Socio-technical Lens Research Articles

국제개발협력에서 디지털 공공재의 역할과 과제에 관한 연구

Purpose: This study examines the role and challenges of Digital Public Goods (DPGs) in international development cooperation. Emphasizing openness, it analyzes the socio-technical dimensions of DPGs, identifying key considerations and constraints for their development and application. Originality: DPGs are emerging as a strategic tool to achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and address digital inequality. However, questions persist about whether technical openness alone can ensure successful development outcomes, suggesting the need for a broader analysis. Methodology: Using a socio-technical systems approach, this study reviews scholarly work on open-source software and open data in the Digital for Development (D4D) field over the past 15 years. Result: The findings show that DPGs enhance public service efficiency, support service expansion, and foster innovation through open access to data and knowledge. Despite these benefits, challenges such as technological complexity, infrastructure limitations, gaps in stakeholder awareness, capabilities, and trust, and hierarchical governance structures reveal tensions between technical and social dimensions. Conclusion and Implication: For effective implementation, DPGs require not only technical openness but also open governance structures, sustainable financial and technical capacities, and context-specific strategies. Governments and international organizations play a critical role as coordinators, while the formation of intermediaries and tailored strategies is crucial. This study contributes to the growing body of DPG research by offering a comprehensive analysis through a socio-technical lens.

The Ladder of Data Citizen Participation: A Sociotechnical Lens for Designing Democratic Digital Services in the Data Economy

Abstract In the data economy digital services of democratic value such as news platforms are embedded into unjust power imbalances and the intertwining of economic and civic objectives. The authors argue, to design proficient democratic digital services, power structures of the data economy and empowerment stages of data citizenship need to be made visible initially. To do so, a combination of Arnstein’s ‘Ladder of Citizen Participation’ and Rocha’s ‘Ladder of Empowerment’ is translated into the field of the data economy. A small interview study with niche actors from the field of online journalism is conducted to identify phenomena of their embedding into the sociotechnical landscape of the data economy. As a result, the Ladder of Data Citizen Participation is presented. Eventually, this article closes with implications for the sociotechnical design of democratic digital services and suggestions for future research.

A Disruptive Research Playbook for Studying Disruptive Innovations

As researchers today, we are witnessing a fundamental change in our technologically-enabled world due to the advent and diffusion of highly disruptive technologies such as generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR). In particular, software engineering has been profoundly affected by the transformative power of disruptive innovations for decades, with a significant impact of technical advancements on social dynamics due to its socio-technical nature. In this paper, we reflect on the importance of formulating and addressing research problems in software engineering through a socio-technical lens, thus ensuring a holistic understanding of the complex phenomena in this field. We propose a research playbook with the aim of providing a guide to formulate compelling and socially relevant research questions and to identify the appropriate research strategies for empirical investigations, with an eye on the long-term implications of technologies or their use. We showcase how to apply the research playbook. Firstly, we show how it can be used retrospectively to reflect on a prior disruptive technology, Stack Overflow, and its impact on software development. Secondly, we show how it can be used to question the impact of two current disruptive technologies: AI and AR/VR. Finally, we introduce a specialized GPT model to support the researcher in framing future investigations. We conclude by discussing the broader implications of adopting the playbook for both researchers and practitioners in software engineering and beyond.

ChatGPT use in universities in South Africa through a socio-technical lens

ChatGPT use in universities in South Africa through a socio-technical lens

Unraveling China’s digital traces: evaluating communication scholarship through a sociotechnical lens

In the growing trend of research using digital trace data to study human activities and opinions across different contexts, networked China has emerged as a prominent area of interest. However, research that critically examines the use, strengths, and weaknesses of existing digital trace methods, and the extent to which they can reveal the true landscape of digital China remains limited. To address these gaps, this study proposes a framework for examining and evaluating the knowledge production of digital trace research within a sociotechnical system comprising state actors, platform governance, digital civil society, and international forces. We then provide the first empirical examination of the knowledge claims and epistemic approaches used in digital trace communication scholarship that has studied China across different phases in the past 30 years. Grounded in the resulting empirical evidence, we discuss two common practices in existing digital trace research on China, how these approaches and perspectives could affect the validity and reliability of offering diverse viewpoints for studying and understanding digital China, and directions for improving these practices.

Sustainable Development for Mobile Health Apps Using the Human-Centered Design Process.

