Community Collaboration Support System (CCSS) for Community Resilience During Crises: Developing Design Theory and Formalizing Design Principles

Abstract

Resilience of communities is a core component emphasized in international policies and programs developed to strengthen crisis management and relief operations, yet it can be difficult for communities to collectively respond to crises and stay resilient without necessary knowledge, resources, and expertise. A promising solution is to empower communities to act during crises as suppliers or distributors, enabling their resilience via collective action. Various information systems (IS) focused on partnering and collaboration have been developed in recent years to support the community resilience to crises. Despite the effort, the design of many existing systems lacks a comprehensive, theoretical foundation, offers unstructured design guidance, or is not empirically grounded. To address these limitations, this thesis seeks to answer the main research question: How to design a theory-driven information system that enhances community resilience and collaboration among key community stakeholders by balancing community-level needs and social support during various crises? To effectively inform the design of such system, I propose a Community Collaboration Support System (CCSS) and use the Design Science Research (DSR) methodology to develop and validate two artifacts: i) a Design Relevant Explanatory/Predictive Theory (DREPT); ii) actionable Design Principles (DPs) that can guide the design of a CCSS, ensuring its high-quality and utility. I validated both artifacts in exploratory and confirmatory focus groups. As an essential method in DSR, I quantitatively validated the DREPT via Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) and used vignette activities and reusability testing for the validation of the DPs. Theoretical contributions expand to the research in collaboration ISs by proposing a CCSS design theory (also DREPT) and a set of twelve DPs. It advances DSR by offering a procedure for deriving and formalizing DPs through Human–technology role assignment and CIMO-based theorizing. The practical implications offer IS designers a structured toolkit and actionable insights for designing resilient collaboration systems that integrate technology with human judgment.