Design principles for business domain-specific e-collaboration: a solution for integrated e-collaboration in enterprise systems based on the example of the product costing domain

In this paper, we present design principles for business domain-specific e-collaboration (BDSpeC) - a concept that focuses on integrating e-collaboration into the core processes of particular business domains and the corresponding transactional enterprise systems (ESs) supporting these core processes. These principles are based on our research results regarding collaboration support in product costing as pilot domain. In this domain, we discovered a specific lack of integrated e-collaboration to enable communication, coordination, and information exchange in direct connection to the core processes with their daily work routines and data sources. In a design science research project, we created artefacts for the product costing domain and derived design principles for a broader scope of contexts. The design principles for BDSpeC illustrate how such an integration can be achieved in various business domains with similarities to product costing. By focusing on design principles, we have abstracted and codified design knowledge that is useful for both, research and practice. In design practice, the design knowledge can be used to develop other instances as solutions to a class of problems sharing similarities with product costing. In design research, it is intended to encourage exaptation by supporting the transfer of our solution into other domains.