Well-documented scientific evidence indicates that mobile health (mHealth) apps can improve the quality of life, relieve symptoms, and restore health for patients. In addition to improving patients' health outcomes, mHealth apps reduce health care use and the cost burdens associated with disease management. Currently, patients and health care providers have a wide variety of choices among commercially available mHealth apps. However, due to the high resource costs and low user adoption of mHealth apps, the cost-benefit relationship remains controversial. When compared to traditional expert-driven approaches, applying human-centered design (HCD) may result in more useable, acceptable, and effective mHealth apps. In this paper, we summarize current HCD practices in mHealth development studies and make recommendations to improve the sustainability of mHealth. These recommendations include consideration of factors regarding culture norms, iterative evaluations on HCD practice, use of novelty in mHealth app, and consideration of privacy and reliability across the entire HCD process. Additionally, we suggest a sociotechnical lens toward HCD practices to promote the sustainability of mHealth apps. Future research should consider standardizing the HCD practice to help mHealth researchers and developers avoid barriers associated with inadequate HCD practices.

A sociotechnical perspective for responsible AI maturity models: Findings from a mixed-method literature review

As artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly used in various industries, it becomes crucial for organizations to enhance their capabilities and maturity in adopting AI responsibly. This paper employs a mixed-method approach that combines topic modeling with manual content analysis to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on AI maturity and readiness. The review encompasses an extensive corpus of 1451 papers, identifying the main themes and topics within this body of literature. Based on these findings, a subset of papers was selected and further analyzed to identify AI capabilities utilizing a sociotechnical lens. This further analysis led to the identification of foundational and responsible AI (RAI) capabilities. These capabilities have been integrated in a sociotechnical framework of capabilities for AI maturity models providing valuable insights for organizations and AI service providers and a basis for further research.

Responsibly strategizing with the metaverse: Business implications and DEI opportunities and challenges

This viewpoint article aims to lay out the foundations for IS research on the strategic implications as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) opportunities and challenges of the metaverse – a sociotechnical system providing users with an immersive, synchronous 3D experience of (virtual) reality through interoperable platforms and sensor devices. We first examine the metaverse’s technologies and its underlying business models, which hold immense strategic implications for organizations and industries, and might require rethinking the future of work. As with most emerging technologies able to generate, collect, and process user data, the metaverse comes at a price; leveraging the metaverse strategically will require ethical and DEI considerations. After examining all these aspects of the metaverse, we reflect on ways IS scholarship engaged in strategizing can advance theoretical and practical knowledge by generating novel research questions and outlining a research agenda. Our contribution is twofold: first, we analyze the metaverse using a sociotechnical lens, thereby setting the ground for future studies of the phenomenon. Second, we identify specific strategic implications as well as DEI opportunities and challenges associated with the metaverse, and discuss how scholarship versed in IS strategizing can contribute to addressing them, both theoretically and empirically.

The “Collections asMLData” checklist for machine learning and cultural heritage

AbstractWithin cultural heritage, there has been a growing and concerted effort to consider a critical sociotechnical lens when applying machine learning techniques to digital collections. Though the cultural heritage community has collectively developed an emerging body of work detailing responsible operations for machine learning in galleries, museums, archives, and libraries at the organizational level, there remains a paucity of guidelines created for researchers embarking on machine learning projects with digital collections. The manifold stakes and sensitivities involved in applying machine learning to cultural heritage underscore the importance of developing such guidelines. This article contributes to this need by formulating a detailed checklist with guiding questions and practices that can be employed while developing a machine learning project that utilizes cultural heritage data. I call the resulting checklist the “Collections as ML Data” checklist, which, when completed, can be published with the deliverables of the project. By surveying existing projects, including my own project, Newspaper Navigator, I justify the “Collections as ML Data” checklist and demonstrate how the formulated guiding questions can be employed by researchers.

Telling ‘more complex stories’ of European integration: how a sociotechnical perspective can help explain administrative continuity in the Common European Asylum System

ABSTRACT This article tries to explain an apparent paradox in the Common European Asylum System (CEAS): despite political stalemate over CEAS legislative reform and lack of trust amongst MSs, administrative cooperation shows operational continuity. Drawing on the ‘Infrastructural Europeanism’ approach, we argue that a sociotechnical perspective allows detecting the material means that operationally provide continuity to administrative action, despite policy gaps. It reveals mediating agency exerted by less visible actors who are nevertheless crucial to the integration process. Through a sociotechnical lens, alleged integration failures – like in the post-2015 asylum crisis – can reveal operational cooperation not visible if only legislative outcomes are taken into account. Empirically, the article shows how the International Organization for Migration assumed a role in mediating relocations between MSs, overcoming an implementation gap in health data circulation, thanks to its data infrastructure able to prompt data production, harmonise administrative standardisation and build continuity in time.

