Human Agency Research Articles

Purpose The purpose of this study is to explore Finnish public saunas as third places. Taking the theoretical lens of assemblage thinking, the study reveals how the socio-material capacities of public sauna assemblages enable and/or constrain public saunas to facilitate their unique social atmosphere. Design/methodology/approach This study develops insights from an interpretative data set consisting of interviews (n = 39) with sauna bathers in hotel sauna departments, three focus group discussions arranged in a commercial sauna environment, and articles from the Sauna Magazine published between 2018 and 2022. Findings The findings demonstrate how the elements of people, spaces and materials contribute to the production of public saunas as holy places, democratic places and experiential places. The study also addresses how socio-material capacities enable public saunas to facilitate their social atmosphere by connecting each assemblage to the four social dimensions – social leveller, regularity, diversity and enjoyment (Yuen and Johnson, 2017) – of third places. Originality/value This study extends previous third-place studies by looking beyond human agency in the construction of third places. That is, the study illuminates how the heterogeneity of material elements in collaboration with a variety of people creates diverse third-place assemblages and reveals how the assemblages interact with the social dimensions of public saunas. In particular, the study shows how the finetuned layers of social interaction, including pursuing for silence, facilitate thesocial atmosphere of public saunas.

Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman’s (1990) Good Omens offers an apocalyptic rewrite of mythology, making it clear that Pestilence has been overthrown and replaced with Pollution as one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This replacement reflects contemporary shifts of the cultural spotlight from the fear of infectious disease, which peaked in the mid-20th century, to the slow, gradual, and pernicious environmental damage caused by human agency. This shift continues through the current concerns of ecological collapse and climate change. Conventional wisdom suggests that in the Book of Revelation, Pestilence represents disease and decay. However, in Good Omens, Pollution symbolizes humanity’s most pressing existential threat: ecological devastation. Unlike apocalyptic works like McCarthy’s The Road (2006) and Mad Max, which depict a braver, more violent apocalypse, Good Omens critiques environmental destruction through humor and satire. Pollution is characterized as a passive yet powerful protagonist, representing modernity’s acceptance of ecological violence, spoofing obscene consumerism, and highlighting the destructiveness of modern societal habits. Through the lens of eco-criticism, this paper discusses how Good Omens interrogates current ecological worries and contributes to the conversation around climate justice. This approach ultimately leads to an insightful exploration of how Pestilence’s reframing as Pollution challenges the tropes of the apocalyptic genre, engaging with broader ecocritical and cultural discussions about the role literature can play in shifting perspectives on the ecological crises faced today.

This study critically re-evaluates human-robot relations in Daniel H. Wilson’s Robopocalypse (2011), critiquing anthropocentric frameworks that systematically marginalize non-human entities in posthuman scenarios. Drawing mainly on Neil Badmington, Rosi Braidotti and Francesca Ferrando’s ideas and concepts, it exposes how human characters remain trapped in hierarchical binaries despite posthuman contextual shifts, failing to establish a cross-species posthuman approach. Central to the analysis is a fluid interconnectivity model, which reimagines human-machine relations as open-ended, mutually transformative exchanges rather than hierarchical binaries. Unlike prior scholarship emphasizing human-led coexistence strategies, this framework foregrounds non-human agency—demonstrating how robots in Robopocalypse autonomously initiate symbiotic networks that affect human cognition, ethics, and world-building practices. By reframing symbiosis as a co-constitutive process marked by ongoing and flowing characteristics, this study challenges static definitions of posthuman relationality. It contributes to critical posthumanist discourse by mapping how human and non-human agencies interpenetrate across the dimensions of mutual interdependency and ethical co-responsibility. These insights invite reconsideration of human-machine coexistence paradigms.

