Design Behavioral Research: Toward a Unified View of Information Systems

Behavioral and design science research are two of the major paradigms of information systems. The two paradigms are commonly seen as complementary and distinct, differing in philosophical underpinnings, prevailing methodology and expected outputs of research. Presently, behavioral and design science communities seldomly interact and conduct projects together. We propose a new perspective on the relationship between behavioral and design science research - design behavioral research (DBR). Design behavioral research suggests that the two paradigms can merge within the same research project and leverage the strengths of one another. We expect DBR to offer theoretically deeper, while at the same time more rigorous and practically relevant insights. Among other contributions of DBR we identify Theory Type VI – theory of explanation, prediction, and action. We present a preliminary sketch of DBR, explain the nature of Theory VI, and suggest fruitful opportunities for future studies