Managing Uncertainty: Company’s Adaptive Capabilities during Covid-19

The concept of organizational learning receives increasing attention and recognition in recent years as a critical enabler of organizational adaptation, survival, and growth during uncertain times. Our study applies a socio-technical lens to shed light on the organizational learning processes taking place in 40 various sizes and kinds of UK businesses during the critical, volatile, and unprecedented period – February–May 2021. The study identifies learning antecedents and key organizational context enabling and/or impeding learning processes and follow-up evolution within the studied companies. Our research confirms that in an uncertain environment, companies need to develop and apply ad-hoc learning and quick adaptation practices which are critical for survival and growth, and not standard management practices The findings suggest, however, that even if employees have the capability, not all are able to capture and transform intelligence into learning and apply it at a strategic level, reconfiguring purposefully future operational capabilities to respond to environmental changes, as they are not empowered and supported by the organizational management.

Managing the Inevitable – A Maturity Model to Establish Incident Response Management Capabilities

Although the ongoing digital transformation offers new opportunities for organizations, more emphasis on information security is needed due to the evolving cyber-threat landscape. Despite all preventive measures, security incidents cannot entirely be mitigated. Organizations must establish incident response management to treat inevitable incidents in a structured manner and under considerable time pressure. If not handled, incidents can result in reputational or financial losses and disrupt business continuity. Especially organizations that have not addressed incident response management extensively need to understand which capabilities are required to develop their incident response management. However, research still lacks a practice-grounded and socio-technical conceptualization of those capabilities and their development. For such challenges, maturity models have proven valuable in practice and research. This paper follows a design science research approach to develop an incident response management maturity model (IRM3) closely aligned with practice requirements under a socio-technical lens. Iteratively applying and evaluating the IRM3 with seven real-world organizations leverages its comprehensive view based on four focus areas and 29 capability dimensions to understand which capabilities organizations need to approach incident response management. Building on existing research, this work provides a comprehensive perspective on incident response management and its associated capabilities. For practitioners, especially in organizations with initial incident response maturity, the IRM3 offers descriptive value when used as a status quo assessment tool and prescriptive value by outlining capabilities for successful incident response management.

Perceptions and realities of mercury contamination in a Peruvian artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) community

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the leading global source of mercury pollution. Efforts to reduce or eliminate mercury use in ASGM have produced limited results, in part because they do not engage the complex socio-technical nature of mercury issues in ASGM. The paper takes a multidisciplinary approach to understand the mercury issue with a socio-technical lens, pairing sampling of mercury in soils with surveys of miners' and residents' perceptions of mercury pollution and its dispersion. The research was conducted in Secocha, an ASGM boomtown in southern Peru. Mercury levels in soils exceeded relevant standards in both industrial zones (average of 72.6 mg/kg, versus the Peruvian standard of 24 mg/kg) and residential/urban zones (average of 9.5 mg/kg, versus the Peruvian standard of 6.6 mg/kg). Mercury levels were highest where processing and gold buying activity were concentrated. Surveys revealed that miners and residents correctly assumed mercury pollution to be highest in those areas. However, respondents seemed to underestimate the extent of mercury pollution in other parts of town, and many believed that only those who handle mercury directly were affected by it. Respondents also placed low priority on reducing mercury pollution. Miners' and residents’ partial knowledge about mercury contamination and the low priority accorded to the issue suggest that mercury reduction efforts would likely be met with indifference and potentially resistance.

Innovation Ecosystem Evolution as Socio-technical Transition: A Case Study

The evolution of innovation ecosystems is an important topic for scholars and practitioners alike, as externalities such as market changes, competitive landscapes, and regulatory pressures demand the delivery of new customer-facing value propositions. In this paper we aim to enhance our conceptual understanding of ecosystem evolution by shining a socio-technical lens upon the innovation ecosystem. Through this perspective we understand ecosystem evolution as a socio-technical transition resulting from the emergence and resolution of development-retarding social or technical components referred to as ‘reverse salients’. Our case study of a food innovation ecosystem in regional Australia identifies numerous reverse salients that inhibit ecosystem reconfiguration and transition from its current state delivering high-quality agricultural produce, to a new state marked by greater output capacity and higher number of value-added offerings. We categorise these reverse salients as ‘actors’, ‘connections’ between actors, and ‘resources’ flowing between actors. While these categories align with the ecosystem-as-structure perspective, our findings additionally underscore the role of ecosystem ‘leadership’ and ‘rules of engagement’ within the ecosystem as further sources of reverse salience. We subsequently present a conceptual model that integrates our study findings along with a set of propositions to guide future empirical research.