This teaching case portrays the predatory exploitation of the psychological weaknesses in the digital marketing process in three jaw-dropping stories in the swirling half-trillion-dollar digital economy in India, in the age of algorithms that predict our desires even before we know we have them. The case follows the lives of Priya, a marketing professionals whose shopping frequency had risen to thrice a week and whose satisfaction had declined to 40-percent; and Rajesh, another data engineer whose study became his control system; and Anita, a social media influencer whose expenditure had tripled to 18,000 a month with no concept that she was a manipulator of her 400 followers. These narratives expose the vulnerability algorithm—exploiting time, emotional, social, cognitive, and financial insecurity and faking scarcity, artificial social proving, gamified decision-making, and mood-controlled advertising in the given scenario of 700 million internet users, frictionless UPI payments, and inbuilt social commerce. The case provides a challenge to the simple economic idea of consumer rationality, illustrating how platforms construct preferences rather than fulfilling them. It teaches the relationships between consumer psychology, behavioral economics, information technology, and business ethics to enable students to attain the principles of decoding the processes of manipulation and develop essential digital literacy. Students argue about burning issues, by means of discussion questions that are well designed: Where does the persuasion and manipulation begin and end? So what then shall we do in order to preserve human agency in the algorithmic worlds? The ultimate awakenings of the protagonists by means of digital detox, reverse-engineering of algorithms, and moral reckoning give hope and contribute timely information to IT, marketing, and ethics courses as future leaders redefine the boundary between profitable persuasion and unethical exploitation.

IEEE 3152: A Standard for Human and Machine Agency Identification

This article explores the literary and visual representations of sea-level rise and coastal encroachment within the conceptual framework of the Meteorocene — an epoch defined by the complex entanglements of human and nonhuman agencies under anthropogenic climate change. Building upon the oceanic turn and engaging with emerging fields such as critical ocean studies, blue ecocriticism and hydrocriticism, the analysis examines texts that resonate with the cultural and existential dimensions of environmental disruption. Through a non-chronological approach that juxtaposes literary imagination with deep geological time, the study investigates the transformative potential of catachronistic reading, offering new interpretive strategies to engage with the temporal and ecological complexities of the Meteorocene. The article concludes by advocating for a new public humanities that bridges literary studies with natural sciences and Indigenous epistemologies to foster ethical engagements and communal imaginaries responsive to the ongoing climate crisis.

UNESCO (2023) has called for educators to use pedagogical approaches that prioritize human agency and a responsible interaction between humans and generative artificial intelligence (GenAI). The present study, therefore, sought to design and implement an innovative 5-stage GenAI-based project with Sports Science English for Specific Purposes (ESP) students. Specifically, the objective of the project was for students to create multimodal texts for promotional purposes while developing both critical thinking skills and vocabulary range. Upon completing the project, 42 students participated in a survey, analyzed with both quantitative and qualitative methods, to gauge the impact of the project. Regarding critical thinking skills, 95.2% of students revealed they learned it was important to use these skills when using chatbots, emphasizing the need to verify GenAI-generated content and external sources a chatbot uses. Concerning vocabulary learned, 85.7% of the students, irrespective of their self-perceived level, reported learning useful topic-based and general vocabulary, thus strongly implying generalized intentional and incidental vocabulary learning. The study’s main conclusion is that GenAI-based projects, when designed to primarily assess student critical reasoning, can create optimal conditions for vocabulary acquisition and critical thinking skill development. This approach can also have significant implications for GenAI-related teaching practice and student assessment. Keywords: Critical thinking; Vocabulary learning; GenAI; Project-based learning; ESP; Multimodal text creation

This paper investigates the posthuman ramifications of machine learning (ML) in cancer cell detection, analyzing how artificial intelligence fundamentally alters the production of medical knowledge, reshapes human-machine interactions in healthcare, and contests anthropocentric notions of embodiment, agency, and mortality. This analysis examines recent advancements in multicancer early detection (MCED) technologies and deep learning methodologies, exploring how AI-mediated diagnosis challenges conventional medical epistemologies and creates novel posthuman assemblages that obscure the distinctions between human and non-human agencies in healthcare. Utilizing a posthumanist framework that acknowledges both the opportunities and risks of technological mediation, we examine the ontological, ethical, and political aspects of algorithmic medicine, interrogating how these technologies redefine our comprehension of disease, the posthuman body, and decentralized medical authority in an era of intelligent machines.

