Design

Certification for human-centered AI is becoming increasingly important—as a source of competitive differentiation, a response to regulatory expectations, and a mechanism for fostering human-centered work environments. But how can organizations determine whether the underlying requirements are truly embedded in practice? Drawing on expert interviews from established certification domains, this paper shows that the decisive question is answered not during the audit itself, but in the period between audit cycles. Ultimately, it is not the certificate that matters, but the commitment of organizational leadership and the organization as a whole to engage seriously in the certification process and its continuous implementation.

Complementors are central to value creation in digital ecosystems yet have limited leverage and must adapt through dynamic capabilities. Building on the Profiting From Innovation Framework, this study examines how integrative capabilities manifest for complementors through cooperative routines. Based on a systematic literature review of Scopus-indexed studies from 2020 to mid-2025 focusing on the microfoundation “orchestrating ecosystem actors”, we identify two routine clusters. Complementors cooperate with other complementors via partner sensing, scouting, coalitions, resource sharing, and risk allocation while protecting critical assets. They cooperate with platform owners via multichannel boundary spanning, quality signaling, governance compliance, boundary resource integration, and co-development, while facing the risk of owner entry. Research gaps concern the formalization of cooperation routines, taxonomy, and B2B contexts.

Industrial supply chains must repeatedly reconfigure sourcing strategies in response to disruptions, yet supplier capability information remains heterogeneous and difficult to operationalize. Existing research addresses supplier selection, simulation, and interoperability standards separately, treating discovery, evaluation, and optimization as disconnected steps requiring manual data transformation. This paper presents a framework for a data-driven industrial platform integrating three components: Asset Administration Shell-based supplier profiles structured by an Actor-Service ontology for semantic discovery, automatic discrete-event simulation model generation from layout data for performance evaluation, and KPI-driven configuration using optimization algorithms. The main contributions are an end-to-end interoperable workflow, a two-tier supplier profile concept separating semantic descriptions from simulation parameters, and a standardized KPI interface maintaining consistency ...

Long-term relationships are now insufficient to ensure trust in digitalized and dynamic industrial networks where sensitive data sharing is prevalent. While organizational trust mechanisms, such as contracts, remain significant, they are often slow and challenging to scale within evolving digital platforms. This article thus proposes privacy-enhancing technologies as a foundation for embedding technical and verifiable guarantees alongside organizational trust mechanisms. As a result, secure industrial collaboration can be achieved without the persistence of data silos.

From automotive supply chains to smart factories, data ecosystems promise seamless collaboration across company boundaries. But how can industries build the necessary infrastructure without creating new dependencies? This article explores how open-source software can serve as a foundation and impactful tool for sovereign, interoperable technologies and standards. Yet, open-source software is not a silver bullet; rather, it poses challenges for digital sovereignty in burgeoning data ecosystems.

Industrial platforms are fundamentally transforming the organization and structure of value creation. Beyond serving as intermediaries that connect machine manufacturers, suppliers, and service providers, they enable data-driven decision-making in production while fostering innovation in product development. In doing so, they create new opportunities for collaboration and value creation through enhanced connectivity and interaction across the platform ecosystem.

Industrial digital platforms are considered the driving force behind digital value creation, yet legally they largely operate in a gray area. This article examines what defines industrial digital platforms and what legal framework applies to them. Existing platform regulations apply only to a limited extent to industrial digital platforms, which is why these platforms often establish their own legal framework through their terms and conditions. The article also explores the implications of European regulation, power asymmetries, and the opportunities and limitations of private regulation.

Building a global hydrogen economy requires more than technology and investment; it requires trust. As information systems (IS) increasingly mediate collaboration among unfamiliar, distributed actors, the question of how trust can be deliberately built becomes critical. This study systematically maps how IS enable different types of trust and reveals how these mechanisms can support trusting collaboration in emerging hydrogen value chains.