A socio-technical lens on security in sustainability transitions: Future expectations for positive and negative security

A transition to net-zero carbon energy systems, imperative to combat climate change, is unfolding around the world. Other socio-technical systems also face the need to transition to become more environmentally and socially sustainable. We argue that such transitions will have both positive and negative security implications on numerous issues which deserve attention but have been little addressed in transition studies. We take a socio-technical lens and propose that these security implications can be ex-ante analysed via three elements of socio-technical systems: technology, actors, and institutions. We provide an illustration of such analysis in the energy transition context and use this to create a categorisation framework for expectations analysis. Regarding the technology dimension, expectations concerning, e.g., resource and technology dependencies, risk for technical system disruptions, and effects on interconnected systems can be analysed as relevant security issues. For the actor dimension, issues such as geopolitical uncertainties, regional (in)stability, internal tensions, and diffusion of power are identified. For institutions, e.g., influence on democratic institutions, peace building and structural violence can be assessed. We argue there is a need for improved and forward-looking policy coordination across domains and for academic studies that utilise foresight approaches to assess different security expectations more concretely.

Building Software Applications Securely with DevSecOps: A Socio-Technical Perspective

While continuous real-time software delivery practices induced by agile software development approaches create new business opportunities for organizations, these practices also present new security challenges in the DevOps environment. DevSecOps attempts to incorporate advanced automated security practices for agility in the DevOps environment. Mainstream perspectives of DevSecOps tend to overlook the collaborative role played by social actors and their relations with technologies in securing software applications in organizations. The first perspective emphasises the use of technologies such as containers, microservices, cryptographic protocols and origin authentication to secure the continuous deployment pipeline. The other dominant perspective focuses almost exclusively on the social aspects such as organizational silos, culture, and team collaboration. Such one-sided perspectives neglect the socio-technical argument that secure software applications from continuous deployment emerges when developers, quality assurers, operators and security experts combine their collective expertise together with DevSecOps technologies. The article presents a socio-technical framework of DevSecOps based on a systematic literature review. The review focused primarily, but not exclusively, on the computing and information systems literature and identified 26 peer reviewed articles from 2016 to 2020 which met the quality criteria and contributed to the analysis. The authors used a critical appraisal checklist and member checking to assess the quality of the articles. The authors then used thematic analysis to develop a comprehensive framework for DevSecOps based on the insights from these articles and a socio-technical lens. The socio-technical framework can be used by practitioners to perform a more holistic analysis of their DevSecOps practices. It highlights the key social and technical themes that underpin the effectiveness of DevSecOps and how insights about these themes can be used by practitioners to improve the instrumental and humanistic goals of DevSecOps. An interdisciplinary approach is proposed to adequately address challenging socio-technical relationships in DevSecOps. Future research can empirically test the importance of the interplay between technology and human activities to improve the overall performance of DevSecOps and other domains in cyber warfare and security.

Multi-Party Certification on Blockchain and Its Impact in the Market for Lemons

ABSTRACT Markets in which similar goods of different qualities are sold suffer from information asymmetries and their negative consequences. Dealers have established themselves, and mediate these markets through their use of quality signals. While these signals help to mitigate information asymmetries, these markets still function well below their optimum: a large share of goods sold are overpriced, and most of the benefits are reaped by intermediaries. In this paper we build on prior research that proposes the use of blockchain as an enabler for trusted, decentralized asset documentation. Applying a socio-technical lens, we describe how blockchain-enabled multi-party certification affords dealers the action potential to send signals that are more closely correlated to the unobservable quality of the underlying good (i.e., signals with a higher fit) than the signals they send today. We then both theorize and experimentally explore the market effects of the two types of signals. Using data from a laboratory market experiment with 210 participants, we find empirical evidence that multi-party certification affords dealers the action potential to send signals of significantly higher fit than those sent by intermediaries alone, leading to a reduction in information asymmetries, a more efficient allocation of goods, and an increase in market fairness.

