=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2039/paper01
|storemode=property
|title=New Challenges in the Social Web: Towards Systems-of-Information Systems Ecosystems
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2039/paper01.pdf
|volume=Vol-2039
|authors=Valdemar Graciano Neto,Rodrigo Santos,Renata Araujo
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/ihc/NetoSA17
}}
==New Challenges in the Social Web: Towards Systems-of-Information Systems Ecosystems==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2039/paper01.pdf
New Challenges in the Social Web:
Towards Systems-of-Information Systems Ecosystems
Valdemar Vicente Graciano Neto1,2,3, Renata Araujo4 and Rodrigo Pereira dos Santos4
1
Instituto de Informática – Universidade Federal de Goiás (UFG) – Goiânia, Brazil
2
ICMC – Universidade de São Paulo (USP) – São Carlos, Brazil
3
IRISA/Université de Bretagne-Sud (UBS) – Vannes, France
4
PPGI – Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) – Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
valdemarneto@inf.ufg.br, renata.araujo@uniriotec.br,
rps@uniriotec.br
Abstract. Software vendors are currently concerned to the development of
software-intensive Information Systems (IS) that interoperate among them, es-
pecially in the web and mobile platforms. This phenomenon has raised the con-
cept of System-of-Information Systems (SoIS), which is a set of interoperable
ISs that exchange data and services to achieve some major business goal. The
scientific community has explored human interaction, interface design and sys-
tem development through a growing theoretical and applied research, pointing
out sociotechnical challenges in the social web. Since new types of sociotech-
nical relations can be established to increase gains and productivity in this con-
text, considering technical, business and social dimensions, software ecosys-
tems (SECO) emerge from those SoIS. We claim that the SECO perspective can
foster the comprehension about SoIS by exploring the existing relations among
constituent ISs within a SoIS as well as the nature of such relations and the hu-
man aspects of those systems. Thus, the aim of this paper is to introduce the
concept of System-of-Information Systems Ecosystems (EcoSoIS) based on the
existing background on IS, SoIS, and SECO, and how the Social Web and In-
teraction paradigms fit in this context.
Keywords: Systems-of-Information Systems, Systems-of-Systems, Software
Ecosystems, Human Factors, Information Systems.
1 Introduction
Software vendors are currently concerned to the development of software-intensive
Information Systems (IS), i.e., systems that can automate a set of business processes
of their customers [10]. Recently, those ISs have been demanded to support a high-
level of interoperability due to the dynamics of new open, collaborative business sce-
narios. One remarkable branch of IS software development is the Social Web, where
social IS software such as Facebook and Instagram not only support social interaction,
but also play the role of platforms for marketing and purchases, besides interoperabil-
ity with several IS platforms. Therefore, this type of IS must be designed to support
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interoperability, creating more complex business processes, and opening up new
business chains [13] [16]. This phenomenon has raised the concept of System-of-
Information Systems (SoIS), i.e., a set of interoperable ISs (termed in this context as
constituent systems) that exchange data and services to achieve some major business
goal [2] [3]. SoIS can be highly dynamic, enabling new constituents to join (or leave)
the SoIS to contribute with their specific functionalities in order to achieve more
complex behaviors.
As such, relations among interoperable IS are of utmost importance as novel busi-
nesses can be created and sustained, while other businesses can generate more value if
those relations are better investigated and understood [6] [7]. New relations can also
be established to increase gains and productivity considering technical, business and
social dimensions. In turn, an entire business domain can be damaged or eliminated
due to harmful business relations among ISs. This scenario requires new views on
how to understand, describe and analyze the relations among such systems, bringing
to light the vision of the new ecosystems that can surround them.
The concept of Software Ecosystem (SECO) has helped researchers and practition-
ers to model and analyze several existing relations among software elements that
compose a technological platform, as well as their internal and external actors, such as
Apple SECO or Eclipse SECO [14]. They are important as they enable to predict how
to obtain value, return on investment, and how relations between distinct products can
be beneficial or harmful for the business progress in IS development [15]. In this con-
text, the platform of an ecosystem can be seen as a broker that supports a social web
based on interaction among organizations, developers and users.
We claim that SECO can foster the comprehension about SoIS by exploring the ex-
isting relations among IS constituents within a SoIS as well as the nature of such rela-
tions. This concern may raise the concept of System-of-Information Systems Ecosys-
tems (EcoSoIS), i.e., a SECO that involves the development and interoperable activity
within a set of ISs working together to support business and social goals. This new
scenario is worth to be investigated since new IS relations can benefit/harm an organ-
ization that delivers products and services, and whose clients can combine those as-
sets to cooperatively work together to achieve a bigger business value [17].
