Dear all,
Some of the recent discussions have brought up a question on the relationship between design research and other fields.
My own dissertation on ”co-design - Innovation of IS based Services” is based on empirical studies of large projects. Unfortunately for me no single academic field offer the necessary theoretical body to cover the findings. Therefore I have been reading up on research in 5 fields: Design Research, IS research, Innovation research, Project Management research and Service research. (Pls: I don’t claim to be an expert in any.)
There are many similar developments in these fields; for instance what in DR is referred to as design method generations (Cross, 2007) I find to contain similarities to developments in the IS field presented by Langefors (who coined the term ”information system”) (Langefors, 1980), in project management by (Winter, Smith, Morris, & Cicmil, 2006) and Innovation by (Rothwell, et al., 1974) and possibly (Vargo, 2008) in Service research.
In the books and articles I have read there are however very few references outside the corresponding discipline. There are, I think, only one scholar whose work I have found cited in all five disciplines; that of Donald Schön. (Possible also Kant and Aristotle, but they are everywhere.)
This makes me wonder if the image of scholars only reading there own field is correct or if there is a tradition to prefer to cite only scholars in the corresponding field?
Do for instance design researchers in general mostly study design research or do they read a lot of other areas but prefer to only reference design research?
Or is it just my selection of books and articles that is biased?
B.R
Lars
Cross, N. (2007). Forty years of design research. Design Studies, 28(1), 1-4.
Langefors, B. (1980). Infological models and information user views. Information Systems, 5(1), 17-32.
Rothwell, R., Freeman, C., Horlsey, A., Jervis, V. T. P., Robertson, A. B., & Townsend, J. (1974). SAPPHO updated - project SAPPHO phase II. Research Policy, 3(3), 258-291.
Vargo, S. L. (2008). Customer Integration and Value Creation: Paradigmatic Traps and Perspectives. Journal of Service Research, 11(2), 211-215.
Winter, M., Smith, C., Morris, P., & Cicmil, S. (2006). Directions for future research in project management: The main findings of a UK government-funded research network. International Journal of Project Management, 24(8), 638.
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LARS ALBINSSON
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MAESTRO MANAGEMENT AB
CALISTOGA SPRINGS RESEARCH INSTITUTE
UNIVERSITY OF BORÅS
LINKÖPING UNIVERSITY
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