An Information Systems Design Theory for Digital Broker Platforms

Service platforms are becoming dominant drivers of daily business operations in a digitalized environment. Research focuses on technological and network effects of such platforms, while socio-technical opportunities remain limited. Guidance support in selecting appropriate digital services on a multisided market platform may help companies with low domain knowledge as it increases their benefits by reducing existing barriers in adopting emerging technologies. We adapt the concept of a broker to a digital platform, which instantiates guidance support on multisided markets as core platform element. Further, we abstract the concept of a digital broker platform as an Information Systems (IS) design theory. By providing the necessary components of an IS design theory, we offer the possibility to derive digital broker platform artifacts, which are theoretically and conceptually grounded. We provide design principles for the method artifact and describe their applicability in an exemplary instantiation of the design theory in the domain of cloud computing. Lastly, we present the artifact’s mutability as well as its testable propositions.