In another perspective, the scientific community has explored human interaction,
interface design and system development through a growing theoretical and applied
research, pointing out sociotechnical challenges in the social web. However, these
new arrangements of highly dynamic SoIS and interoperable IS playing roles in a
SECO impose new challenges for interaction design, which must deal with function-
alities that are available only while specific constituents are part of such SoIS. As
such, they present all the information regarding SoIS constituents considering usabil-
ity and accessibility principles, and other human-computer interaction issues.
In this paper, we introduce the concept of EcoSoIS based on the existing back-
ground on IS, SoIS, and SECO. We also present a discussion on the importance of
such view as a research topic in the interdisciplinary research on IS development,
human interaction and social web trends. Our main contribution is to explore how
SECO perspective can help us to identify elements that affect SoIS as well as to come
up with a research agenda, and to discuss interaction design under EcoSoIS perspec-
tive. This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the foundations of IS,
SoIS and SECO as the basis for proposing the concept of EcoSoIS in Section 3, in-
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cluding a seminal discussion on how social and human interaction aspects fit EcoSoIS
research topic; Section 4 summarizes a research agenda; finally, Section 5 concludes
the paper with final remarks.
2 Background
This section introduces the main concepts that help us to define the object in which
we are working on this paper.
2.1 Information Systems
According to the General Systems Theory (GTS) [11], systems are a set of elements
dynamically interrelated to perform activities aiming at achieving a specific goal,
while consuming energy, materials or data (input) and producing new forms of ener-
gy, materials or data (output). The concept of system has been useful to describe and
understand the behavior of complex structures in many different knowledge domains -
from Biology to Social Sciences, and particularly in IS area.
An Information System (IS) is a set of interrelated components that collect (or re-
trieve), process, store and distribute information [13]. The use of a mural on an organ-
ization wall, where different people share information, can be understood as an IS
composed by humans and objects (the mural) from which information can be pro-
cessed, published, retrieved and deleted to cope with the organizational goal of com-
municating relevant things. Especially in the web and mobile eras, IS research prac-
tice are facing challenges, e.g., how to establish and control ISs’ borders and how to
govern the software supply network formed over them considering the social web
environment.
Conceptually, IS may also comprise software or other computer technology as one
of its elements (computer-based or software-intensive IS). Therefore, the use of an
organization’s information portal – where people report and share news and infor-
mation using their smartphones with the aim of establishing communication – is also
an IS. Very often, the term ‘information system’ is used to specifically refer to soft-
ware that processes information for a set of users. These IS are often known as com-
puter-based or software-intensive IS. This is correct if we consider that software is
composed by interrelated parts (modules, functions etc.) with the aim of processing
information. However, one should not restrict his understanding of IS to the software
element. Henceforth, we consider software-intensive IS and IS as interchangeable
terms.
Back to the GTS [11], systems exist inside other systems (they vary in hierarchy
and complexity); they are usually open (they interact with the environment in which
they are inserted in and learn with this interaction); their operation depends on their
internal structure (the relationship performed by their elements); and they exhibit
rules that help them to balance and regulate their operation (they try to avoid varia-
tions that will harm their operation or they are able to change and adapt to new bal-
anced situations). Systems behavior can be predictable and descriptive (e.g., comput-
ers) or unpredictable, complex and difficult to be described (e.g., social or economic
systems).
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2.2 Systems-of-Information Systems
Systems can be combined to form what is termed Systems-of-Systems (SoS). SoS are
alliances of independent systems (i.e., constituents) that are combined to interoperate
and achieve some more complex behavior. Such behavior could not be obtained from
those independent systems working separately [1]. SoS share a set of well-defined
characteristics [1] [16]: (i) managerial independence of constituents, i.e., constituents
are owned and managed by distinct organizations and stakeholders; (ii) operational
independence of constituents, as constituents also perform their own activities, even
when they are not contributing to the accomplishment of one of the SoS’ functionali-
ties; (iii) distribution, i.e., constituents require a network technology to communicate
among themselves; (iv) evolutionary development, as SoS evolve due to the evolution
of its constituents parts; and (v) emergent behavior, which corresponds to complex
functionalities that arise from the interoperability among constituents.
