The design science research paradigm: an instantiation of website benchmarking

[Extract] In this digital age, business problems cannot always be investigated and solved using traditional research methods as advances and changes in technology are occurring at an ever-increasing speed. Therefore, an additional approach is required. Why should we, in the business discipline, only consider our traditional paradigms? Why not consider paradigms available and accepted in other disciplines? After all, most research can now be termed ‘cross-disciplinary’ as technology is used increasingly to assist in, and at times, is the outcome of research, regardless of the research discipline. Therefore, why not look to the technology disciplines for a paradigm? Looking to the information systems (IS) discipline we find the design science research (DSR) paradigm. This paradigm has long been situated in the realms of engineering and the sciences of the artificial (Hevner et al., 2004; Iivari, 2007). However, over the last twenty years the DSR paradigm has become increasingly accepted as central to IS research (Hevner et al., 2019). As digital innovation brings rapid changes to business and management, the DSR paradigm becomes more and more relevant to this discipline (Turetken et al., 2019). To understand how the DSR paradigm can be applied to other disciplines I first look to its history, its appearance and use in the engineering discipline, and its path to IS acceptance. I then discuss the DSR paradigm and methodology in relation to my thesis research into website benchmarking, how I applied it to develop a new website benchmarking approach and how I used it in the process of creating my thesis. I conclude with some advice that I hope is useful to the readers of this chapter