Christian Engel
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Engel
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Christian
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christian.engel@unisg.ch
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+41 71 224 3363
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Publication

Stairway to Heaven or Highway to Hell: A Model for Assessing Cognitive Automation Use Cases

2023 , Christian Engel , Edona Elshan , Philipp Alexander Ebel , Jan Marco Leimeister

Cognitive automation (CA) moves beyond rule-based business process automation to target cognitive knowledge and service work. This allows the automation of tasks and processes, for which automation seemed unimaginable a decade ago. To organizations, these CA use cases offer vast opportunities to gain a significant competitive advantage. However, CA imposes novel challenges on organizations’ decisions regarding the automation potential of use cases, resulting in low adoption and high project failure rates. To counteract this, we draw on an action research study with a leading European manufacturing company to develop and test a model for assessing use cases’ amenability to CA. The proposed model comprises four dimensions: cognition, data, relationship, and transparency requirements. The model proposes that a use case is less (more) amenable to CA if these requirements are high (low). To account for the model’s industry-agnostic generalizability, we draw on an internal evaluation within the action research company and three additional external evaluations undertaken by independent project teams in three distinct industries. From a practice perspective, the model will help organizations make more informed decisions in selecting use cases for CA and planning their respective initiatives. From a research perspective, the identified determinants affecting use cases’ amenability to CA will enhance our understanding of CA in particular and artificial intelligence as the driving force behind CA in general.

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Publication

Improving Explainability and Accuracy through Feature Engineering: A Taxonomy of Features in NLP-based Machine Learning

2021 , Wambsganss, Thiemo , Engel, Christian , Fromm, Hansjörg

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Structuring the Quest for Strategic Alignment of Artificial Intelligence (AI): A Taxonomy of the Organizational Business Value of AI Use Cases

2022-01 , Engel, Christian , Schulze Buschhoff, Julius Constantin , Ebel, Philipp

The deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in businesses is said to provide significant benefits to organizations. However, many businesses struggle to align single AI use cases with the overall strategic business value contribution. Thus, we investigate the strategic characteristics that determine the business value contribution of AI use cases at an organizational level. We draw on academic literature and 106 AI use cases to develop a conceptually sound and empirically grounded taxonomy of the organizational business value of AI use cases. With the developed taxonomy, decision-makers are presented with a tool to systematically align AI use cases with strategic objectives. Moreover, our findings reveal how an AI use case can generate different business value contributions in different contexts, which provides researchers with a conceptual frame for informing their empirical research endeavors at the organizational level.

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Publication

Deploying a Model for Assessing Cognitive Automation Use Cases: Insights from Action Research with a Leading European Manufacturing Company

2021-01 , Engel, Christian Thomas , Elshan, Edona , Ebel, Philipp

Cognitive automation moves beyond rule-based automation and thus imposes novel challenges on organizations when assessing the automation potential of use cases. Thus, we present an empirically grounded and conceptually operationalized model for assessing cognitive automation use cases, which consists of four assessment dimensions: data, cognition, relationship, and transparency requirements. We apply the model in a real-world organizational context in the course of an action research project at the customer service department of ManuFact AG, and present unique empirical insights as well as the impact the application of the model had on the organization. The model shall help practitioners to make more informed decisions on selecting use cases for cognitive automation and to plan respective endeavors. For research, the identified factors affecting the suitability of a use case for cognitive automation shall deepen our understanding of cognitive automation in particular, and AI as the driving force behind cognitive automation in general.

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Understanding the Design Elements Affecting User Acceptance of Intelligent Agents: Past, Present and Future

2022-01-04 , Elshan, Edona , Zierau, Naim , Engel, Christian , Janson, Andreas , Leimeister, Jan Marco

Intelligent agents (IAs) are permeating both business and society. However, interacting with IAs poses challenges moving beyond technological limitations towards the human-computer interface. Thus, the knowledgebase related to interaction with IAs has grown exponentially but remains segregated and impedes the advancement of the field. Therefore, we conduct a systematic literature review to integrate empirical knowledge on user interaction with IAs. This is the first paper to examine 107 Information Systems and Human-Computer Interaction papers and identified 389 relationships between design elements and user acceptance of IAs. Along the independent and dependent variables of these relationships, we span a research space model encompassing empirical research on designing for IA user acceptance. Further we contribute to theory, by presenting a research agenda along the dimensions of the research space, which shall be useful to both researchers and practitioners. This complements the past and present knowledge on designing for IA user acceptance with potential pathways into the future of IAs.