Moreover, SoS should exhibit an opportunist nature, i.e., a system should be able
to join other systems to form a SoS that accomplishes a mission, leaving the SoS
when the mission finishes. Dynamic architecture has also been considered a remarka-
ble SoS characteristic. In the context of the social web and human aspects research,
SoS is still barely explored as methods, techniques and tools largely focus on the
technical aspects. However, organizational aspects emerge, for example, how devel-
opers and users interact with those complex systems in order to accomplish their mis-
sions and how the social web environment can aid those stakeholders to communicate
and collaborate in order to evolve such systems with new requirements [18].
Systems-of-Information Systems (SoIS) are a particular type of SoS composed by
ISs [22]. SoIS have emerged due to the increasing trend of cooperation between dis-
tinct companies, combining efforts by offering more complex functionalities as a
combination of their own IS [2] [3]. A SoIS is dynamically generated through the
alliances among other software-intensive IS products, interoperating to create value to
their owners and to new clients that benefit from their resulting partnership. Examples
of this trend include Virtual Organizations, which comprise several distinct organiza-
tions that spontaneously get together over a social web environment, working cooper-
atively (including their software-intensive ISs) in the context of a specific project,
leaving it in the next moment. Movements such as Clean Web1, in which social net-
work software and information technology are articulated to solve issues related to
natural resources constraints, also represent trends in SoIS research and practice [16].
2.3 Software Ecosystems
Software vendors co-evolve their market capabilities around innovation: they work
cooperatively and competitively to support and to develop new products, to satisfy
customer needs and to innovate continuously [4]. These tight networks of suppliers,
distributors, outsourcing companies, developers of related products or services, tech-
nology providers, and a plethora of other organizations affect and are affected by the
creation and delivery of software vendor’s products and services. Aligned to this
1
http://goo.gl/5oZjss
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viewpoint, researchers have coined a new perspective to analyze the software indus-
try, known as Software Ecosystems (SECOs) [6] [7].
SECO is an effective way to construct software on top of a common technological
platform (e.g., operating system, application, software asset base etc.), by composing
applications and technologies developed by multiple actors (i.e., third-party develop-
ers, communities and organizations) [16]. Moreover, a SECO comprises a foundation
technology or set of components used beyond a single firm which brings multiple
parties together for a common business/development purpose or to solve a common
problem. In this context, the ecosystem platform can be seen as a broker that supports
a social web based on the interaction among organizations, developers and users.
Pragmatically speaking, we can conjecture that a SECO is formed by a software
platform and a community [23]. Such platform is composed of many artifacts, which
can be products or services. In turn, a community is formed by (1) hubs, i.e., main
agents in a SECO (e.g., leading organizations that polarize a SECO), and (2) niche
players, i.e., all stakeholders who collectively affect a SECO from individual actions
onto the platform (e.g., each of them can influence, commit to, contribute to, promote,
or extend the platform). Both types of central players in a SECO are associated to a
role (e.g., keystone, developers, reseller, end-user etc.).
This common technological platform can originate software products that cooper-
ate and/or compete in the market, or even other relations can be drawn among them.
SECO is also characterized by both software production and consumption relations.
These relations can be established with third-party developers, communities and/or
other organizations to foster components development, supply and evolution in a
large ecosystem created over the common technological platform. Examples of SECO
include Microsoft SECO, iPhone SECO and Drupal SECO [5]. Additionally, a SECO
can be part of another SECO, e.g., Microsoft CRM SECO is part of Microsoft SECO.
In the social and business perspectives, a SECO provides a complementary, organ-
izational view to SoS development, which defines roles, rules of interaction, collabo-
ration and synergistic capabilities for its constituent systems. There exist many simi-
larities between SoS characteristics [9] and SECO technical challenges [15], e.g., how
to ensure platform stability, simplicity, security, reliability, and evolution. In this
sense, we can conjecture that SECO and SoIS may also hold intrinsic and synergistic
relations that can be explored. We discuss this perspective in the next section.
3 Systems-of-Information Systems Ecosystems
Noticeably, SoIS has a strong business nature and its constituents’ development be-
comes business-driven [2] [3]. One of the challenges is to cope with the complexity of
describing, developing and operating SoIS as well as the ecosystem that emerge from
it, considering its intrinsic attributes – structure, complexity, openness, need for bal-
ance and regulation, and different levels of behavior predictability – and achieving its
desired business goals. Moreover, the diversity and amount of stakeholders’ relation-
ships mainly supported by a social web environment come up as a critical concern for
both organizations and customers.