In the contemporary era, the rapid advancement of science and technology, along with the ongoing digital transformation, has exerted a profound influence across all domains of social life, including the legal sciences. Legal technology (LegalTech) is a relatively new concept that has been conceptualized and interpreted in various ways within academic and professional discourse. This article explores several theoretical and practical approaches to legal technology, analyzes its positive impacts as well as potential risks to legal science, and, on that basis, proposes policy and research implications for Vietnam. The integration of technology into legal systems represents a paradigm shift in how law is practiced, interpreted, and even created. LegalTech encompasses a wide range of technological tools and methodologies designed to automate, optimize, and innovate legal processes. These include data analytics for case prediction, natural language processing for legal document review, blockchain-based smart contracts, and artificial intelligence (AI) systems used to support judicial decision-making. In a broader sense, legal technology not only serves as a mechanism for efficiency but also functions as a transformative force that challenges traditional notions of legal reasoning, professional ethics, and human agency in the administration of justice (Susskind, 2019). The global expansion of LegalTech has been accelerated by the increasing demand for access to justice, transparency, and cost efficiency in legal services. In many countries, especially those undergoing digital transformation, LegalTech has become a cornerstone of reform efforts aimed at simplifying procedures, improving public trust in legal institutions, and facilitating international integration (Vinogradova, 2023). For example, the United States and the United Kingdom have witnessed the proliferation of automated legal advice platforms and online dispute resolution systems, while civil law jurisdictions such as Russia and Vietnam are exploring the digitization of normative legal acts and the potential use of AI in legislative drafting. However, the emergence of LegalTech also raises important theoretical and ethical questions. Scholars debate whether the increasing reliance on AI could undermine core legal principles such as fairness, accountability, and due process (Surden, 2020). Algorithmic decision-making, while efficient, may lack transparency and be vulnerable to bias, particularly when trained on incomplete or unbalanced data sets. Moreover, the introduction of LegalTech disrupts traditional legal education and professional formation, requiring future jurists to acquire interdisciplinary skills in technology, data management, and cybersecurity. In Vietnam, LegalTech remains an underexplored but promising field. The country’s growing emphasis on e-governance and digital transformation provides a favorable environment for its development. Nevertheless, challenges persist in areas such as fragmented legal databases, limited institutional capacity, and the need for clear regulatory frameworks governing the ethical and technical standards of LegalTech applications. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that Vietnam should adopt a strategic approach that combines comparative research, institutional capacity-building, and legislative modernization. By examining the experiences of countries such as Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Brazil, and the United States, this study highlights both the opportunities and challenges of integrating technology into legal processes. Legal technology, if developed responsibly, can enhance the coherence, transparency, and accessibility of the legal system. Yet it simultaneously demands careful policy design, interdisciplinary research collaboration, and ongoing public oversight to ensure that the human dimension of law is not lost in the pursuit of technological progress.

Set in Bantayan Island in southern Philippines, Martha Atienza’s film our islands11°16’58.4”N 123°45’07.0”E features a subaquatic fisher folk procession. This seemingly religious performance doubles as a protest memory-work for overarching advocacies on extra-judicial killings and climate emergency. The breathing tubes, imaginative costumes, and buoyant bodies of diver-performers simultaneously dramatize an ecological crisis which cinema can effectively disseminate. This essay, therefore, engages with the film’s ecocritical potential by situating seawater, not only as a trope, but as an actor whose agency shapes the movement and diegesis of the film. In doing so, this current reading looks into how water, with all its elemental physicality and presence, facilitates a collaborative memory-work between human and nonhuman agencies. At any rate, while this submerged procession summons an apocalyptic future, it alternatively unfolds a co-constituted memory borne out of, rather than besieged by, the tropics.

Purpose This study investigates the relationship between employee support and labor investment efficiency, examining the mediating role of internal control weaknesses. The research integrates human capital theory and agency theory to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how employee Support policies affect workforce management efficiency. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of 1,790 firm-year observations spanning from 2014 to 2023, the study employs regression analysis with panel data. Findings The results reveal that employee support significantly improves labor investment efficiency both directly and indirectly. Companies with stronger employee support demonstrate fewer internal control weaknesses, which in turn leads to more efficient labor investment decisions. The study finds that internal control weaknesses partially mediate the relationship between employee support and labor investment efficiency. Originality/value This study makes a novel contribution by examining the mediating role of internal controls in the relationship between employee support and labor investment efficiency, an aspect previously unexplored in the literature. By integrating multiple theoretical perspectives and investigating both direct and indirect effects, the research provides new insights into how organizations can optimize their human capital management through the complementary interaction of supportive policies and control mechanisms.