A paradigm shift to ethical decision-making—incorporating systemic epistemology into complex socio-technical decision support systems research

ABSTRACT Current decision support systems (DSS) research is overwhelmingly positivist and limits the adequate representation of relevant stakeholders. This crisis of relevance precludes the systemic inclusion of social and ethical issues in complex socio-technical DSS designs. For their unstable boundary conditions, such systems also require explicit coverage of their dynamics. Lending a novel perspective to DSS research, this paper proposes a framework with the new decision-making paradigm and the systemic inquiry of boundary critique to explore stakeholder perspectives for more ethically-aware DSS development. Using qualitative research, the developed framework is applied to unleash ethical issues for a dynamic and complex socio-technical university timetabling scenario implemented as a web-based group decision support system. Multiple stakeholder perspectives are recognised and analysed for boundary judgements, while a dynamic stakeholder network considers boundary liquidity and emergence. This work aims to couple systemic epistemology with the socio-technical lens to encourage the inclusion of ethical dimensions in dynamic and complex DSS designs.

Thresholds Revisited: Inertia of an Automated Utopia: Design Commodities and Authorial Agency 40 Years After “The Architecture Machine”

April 01 2022 Thresholds Revisited: Inertia of an Automated Utopia: Design Commodities and Authorial Agency 40 Years After “The Architecture Machine” Daniel Cardoso Llach, Daniel Cardoso Llach Daniel Cardoso Llach is Associate Professor of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, where he chairs the Master of Science in Computational Design and co-directs CodeLab. He is the author of publications, exhibitions, and artifacts exploring the nexus of design and computation 349 through a sociotechnical lens. Daniel holds a PhD and a Master of Science in Computation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B. Arch. from Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Farzin Lofti-Jam Farzin Lofti-Jam Farzin Lotfi-Jam is Assistant Professor in Architecture at Cornell University AAP and director of Farzin Farzin, a multidisciplinary design studio working across architecture, urbanism, computation, and media. His work explores the political implications of technology and computation through expanded forms of architectural practice. He has been exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture, MAXXI, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and elsewhere. Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Daniel Cardoso Llach Daniel Cardoso Llach is Associate Professor of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University, where he chairs the Master of Science in Computational Design and co-directs CodeLab. He is the author of publications, exhibitions, and artifacts exploring the nexus of design and computation 349 through a sociotechnical lens. Daniel holds a PhD and a Master of Science in Computation from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a B. Arch. from Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá. Farzin Lofti-Jam Farzin Lotfi-Jam is Assistant Professor in Architecture at Cornell University AAP and director of Farzin Farzin, a multidisciplinary design studio working across architecture, urbanism, computation, and media. His work explores the political implications of technology and computation through expanded forms of architectural practice. He has been exhibited at Storefront for Art and Architecture, MAXXI, the Venice Architecture Biennale, the Istanbul Design Biennial, and elsewhere. Online Issn: 2572-7338 Print Issn: 1091-711X © 2022 Daniel Cardoso Llach and Farzin Lofti-Jam2022Daniel Cardoso Llach and Farzin Lofti-Jam Thresholds (2022) (50): 289–300. https://doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00762 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share MailTo Twitter LinkedIn Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Daniel Cardoso Llach, Farzin Lofti-Jam; Thresholds Revisited: Inertia of an Automated Utopia: Design Commodities and Authorial Agency 40 Years After “The Architecture Machine”. Thresholds 2022; (50): 289–300. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/thld_a_00762 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentAll JournalsThresholds Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2022 Daniel Cardoso Llach and Farzin Lofti-Jam2022Daniel Cardoso Llach and Farzin Lofti-Jam Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Academic medical center clinical research professional workforce: Part 2 - Issues in staff onboarding and professional development.

Defining key barriers to the development of a well-trained clinical research professional (CRP) workforce is an essential first step in identifying solutions for successful CRP onboarding, training, and competency development, which will enhance quality across the clinical and translational research enterprise. This study aimed to summarize barriers and best practices at academic medical centers related to effective CRP onboarding, training, professional development, identify challenges with the assessment of and mentoring for CRP competency growth, and describe opportunities to improve training and professionalization for the CRP career pathway. Qualitative data from a series of Un-Meeting breakout sessions and open-text survey questions were analyzed to explore the complex issues involved when developing high-quality onboarding and continuing education opportunities for CRPs at academic medical centers. Results suggest there are several barriers to training the CRP workforce, including balancing foundational onboarding with role-based training, managing logistical challenges and institutional contexts, identifying/enlisting institutional champions, assessing competency, and providing high-quality mentorship. Several of these themes are interrelated. Two universal threads present throughout all themes are the need for effective communication and the need to improve professionalization of the CRP career pathway. Few institutions have solved all the issues related to training a competent and adaptable CRP workforce, although some have addressed one or more. We applied a socio-technical lens to illustrate our findings and the need for NCATS-funded academic medical centers to work collaboratively within and across institutions to overcome training barriers and support a vital, well-qualified workforce and present several exemplars from the field to help attain this goal.