Due to its nature, a SoIS can hold an entire business, involving suppliers, clients,
partners and technological platforms that act as an entire main ‘technology’ that sup-
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ports that business. Then, we glimpse that the association among distinct software-
intensive ISs creates a major/new SECO comprising the emergent behavior resulting
from the association of their different business goals into a new and common one – a
System-of-Information Systems Ecosystem (EcoSoIS2).
Figure 1 illustrates our understanding about EcoSoIS. Interoperability links among
diverse ISs are established to create novel functionalities and to explore or create
business opportunities. This happens due to inter-organizational alliances and cooper-
ation. This joint set of ISs raises a SoIS at a technical level. We suppose that each
organization that composes this ‘consortium’ owns a different IS platform. However,
SoIS only deals with the technical aspects. Other remarkable elements, such as busi-
ness goals, players, agents, value chains and production/consume relations – which
are inherent elements in a SECO – are not covered by the SoIS technical dimension.
As a result, business and social dimensions emerge, creating by definition a SECO
that involves the interoperable ISs that are included in a SoIS context. As shown in
Figure 1, a SECO can emerge (or not) from an IS that forms a SoIS, e.g., SECOs
emerge from IS1 and IS3. However, the EcoSoIS is formed by the relations estab-
lished with the SECOs and with the ISs themselves.
Fig 1. A conceptual illustration of an EcoSoIS.
Rewriting the view presented in Santos et al. [23], an EcoSoIS is formed by a soft-
ware platform (the set of interoperable IS that form the underlying SoIS) and a com-
2
Henceforth, EcoSoIS will be used interchangeably to express singular and plural
forms, i.e., “System-of-Information Systems Ecosystems” and “Systems-of-
Information Systems Ecosystems”.
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munity. Such platform is composed of many IS constituents, which can offer products
or services, establishing new business links among the involved companies and ena-
bling new functionalities to address new business opportunities. Such community is
formed by (1) hubs, i.e., main agents in a SECO (e.g., leading organizations that po-
larize a SECO), and (2) niche players, i.e., all stakeholders who collectively affect a
SECO from individual actions onto the platform (e.g., each of them can influ-
ence, commit to, contribute to, promote, or extend the platform). Both types of central
players in a SECO are associated to a role (e.g., keystone, developers, reseller, end-
user etc.). Under the perspective presented in Figure 1, for simplicity, we have a 1:1
relation, i.e., one SECO emerges from one and only one IS. However, we do not dis-
card the possibilities that one SECO can be formed by multiple ISs.
This phenomenon creates an entire SECO that surrounds the entire SoIS and in-
volves other inner SECOs that are inserted in that context. Thus, we have envisioned
a EcoSoIS (or SoIS SECO), i.e., a SECO the surrounds the inner SECOs that can be
associated with some of the constituent ISs that composes a SoIS, besides the value
chains, players, business goals and agents that emerge from the interoperability be-
tween several ISs that compose a SoIS. Regarding the presence of the ‘human ele-
ment’ within the EcoSoIS, an actor appears as a SoIS player (or even a customer) that
interacts with the system through its constituents (i.e., SoIS interaction borders) or
performs a role in the business process that supports the SoIS mission.
One example for exercising the EcoSoIS perspective lies on the domain of gov-
ernment and electronic democracy [12]. Public institutions have different IS and data-
bases that need to be integrated so as to provide effective services to citizens (e.g.,
civil identification IS should be integrated with the police department IS and/or the
public health system). Additionally, each distinct IS in this context may be maintained
within a specific SECO involving vendors, developers, legislation, auditors, citizens
etc. Their relationships vary depending on the diversity of business needs, i.e., new
procedures or changes in legislation.
Demands for transparency and accountability put a different agent in this ecosys-
tem: the citizen/society, particularly those able to develop their own applications us-
ing open data provided by public institutions by force of law. IS developed by indi-
viduals or group of individuals are a new SECO in this EcoSoIS, pushing the previous
ecosystem to new behavior, results and innovation. Looking this scene from the per-
spective of EcoSoIS might help to develop a broader view of this ecosystem arrange-
ments, business potential, emergent behavior, and innovation.
