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Information Systems for “Wicked Problems”

Research at the Intersection of Social Media and Collective Intelligence

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Abstract

The objective of this commentary is to propose fruitful research directions built upon the reciprocal interplay of social media and collective intelligence. We focus on “wicked problems” – a class of problems that Introne et al. (Künstl. Intell. 27:45–52, 2013) call “problems for which no single computational formulation of the problem is sufficient, for which different stakeholders do not even agree on what the problem really is, and for which there are no right or wrong answers, only answers that are better or worse from different points of view”. We argue that information systems research in particular can aid in designing appropriate systems due to benefits derived from the combined perspectives of both social media and collective intelligence. We document the relevance and timeliness of social media and collective intelligence for business and information systems engineering, pinpoint needed functionality of information systems for wicked problems, describe related research challenges, highlight prospective suitable methods to tackle those challenges, and review examples of initial results.

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Notes

  1. For different interpretations of the term “social media” see Kaplan and Haenlein (2010, pp. 59–68); Kietzmann et al. (2011, pp. 241–251).

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Marc Egger, Tim Majchrzak, Martin Petzold, Frank Piller, and three anonymous reviewers for their input and valuable comments on earlier drafts of this article. Panagiotis T. Metaxas’s research was partially supported by NSF grant CNS-1117693.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Cologne, 50969, Cologne, Germany

    Detlef Schoder

  2. University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany

    Johannes Putzke

  3. Wellesley College, Wellesley, USA

    Panagiotis Takis Metaxas

  4. Harvard University, Cambridge, USA

    Panagiotis Takis Metaxas

  5. MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, USA

    Peter A. Gloor

  6. University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

    Kai Fischbach

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  1. Detlef Schoder
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Correspondence to Detlef Schoder.

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Accepted after two revisions by the editors of the special focus.

This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Schoder D, Putzke J, Metaxas PT, Gloor PA, Fischbach K (2013) Informationssysteme für “Wicked Problems”. Forschung an der Schnittstelle von Social Media und Collective Intelligence. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: 10.1007/s11576-013-0395-x.

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Schoder, D., Putzke, J., Metaxas, P.T. et al. Information Systems for “Wicked Problems”. Bus Inf Syst Eng 6, 3–10 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-013-0303-3

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