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Poster Short Abstract

IT sourcing partnerships often fail because early signs of misalignment go unnoticed. This project combines Action Design Research with Citizen Science principles, engaging practitioners in co-creating a methodology to detect and act on early warning signals before they escalate.

Poster Abstract

IT sourcing partnerships are meant to provide flexibility and innovation for organizations, yet many fail because early signs of misalignment go unnoticed and escalate into costly breakdowns. Existing research mostly explains such failures retrospectively, offering little guidance for timely intervention. This project develops a methodology to detect and interpret early warning signals in real time.

The approach integrates Action Design Research (ADR) with Citizen Science (CS) principles. ADR structures iterative cycles of design, testing, and evaluation in organizational settings, ensuring rigor and theoretical grounding. CS brings in participatory knowledge production: practitioners work as co-researchers, shaping questions, co-designing tools, and interpreting results. Unlike many CS projects involving the public, this study adapts CS principles to professional communities, showing how collaboration with practitioners can advance both science and practice.

Grounded in Schön’s concept of reflective practice, the project emphasizes learning through cycles of action and reflection. Practitioners’ involvement ensures that the methodology is context-sensitive, interpretable, and directly applicable in practise.

The contributions are threefold:

1. Methodological: a co-research framework that combines ADR and CS in organizational studies.

2. Theoretical: extending governance and reflective practice theories toward proactive misalignment detection.

3. Practical: a transferable methodology that helps organizations identify and address misalignments before they escalate.

By positioning organizational research as an unconventional dimension of citizen science, this project extends CS beyond its usual domains while showing how participatory approaches in professional communities enrich ADR and support resilient, sustainable IT sourcing partnerships.