Another example of EcoSoIS in the domain of collaborative software engineering
is the Brazilian Public Software Portal (BSP Portal) [19]. Public institutions and na-
tional organizations often acquire off-the-shelf and/or tailored ISs from international
suppliers, sometimes making the satisfaction of stakeholders’ needs harder. As a Bra-
zilian initiative supported by the Ministry of Planning, BSP Portal serves as a public
software catalog and a social web platform to help development communities to spec-
ify, build and evolve national software projects, mostly aiming at creating ISs.
Similarly to the previous example, such ISs should interoperate since different de-
velopment communities are developing software that should communicate with public
administration business processes and ISs, forming a SoIS. Each IS is supported by a
community of developers and users, forming different ecosystems that sometimes
share information, resources and artifacts. In the macro level (EcoSoIS), SPB Portal
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adopts some strategies such as: stimulate self-managed communities, attract new ac-
tors, keep open for new partnerships, create behavior and technical patterns to sustain
the ecosystem, and focus on collective intelligence for software development.
Finally, we can claim that social and human interaction in EcoSoIS is worth to
be investigated [20]. Human aspects comprise a crosscutting concern in EcoSoIS as
the ‘human element’ is a pivotal aspect to the interaction supported by the ecosystem
network. In turn, the social web environment is a very important element to support
coordination, collaboration and communication among all the stakeholders. A forth-
coming work shall discuss other challenges in a more deep way. One social and hu-
man factor refers to the diversity of organizations and relations within a SECO. Such
diversity requires special attention to the interaction means in order to sustain the
EcoSoIS platform and keep stakeholders engaged and motivated. For example, how to
identify stakeholders’ capabilities and limitations in their relationships? How do
stakeholders relate themselves based on the EcoSoIS’s technologies? In the SECO
research, such relationships have been investigated through the social network analy-
sis [21]. The EcoSoIS manager (i.e., an organization that plays as a hub) should stim-
ulate participation of external actors, SoISs’ adoption by the community, and content/
experience sharing – other relevant factors for EcoSoIS. Global software reuse, hybrid
business models (neither open nor closed), requirements engineering considering the
crowd over the social web environment surrounding the EcoSoIS, transparency and
modular design are also factors to be investigated and carefully taken into account.
4 Research Opportunities for EcoSoIS
The relations between SoS and SECO have been already proposed as a recent investi-
gation topic [8] [9]. The association between SoIS and SECO raises a new research
branch and opens new perspectives of investigation for a topic in the interdisciplinary
research on IS development, human interaction and social web trends. Given that, we
list some research challenges that we envisioned comprising EcoSoIS, as follows:
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) in EcoSoIS. Human issues are crosscutting
concerns in EcoSoIS. Social networks play a significant role in some types of
EcoSoIS, since they can influence results achieved by becoming elements that influ-
ence the decisions of their users. On the other hand, social networks can also play the
role of constituents in a SoIS. The phenomena derived from these new relations need
to be investigated as future work branches. Furthermore, when dealing with EcoSoIS,
interaction design must cope with (i) a larger amount of information related to the
diversity of constituents to be displayed to users, (ii) presentation of constituents’
functionalities as well as global behaviors offered by the entire SoIS, and (iii) acces-
sibility and usability, considering the multitude of constituents that can be involved in
such ecosystem – such issues are also worth of being investigated in EcoSoIS context.
Social Web and EcoSoIS. The Social Web is a prominent platform on which several
businesses have been established. Indeed, social software has been employed to sus-
tain marketing and purchases. We need to investigate how the Social Web can foster
even more the establishment of new business chains among interoperable IS that form
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a SoIS. As such, the SECO that surrounds such SoIS elements must also be investi-
gated, culminating in a research opportunity that fills the gap between Social Web and
EcoSoIS. Studies related to the basic types of relationship identified in the ecosystem
(i.e., mutualism, competition/antagonism, neutralism, amensalism and parasitism) can
aid researchers and practitioners to design and understand HCI applied to the plat-
forms involved in an EcoSoIS.