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Publication

Looking Beneath the Surface - Concepts and Research Avenues for Big Data Analytics Adoption in IS Research

, Dremel, Christian , Wulf, Jochen , Engel, Christian Thomas , Mikalef, Patrick

Big data analytics (BDA) gained importance in scholarly and practitioner literature alike. There is some disagreement, however, whether BDA is merely an evolution of established phenomena, most particularly business intelligence, or whether BDA represents a novel technology-driven innovation with potentially disruptive market impacts. Using the technology-organization-environment theory as our lens of analysis, we take a critical stance and conduct a systematic literature review to offer guidance for future research by pinpointing pivotal concepts and providing conceptually and empirically validated propositions as well as research avenues for IS research on BDA adoption. While the research avenues are intended to trigger future research, the developed propositions shall provide guidance to research endeavors that empirically analyze the adoption of BDA in organizational settings. By discussing open research issues and providing potentially fruitful theoretical perspectives for enriching our knowledge in this domain, this shall ultimately contribute to advancing BDA research.

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Design and Evaluating a Tool for Continuously Assessing and Improving Agile Practices for increasing Organizational Agility

2022-06-18 , Greineder, Michael Johannes , Blohm, Ivo , Engel, Christian

Many organizations struggle to measure, control, and manage agility in a manner of continuous improvement. Therefore, we draw on Design Science Research to develop and test a tool for Continuously Assessing and Improving Agile Practices (CAIAP). CAIAP helps agile practitioners to monitor the alignment of “as is” agile practices on individual, team levels with the overall agile strategy of the organization. To develop CAIAP, we first empirically gather requirements, draw on the ICAP framework to base the tool development on a solid conceptual and theoretical basis. CAIAP helps agile practitioners to constantly monitor their agile practices on individual and team levels and to identify areas for improvement to gain greater organizational agility. To researchers, CAIAP helps to make the unit of analysis of agile work explainable, predictable and helps researchers to guide their own empirical research as well as serve as a basis for designing further tool support.

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Publication

Cognitive automation

2022-01-27 , Engel, Christian , Ebel, Philipp , Leimeister, Jan Marco

Facilitated by AI technology, the phenomenon of cognitive automation extends the scope of deterministic business process automation (BPA) through the probabilistic automation of knowledge and service work. By transforming work systems through cognitive automation, organizations are provided with vast strategic opportunities to gain business value. However, research lacks a unified conceptual lens on cognitive automation, which hinders scientific progress. Thus, based on a Systematic Literature Review, we describe the fundamentals of cognitive automation and provide an integrated conceptualization. We provide an overview of the major BPA approaches such as workflow management, robotic process automation, and Machine Learning-facilitated BPA while emphasizing their complementary relationships. Furthermore, we show how the phenomenon of cognitive automation can be instantiated by Machine Learning-facilitated BPA systems that operate along the spectrum of lightweight and heavyweight IT implementations in larger IS ecosystems. Based on this, we describe the relevance and opportunities of cognitive automation in Information Systems research.

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Publication

Assessing the Reusability of Design Principles in the Realm of Conversational Agents

2022-06 , Elshan, Edona , Engel, Christian , Ebel, Philipp Alexander , Siemon, Dominik

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Publication

Opening the Black Box of Music Royalties with the Help of Hybrid Intelligence

2021-01 , Elshan, Edona , Engel, Christian , Ebel, Philipp

The ever-increasing complexity of the music industry and the intensified resentment of artists towards collecting societies call for a transformation and a change of behavior within the music ecosystem. This article introduces a hybrid intelligence system, that ameliorates the current situation by combining the intelligence of humans and machines. This study proposes design requirements for hybrid intelligence systems in the music industry. Using a design science research approach, we identify design requirements both inductively from expert interviews and deductively from theory and present a first prototypical instantiation of a respective hybrid intelligence system. Overall, this shall enrich the body of knowledge of hybrid intelligence research by transferring its concepts into a new context. Furthermore, the identified design requirements shall serve as a foundation for researchers and practitioners to further explore and design hybrid intelligence in the music industry and beyond.

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