This paper re-examines the concept of affordance within the context of generative AI, challenging the recent embodiment framework of human-computer interaction. Drawing on Gibson’s ecological psychology and Actor-Network Theory, it proposes a ‘fold diagram’ to illustrate how generative AI fundamentally alters the relationship between users and digital environments. Unlike previous tools requiring user skill for specific outcomes, generative AIs, exemplified by Compton’s generative art toy Idle Hands, procedural content generation, and LLM-based AI chatbots, respond meaningfully even to unintentional actions or underdeveloped queries, facilitating a new trade-off where control is ceded for increased power. The paper argues that affordances are no longer opportunities for action discovered by the user, but rather the machine’s capacity to flesh out predicted user interests. This shift is viewed through the lens of a radical symmetry between human and AI agency, where both actively fold the digital web to create intra-active niches. Ultimately, the paper presents a critical theory of HCI, asserting that software capitalism leverages generative AI to continuously re-world the web, preserving and exploiting pre-individuated user interests for profit.

From academics to Aidemics: Unpacking the human-AI symbiosis in higher education.

This article analyses William Shakespeare's tragedy, Macbeth, through the modern lens of artificial intelligence (AI) and moral programming. It proposes that Macbeth’s descent into tyranny can be understood as a failure of ethical design, where external stimuli—the witches' prophecies and Lady Macbeth's influence—act as corrupting algorithmic inputs. By examining the characters as 'predictive algorithms' and 'moral programmers,' this study explores the tension between human agency and algorithmic determinism. Macbeth’s psychological torment is interpreted as a system error, highlighting the complexities of accountability in autonomous systems. Ultimately, this reading uses the timeless tragedy to reflect on contemporary concerns regarding AI ethics, the design of moral guardrails in automated decision-making, and the essential role of human oversight and accountability in the 21st century.

Abstract Environmental decision-making is often still limited in its capacity to fully engage with social sciences and local communities. This results in the reinforcement of top-down approaches that exclude diverse perspectives. This paper proposes an arts-based method rooted in transdisciplinarity and participatory action research: the Council of Care, developed and implemented in Brazil and the Netherlands to foster inclusive dialogue and collective engagement. Drawing from the Council of All Beings and the Theater of the Oppressed, it uses role-playing and empathetic engagement to amplify marginalized voices and shift focus beyond human-centric narratives. The method has been applied across educational, community, and policy settings, promoting deeper awareness of the interconnectedness and interdependence among all beings. Our reflections highlight both the challenges and opportunities in using the Council of Care to support more caring and collaborative decision-making and socio-ecological research practices. By highlighting diverse forms of human and nonhuman agency, this approach encourages a more participatory future, with creative practices that aim to include human and nonhuman actors in decision-making processes.

‘Human augmentation’ commonly refers to ‘smart’ technologies that integrate with the human body, like exoskeletons, wearables, or modifications like retinal implants, increasing its cognitive or physical capacity. Many definitions of it are problematically broad or questionable. Nevertheless, the idea has gained traction in journalistic and policy debates. Evangelists for augmentation may posit a near-superhuman synthesis between humans and machines, supposedly resulting in upskilling and empowerment at work. These claims have attracted sceptical analysis from scholars of work and employment, yet there remains a need for further development of a critical research agenda around human augmentation. This article catalyzes this agenda by proposing a new conceptualization of ‘worker-centred’ human augmentation that can be usefully applied in the field. Such a conceptualization requires mediating between giving due weight to the intractable material characteristics of individual ‘augmenting’ technologies, and exploring the channels through which human agency shapes their design and use. We also argue that engaging with human augmentation necessitates critical reflection on ‘human-versus-machine’ framings that remain influential in sociological literature on technology and work.

Chatbots and other conversational agents based on speech recognition and processing technologies have been gaining ground in the field of language education. Although previous research has shown that automatic recognition of second language (L2) speech is difficult, little attention has been paid to how L2 teachers and learners interact with such technology when used as an interactional participant in classroom settings. Addressing this gap, this article provides a qualitative analysis of interactional practices of unplanned and situated pronunciation instruction as a teacher and 10- to 13-year-old young learners of L2 English complete robot-assisted language learning (RALL) activities in a primary school English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) context in Finland. Drawing on 14 hours of video recordings, we use multimodal conversation analysis (CA) to analyse extended repair sequences that involve interactional problems related to word recognition by a social robot. Through a sequential analysis of selected data extracts, we show how the teacher and learners correct these problems by establishing a corrective focus for providing instruction on and modifying learners’ word-level pronunciation, such as the quality of individual sounds or word stress. From the teacher’s perspective, this consists of drawing learners’ attention to pronunciation details by highlighting sounds in learners’ talk and the robot’s talk, using embodied conduct, and modelling a target-like word pronunciation. Our findings shed light on the interactional organisation of RALL activities and some of the real-life consequences of limitations in speech recognition technologies for L2 teaching and learning interactions with conversational agents. The work conducted by the teacher to convert interactional troubles into meaningful learning opportunities suggests that human agency is needed to optimally guide and mediate language learning interactions with conversational agents based on artificial intelligence (AI) and automatic speech recognition (ASR), as these agents are less capable of showing the kind of interactional and instructional adaptation that is part of human–human interaction.

