In their paper “Interdisciplinary Architecture Modeling for Regulating Digital Business Ecosystems”, presented at the Pacific-Asia Conference on Information Systems (PACIS) in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 2024, HBI researchers Josefine Spürkel and Tobias Mast, together with computer scientists Fabian Burmeister, Christian Kurtz and Ingrid Schirmer, explore the question of how complex socio-technical ecosystems can be modeled using architectural methods.
Abstract
Digital business ecosystems present numerous challenges for regulation due to their complex and dynamic nature. With the growing and opaque interrelations among actors, services, data, and emerging digital technologies, traditional approaches to dialogue between information systems and legal experts struggle to keep pace with the rapid changes. Novel methods are required to systematically decompose digital business ecosystems, facilitate a shared understanding of their complexities, and support the assessment of regulatory issues within these ecosystems. Grounded in the architecture concept and developed through a design science research approach, this paper introduces the architecture-based modeling method for ecosystem regulation. This interdisciplinary method supports information systems and legal experts in collaboratively gaining transparency about digital business ecosystems, identifying regulatory issues and gaps, and deriving corresponding implications for information systems, law, and research. Demonstrated through a multiple case study of Google News and Parler, the method is exemplified in the media regulation sector.