How Do Researchers (Re-)Use Design Principles: An Inductive Analysis of Cumulative Research

Accumulating prescriptive design knowledge, such as design principles (DP), is one of the fundamental goals in design science research projects. As previous studies have examined the use of DPs in practice to advance the development and communication of such principles, we argue that this attention also needs to be paid to how and for what researchers (re-)use DPs. Hence, this paper explores DP usage in cumulative (information systems) research based on the analysis and coding of a sample of 114 articles with 226 in-text citations. In doing this, we aim at contributing to the valuable discourse on DP reuse and accumulation by focusing on usage in research, present preliminary types of DP usage extracted from cumulative literature, as well as raise the awareness for guiding user and designer in how to (re-)use and how to allow for reuse of DPs.