Abstract While many prophetic texts display human actions as echoing into the non-human world, Hos 4:3 and Zeph 1:2–3 uniquely do so by reversing the order of creation as found in Gen 1:1–2:3. Both texts literarily deconstruct creation as part of larger paradigms of judgment. Whereas Hosea presents human action (i.e., repentance) as capable of averting the coming crisis, humans are powerless to halt the unraveling of creation in Zephaniah. This shift in the relationship between human agency and creation’s destruction parallels modern ecological concerns, as human actions increasingly stress natural earth systems, threatening to trigger environmental feedback loops (or “tipping points”) that will take the trajectory of climate change out of human control. The following article offers an ecocritical reading of Hos 4:3 and Zeph 1:2–3 in dialogue with the shifting function of human agency in modern calls for human change in response to the climate crisis.

Background: Throughout Armenia, a range of climate conditions exist, from dry subtropical to cold alpine, with a topographic diversity from 400 to 4,100 meters above sea level. Climate analysis has suggested what the territory of Armenia may experience in response to climate change. The persistence of tularemia in Armenia, in conjunction with observed ecological trends, indicates that host reservoir distributions are likely to shift, consequently altering the geographic regions at risk of transmission. This study endeavors to evaluate the potential effects of climate change on the habitat suitability and population dynamics of the common vole, the principal reservoir of Francisella tularensis in Armenia. The objectives aim to elucidate prospective changes in disease-endemic areas, thereby informing targeted control strategies to mitigate pathogen dissemination and reduce public health risks associated with tularemia. Methods: Field and laboratory data from 2000 to 2023 on the common vole and presence of tularemia were compiled from the National Center for Disease Control and Prevention archived records. For spatial and geostatistical analyses, data were compiled from monthly historical temperature and precipitation records from 2000 to 2021 and forecasted data from the WorldClim database. Data were analyzed using a geographic information system. Results: The comparison of current climate data with predictive models indicates a likely shift in regions with favorable habitats for the common vole. By 2100, areas below 2,000 meters are projected to partially lose suitability, the conditions there could be less suitable for particular animal species. Currently, the common vole's habitat area is above an altitude of 1,400 meters above sea level but by 2100, changes in climate suggest the habitat will shift above an altitude of 2,000 meters above sea level. Conclusion: The vole distribution shrinks because of the change in habitats attributed to climate change. This dynamic underscores the critical need for more targeted surveillance and integrated collaboration between human and animal health agencies to effectively monitor alterations in the ecology of zoonotic diseases. Such proactive measures are essential to anticipate and prevent future cases of human tularemia, ensuring a coordinated response to emerging public health threats.

Purpose This contribution is set up as a conceptual paper aimed at the development of a framework for a behavioral explanation and a moral assessment of populist leadership. Design/methodology/approach A literature review is performed, resulting in 16 propositions. The propositions can be used for a QCA study. Findings The framework is conceptually extended to the exercise of control by trust and distrust in the relation between leaders and potential followers. The dominance of symbolic expressions in the contest for leadership is covered by the theory of social comparison. These concepts help to explain why and how specifically unethical populist politicians gain advantages over ethical populist and non-populist competitors. Research limitations/implications The propositions are still conceptual in nature. A research design is not yet developed just like testable hypotheses and measures. Practical implications The paper offers a new and comprehensive approach for understanding and moral assessment of populist leaders. Social implications The paper offers new ideas for the response from constitutional democracies on the threats of unethical populist leaders. Originality/value A behavioral approach to populism and unethical leadership is provided. New is the integration of psychological fields of personality, social motivation, perceptions of control, trust and distrust dynamics and social comparison processes. The integration led to a considerable reduction of theory to explain human agency and leadership.