Reference Architectures for EcoSoIS. Reference architectures comprise an abstract
specification of a family of similar architectures, with documentation of their similari-
ties, variabilities, and inherent properties [24] [25]. One single IS can occasionally
originate a surrounding SECO. This can be born due to new commercial partners,
business expansion, or market pressure. A single SECO has its own relations, such as
competition or predation. A reference architecture can be established for such single
SECO, modeling software/business properties and constraints, such as promised/
obtained advantages (e.g., access to private organizational databases whose data may
be valuable to the business of a third party). However, when we think about EcoSoIS,
we not only consider the inherent relations that exist inside a SECO that emerges
from one or more IS, but we need to consider all the relations between the interopera-
ble IS of such SoIS, as well as the possible competing ecological relations existing
when we consider the entire SECO that emerge from the SoIS. Hence, we claim that
modeling architectures and reference architectures for EcoSoIS is even more complex
than for SECO, and comprises an important challenge.
Innovation with EcoSoIS. We claim that a single SECO, by itself, does not support
innovation in the broad meaning of the word. A SECO that emerges from a single IS
can exploit commercial relations, and from the variabilities eventually available in the
single IS in which such SECO is based on. However, it is not possible, for example,
to design novel functionalities as an arrangement of constituents’ functionalities, as
performed in the context of a SoIS at runtime. As such, the potential for innovation of
a EcoSoIS seems to be more expressive than a single SECO. New businesses can
come up from exploring existing relationships within a SoIS. Strategies should be
drawn on how to recognize innovation opportunities within an EcoSoIS, as well as
how to foster the emergence of innovation opportunities derived from a SoIS creation.
Co-innovation is also an important issue to be handled in EcoSoIS, i.e., how to create
new functionalities and tools upon the SECO platform aided by the community’s
members. Finally, open innovation should be directly considered in EcoSoIS, i.e.,
innovations no longer arise from an organization and depend on contributions from
external actors (i.e., third-party developers, customers and users). Social web data
mining and analysis could support ecosystem maintenance and evolution.
Emerging Requirements in EcoSoIS. In an EcoSoIS context, different requirements
communication and management networks are produced and should be maintained
over time by the different constituents that compose such SoIS (a context not present
in a single SECO). New requirements can emerge from the interplay of a considerable
number of stakeholders due to opportunities raised by combination of resources, and
their commercial/technical products and platforms. As such, how to identify and man-
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age emerging requirements from internal and external actors is a great challenge for
EcoSoIS development.
EcoSoIS Governance. Information on software capabilities and market reports are
not so useful when analyzed as the only support for SECO management decisions,
without data from the organization’s asset base (i.e., catalog of software and ISs) due
to the lack of governance. Therefore, it is important to explore how to select the best
strategies for survival in any ecosystem as a developer, a community, or an organiza-
tion. An interesting question refers to how actors can achieve and maintain a healthy
position in a EcoSoIS, i.e., how sustainable the EcoSoIS platform is over inherent
changes, such as technology obsolescence or business evolution, not only pressured
by politics and the need of one single SECO, but also from an entire set of multiple
SECOs that impose different (and maybe conflicting or competing) interests. Govern-
ance must balance all these factors coming from EcoSoIS.
5 Final Remarks
We are living in a more and more open, connected world, uncovering new opportuni-
ties both to business innovation in organizations and to the empowerment of individu-
als, with more autonomy and satisfaction [13]. This brings challenges to the interdis-
ciplinary research on IS development, human interaction and social web trends, since
new types of ISs must be approached, such as how to understand, describe, model,
build, and manage ISs to face the complexity of building new systems that are not
closed artifacts anymore, but a set connected interoperable IS forming an entire new
ecosystem, with emerging and unpredictable behavior. In this context, the ecosystem
platform can be seen as a broker that supports a social web based on interaction
among organizations, developers and users, so that human aspects are strongly rele-
vant to the design and development of those systems.
In this paper, we introduced the concept of EcoSoIS based on the existing back-
ground on IS, SoIS, and SECO. Our main contribution is to explore how the SECO
perspectives can help us to identify elements that affect SoIS as well as to come up
with a research agenda and implications for human interaction and social web. We
concluded that traditional approaches for IS development needs to consider not only
the organizational contexts but also the broader ecosystems that includes organiza-
tions, individuals, and technologies. In other words, human, technical and organiza-
tional factors that affect SECOs from the perspective of social web, human interaction
and computational system development affect the emerging EcoSoISs. As a research
agenda, challenges related to HCI, social web, reference architectures, innovation,
emerging requirements, and governance were pointed out. As future work, we intend
to conduct a survey with experts on the related topics in order to refine the concept of
EcoSoIS, as well as to expand the research agenda.
6 Acknowledgements
Renata Araujo is supported by CNPq, Brazil (Process No. 305060/2016-3).
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