, S.: Making sense of smartness in the context of smart devices and smart systems. Inf. Syst. Front. 22(2), 381–393 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10796-019-09919-9
Alter, S.: Facets of work: enriching the description, analysis, design, and evaluation of systems in organizations. Commun. Assoc. Inf. Syst. 49(13), 321–354 (2021)
Shneiderman, B.: Human-centered artificial intelligence: reliable, safe & trustworthy. Int. J. Hum.-Comput. Interact. 36(6), 495–504 (2020)
Shneiderman, B.: Human-centered artificial intelligence: three fresh ideas. AIS Trans. Hum.-Comput. Interact. 12(3), 109–124 (2020)
Alter, S.: Agent Responsibility Framework for Digital Agents: Roles and Responsibilities Related to Facets of Work. In: Augusto, A., Gill, A., Bork, D., Nurcan, S., Reinhartz-Berger, I., Schmidt, R. (eds.) Enterprise, Business-Process and Information Systems Modeling, pp. 237–252. Springer, Cham (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-07475-2_16
Alter, S.: Responsibility Modeling for Operational Contributions of Algorithmic Agents. AMCIS (2022)
Alter, S.: System interaction patterns. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Business Informatics (2016)
Alexander, C.: A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1977)
Shalloway, A., Trott, J.R.: Design Patterns Explained: A New Perspective on Object-Oriented Design. Pearson Education (2004)
Cohen, W.V., Carvalho, V.R., Mitchell, T.M.: Learning to classify email into “speech acts”. In: EMNLP, pp. 309–316 (2004)
Malone, T.W., Crowston, K.: The interdisciplinary study of coordination. ACM Comput. Surv. 26(1), 87–119 (1994)
Crowston, K., Rubleske, J., Howison, J.: Coordination theory: a ten-year retrospective. In: Zhang, P., Galletta, D. (eds.) Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems, Vol. I. M. E. Sharpe (2006)
Alter, S.: Taking different types of knowledge objects seriously: a step toward generating greater value from is research. ACM SIGMIS Database Adv. Inf. Syst. 51(4), 123–138 (2020)
Alter, S.: Extending a Work System Metamodel Using a Knowledge Graph to Support IS Visualization and Development. ER Forum (2022)
Alter, S.: How can you verify that i am using AI? Complementary frameworks for describing and evaluating AI-based digital agents in their usage contexts. In: HICSS (2023)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Alter, S. (2023). Can Information System Engineering Make Cyber-Human Systems Smarter?. In: Indulska, M., Reinhartz-Berger, I., Cetina, C., Pastor, O. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13901. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34560-9_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34560-9_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-34559-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-34560-9
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)