Design Science in Service Research: A Framework-Based Review of IT Artifacts in Germany

The purpose of this study is to analyze the nature of IT artifacts that have been proposed in the emerging discipline of Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME) as well as to provide further directions for design research in the service discipline. We review a sample of 123 service-related IT artifacts - that we identified on a German online research portal - by coding them with a framework for design research in the service science discipline. The key insights derived from the analysis are: (1) methods dominate other artifact types; (2) instantiations are almost exclusively developed for supporting the potential dimension of services; (3) research on customer solutions focuses on an inside-out perspective; (4) new constructs are predominantly developed for modeling the outcome dimension of services; (5) artifacts often possess a narrow scope; and (6) artifacts are seldom instantiated into software tools. These novel insights are expected to guide future design research in the service discipline by identifying areas which have only been sparsely addressed by design research or are yet to evolve to a sufficient state of maturity. Our approach is original as it features an early and innovative endeavor for identifying the nature of IT artifacts in SSME.